If "the issue at hand" is running a globe-spanning open-source project with hundreds of contributors, a bunch of targets, and a code base that goes back 30 year

If "the issue at hand" is running a globe-spanning open-source project with hundreds of contributors, a bunch of targets, and a code base that goes back 30 years, sure, I'm happy to listen to Torvalds. if "the issue at hand" is the more typical modern work environment for devleopers, then no, I don't think he has much special insight. Indeed, the fact that he's wrangling something so large and important means he's unlikely to have the time and attention to devote a lot of thought to how best to serve a pretty different group of people. An obvious consequence of this is git's terrible interface. Its premise is "if you totally understand what Git is up to under the hood, the interface is great!" Fine for a small in-group of kernel developers whose lives are distributed patch sets, but terrible for the average developer. It has taken 15 years to get some reasonably named commands for common things like "restore a file". That's a great sign that we shouldn't listen to Torvalds on topics outside the realm of his admittedly impressive expertise.