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> however in contexts where there are objective criteria of quality elitism is just being a professional good at his job. Imagine I look at the Linux kernel so
by michaelt 4y ago
> however in contexts where there are objective criteria of quality elitism is just being a professional good at his job.
Imagine I look at the Linux kernel source code and I feel it's lacking in automated integration tests, and that C is a poor choice of language for security-critical code.
Am I a competent professional, applying objective quality criteria?
Or am I an arrogant dilettante, to imagine I know better than some of the most influential living programmers?
- nathias 4y agoIt depends on you and the context, are you actually working on Linux kernel and have worked on a lot of similar type projects? Objectivity does not imply that it's easy to discern adequate criteria or that they are easy to know or that there is a consensus about them, just that it isn't purely subjective, and code isn't.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoTell Linus his code sucks. That should end well.
- thefaux 4y agoLinus has a terrible attitude.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoThat may be so (I think so, myself), but there's no arguing with his prowess. He was annoyed at his options for configuration management, so he took a couple of weeks off, and wrote Git[0]. Now, that kind of skill doesn't come in a Cracker Jack box... [0] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/10-years-of-git-an-interview-with-git-creator-linus-torvalds https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/10-years-of-git-an...