4 ms·

Side remark : has anyone talked to linus the same way he did to others following a bug linus has coded himself ? Like, calling something he did a piece of trash

by bsaul 8y ago

Side remark : has anyone talked to linus the same way he did to others following a bug linus has coded himself ? Like, calling something he did a piece of trash, or something similar.

nurettin 8y ago
From the very beginning of his collaborative effort, Linus took the role of a code reviewer/merger. That way, he essentially decided the feature set and direction of the project. I don't know if he did any development other than committing patches/merging-rebasing branches after the collaboration started, but I'm guessing it was rare.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  I know he did the groundwork for Git at least, you can see his own commits in the history of https://github.com/git/git; https://github.com/git/git; that was 14 years ago by now though, according to that.
avar 8y ago
Without defending that he does that, that's an unfair summary. When he's been publicly chewing people out on LKML it's not because someone just made an honest mistake, it's usually something like "a subsystem maintainer should know better" resulting in a systemic fuckup, not some isolated mistake or bug.
ElBarto 8y ago
I've known outstanding guru-level engineers that were that blunt when I was a student. You need to know the person. In my experience most of them are very nice guys. It's just that when they think something is not that great they will just say "it's shit". I was told many times my code was shit by these guys at the time and I didn't take it as a personal insult but as constructive feedback. They liked that I took it that way and we ended up good friends. People should see through the words before being offended.
- headmelted 8y ago
  There's being blunt, and there's being a bastard (to borrow Linus' word). True story: I once worked in a place where a new trainee engineer was struggling with a piece of work. There were a few reasons for this that weren't their fault (not a lot of explanation of the requirements). Nonetheless, the work wasn't getting done as fast as the PM wanted. Now, the PM in this case had moved across to software development from a post-graduate background in teaching, which I only point out to explain that this particular PM considered themselves something of a big deal. (Having moved around as an independent contractor I'm fairly used to seeing small fish in smaller ponds that think they're the office genius, but this was next-level conceit.) Anyway, they decide to let this engineer go one morning. Their prerogative I guess, but the PM shares with everyone later on that same day that they were able to steer this person in the right direction on the way out the door by kindly explaining to them that it hadn't worked out because "they didn't have the natural aptitude for engineering and would be better served pursuing a different career path". Most of my gigs are in a fairly small city with a smaller community of engineers, so I'm used to encountering people a couple of years down the road. Sure enough, I never saw this person around again in any of the meetups or in any other gig, so I assume they left the industry based on this manager's feedback. So yeah, bastards abound.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Maybe he was right?
    - trustfundbaby 8y ago
      and maybe he was wrong. whats your point?
      - headmelted 8y ago
        I know this was referring to the parent, but just to add to this: I wouldn't trust Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates, Dennis Ritchie (may he rest in peace), or whoever else to assess whether or not someone has a place in the software industry - so the idea of a mid-level manager in a nameless tech department doing so is utterly ridiculous to me.

by bsaul 8y ago

Side remark : has anyone talked to linus the same way he did to others following a bug linus has coded himself ? Like, calling something he did a piece of trash, or something similar.

nurettin 8y ago

From the very beginning of his collaborative effort, Linus took the role of a code reviewer/merger. That way, he essentially decided the feature set and direction of the project. I don't know if he did any development other than committing patches/merging-rebasing branches after the collaboration started, but I'm guessing it was rare.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
I know he did the groundwork for Git at least, you can see his own commits in the history of https://github.com/git/git; https://github.com/git/git; that was 14 years ago by now though, according to that.

avar 8y ago

Without defending that he does that, that's an unfair summary. When he's been publicly chewing people out on LKML it's not because someone just made an honest mistake, it's usually something like "a subsystem maintainer should know better" resulting in a systemic fuckup, not some isolated mistake or bug.

ElBarto 8y ago

I've known outstanding guru-level engineers that were that blunt when I was a student. You need to know the person. In my experience most of them are very nice guys. It's just that when they think something is not that great they will just say "it's shit". I was told many times my code was shit by these guys at the time and I didn't take it as a personal insult but as constructive feedback. They liked that I took it that way and we ended up good friends. People should see through the words before being offended.

headmelted 8y ago
There's being blunt, and there's being a bastard (to borrow Linus' word). True story: I once worked in a place where a new trainee engineer was struggling with a piece of work. There were a few reasons for this that weren't their fault (not a lot of explanation of the requirements). Nonetheless, the work wasn't getting done as fast as the PM wanted. Now, the PM in this case had moved across to software development from a post-graduate background in teaching, which I only point out to explain that this particular PM considered themselves something of a big deal. (Having moved around as an independent contractor I'm fairly used to seeing small fish in smaller ponds that think they're the office genius, but this was next-level conceit.) Anyway, they decide to let this engineer go one morning. Their prerogative I guess, but the PM shares with everyone later on that same day that they were able to steer this person in the right direction on the way out the door by kindly explaining to them that it hadn't worked out because "they didn't have the natural aptitude for engineering and would be better served pursuing a different career path". Most of my gigs are in a fairly small city with a smaller community of engineers, so I'm used to encountering people a couple of years down the road. Sure enough, I never saw this person around again in any of the meetups or in any other gig, so I assume they left the industry based on this manager's feedback. So yeah, bastards abound.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Maybe he was right?
  - trustfundbaby 8y ago
    and maybe he was wrong. whats your point?
    - headmelted 8y ago
      I know this was referring to the parent, but just to add to this: I wouldn't trust Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates, Dennis Ritchie (may he rest in peace), or whoever else to assess whether or not someone has a place in the software industry - so the idea of a mid-level manager in a nameless tech department doing so is utterly ridiculous to me.