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Does your comment also apply to this specific e-mail? I just read it and it seems pretty tame to me. It's direct but if people get offended by this these days

Does your comment also apply to this specific e-mail? I just read it and it seems pretty tame to me. It's direct but if people get offended by this these days, by gods, we have a problem. Sometimes growing a thicker skin is the answer, one can't put the burden all on the messenger. I mean, there's some Linus e-mails (and also Erik Naggum posts on Usenet) that I thought were awesome when I was young and impressionable but that I now think are over the line. But this specific example, if that's not possible... phew.) (I also get the impression some commenters here do not realize what "fsck" refers to.)

rovolo 8y ago
The problem I see with it is that Linus doesn't leave any room for someone to disagree with him. Specifically: > Oh. And sure, when things crash and you fsck and you didn't even get a clue about what went wrong, you get frustrated. Tough. There are two kinds of reactions to that: you start being careful, or you start whining about a kernel debugger. > Quite frankly, I'd rather weed out the people who don't start being careful early rather than late. That sounds callous, and by God, it _is_ callous. But it's not the kind of "if you can't stand the heat, get out the the kitchen" kind of remark that some people take it for. No, it's something much more deeper: I'd rather not work with people who aren't careful. It's darwinism in software development. > It's a cold, callous argument that says that there are two kinds of people, and I'd rather not work with the second kind. Live with it. True, he's not using profanity, but his words boil down to "People who introduce a crash and want to use a debugger to find out what's going on are not careful developers. Careful developers would not introduce a crash in the first place. If you cause a crash while developing on the kernel, you are not welcome to develop on the kernel." It's impossible to argue that a debugger would be helpful because Linus will label you as a careless developer. Eventually he gets around to the actual reason he doesn't like debuggers, but he spent the first 2/3 of the email just belittling people who use debuggers. > I happen to believe that not having a kernel debugger forces people to think about their problem on a different level than with a debugger. I think that without a debugger, you don't get into that mindset where you know how it behaves, and then you fix it from there. Without a debugger, you tend to think about problems another way. You want to understand things on a different _level_. > And quite frankly, for most of the real problems (as opposed to the stupid bugs - of which there are many, as the latest crap with "truncate()" has shown us) a debugger doesn't much help. And the real problems are what I worry about. The rest is just details. It will get fixed eventually. Only after the last 1/3 of the email do you have enough information to craft a response to Linus to argue why a debugger would be helpful.

rovolo 8y ago

The problem I see with it is that Linus doesn't leave any room for someone to disagree with him. Specifically: > Oh. And sure, when things crash and you fsck and you didn't even get a clue about what went wrong, you get frustrated. Tough. There are two kinds of reactions to that: you start being careful, or you start whining about a kernel debugger. > Quite frankly, I'd rather weed out the people who don't start being careful early rather than late. That sounds callous, and by God, it _is_ callous. But it's not the kind of "if you can't stand the heat, get out the the kitchen" kind of remark that some people take it for. No, it's something much more deeper: I'd rather not work with people who aren't careful. It's darwinism in software development. > It's a cold, callous argument that says that there are two kinds of people, and I'd rather not work with the second kind. Live with it. True, he's not using profanity, but his words boil down to "People who introduce a crash and want to use a debugger to find out what's going on are not careful developers. Careful developers would not introduce a crash in the first place. If you cause a crash while developing on the kernel, you are not welcome to develop on the kernel." It's impossible to argue that a debugger would be helpful because Linus will label you as a careless developer. Eventually he gets around to the actual reason he doesn't like debuggers, but he spent the first 2/3 of the email just belittling people who use debuggers. > I happen to believe that not having a kernel debugger forces people to think about their problem on a different level than with a debugger. I think that without a debugger, you don't get into that mindset where you know how it behaves, and then you fix it from there. Without a debugger, you tend to think about problems another way. You want to understand things on a different _level_. > And quite frankly, for most of the real problems (as opposed to the stupid bugs - of which there are many, as the latest crap with "truncate()" has shown us) a debugger doesn't much help. And the real problems are what I worry about. The rest is just details. It will get fixed eventually. Only after the last 1/3 of the email do you have enough information to craft a response to Linus to argue why a debugger would be helpful.