11 ms·
Ah! The resounding NAK! https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=whFZoap+DBTYvJx6ohqPwn11Puzh7q4huFWDX9vBwXHgg@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=whFZ
by javier_e06 3y ago
Ah! The resounding NAK! https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=whFZoap+DBTYvJx6ohqPwn11Puzh7q4huFWDX9vBwXHgg@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=whFZoap+DBTYvJx6ohqPwn11P...
My take away:
jeffxu@google.com has to go back to rethink the whole thing.
Good idea, execution, not so, yet.
- ranguna 3y agoA bit aggressive, but beautiful code review nontheless.
- eklavya 3y agoMaybe this hero worship is why being a raging asshole is ok.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- WaffleIronMaker 3y agoSorry, I must missing something here, but how is he being a raging asshole? Looking through the linked code review, he's definitely very direct, and I can see how profanity is often uncomfortable to people who are used to formality, but he doesn't seem to attack anyone personally or focus on anything besides the technology?
- eklavya 3y agoHe is being a raging asshole by behaving like one? How is it ok to berate a contribution like that? Is it encouraging more people to contribute? Is it creating a positive environment? Let's park that for now, is it helping the technical discussion at all? It's just power tripping on the gatekeeper status. All of this could be said in a technical, professional manner. Many many great programmers do it everyday, sorry Linus, nobody is a God. People are not anybody's toilet paper.
- mhh__ 3y agoI would much rather have someone like Linus who at very least I would understand very quickly than a "leader" who is distant and only makes a fuss post-hoc
- foooorsyth 3y agoIt’s a bad review. The snarky prose is annoying. He could be much more concise as well. “Won’t merge. Commit messages need far more detail. Don’t do bitmask translations. All of these operations should use the same mask instead of creating redundant ones. Rethink the logic here, not sure if it makes sense. This needs a rewrite, not small tweaks” …was really all it needed. The wall of text is more offensive than the insulting tone.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoOrdinarily I'd agree, e.g. within a company or team, I would not accept this kind of tone, it's not how peers communicate But it's also not Torvald's job to tutor here or be a mentor. He has limited time in the day. And the company doing the proposal here is Google. They probably should have come in with a more-better-finished product. The consequences to design errors in kernel syscalls are rather intense.
- foooorsyth 3y ago>He has limited time in the day So he spends it dunking on a proposal with snarky prose instead of a concise review without bashing the person trying to contribute. How efficient.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoYeah I mean that's maybe fair, and I thought Torvalds had been making attempts to avoid this kind of tone. I still think even if he had been concise and terse he would have been perceived as slightly-rude though.
- hedora 3y agoThe proposed summary of the review is too terse and doesn't make any sense. I don't see any redundant prose in the original one. His concerns are clear, and he gives actionable suggestions for improvement. The tone + his opinion of the patch set is also clear. Would you rather get a code review that is full of vague euphemisms and tries not to hurt your feelings, and then spend months wasting time on a dead end approach because you thought minor tweaks would work? I'd much rather get one message that says where the bar for merging is so I could fix my code and get it merged. I absolutely wouldn't care if the latter was a bit sweary. I've worked at a place where all communication must be in professional tone and polite, and you cannot give valid technical feedback that might hurt someone's feelings. The verbal communications standards were weaponized by sycophants, who dominated middle management. It was the most passive-aggressive and hostile work environment (as in legal liability) I've ever encountered.
- varispeed 3y agoI can picture this as someone publicly berating junior employee for trying to do something good "in a wrong way". There is no need for such language. Other commenter here shown the whole "review" could be just one or two sentences. That to me shows someone has not been going to therapy.
- zelon88 3y agoCan you picture it as the passionate founder of the largest open source non-profit in existence telling a highly paid software engineer at the largest closed source tech conglomorate in the world that the self-serving code he's pushing into the repo you've been maintaining for 30 years is trash, because it is trash? Because that's what you're seeing here.
- ajkjk 3y agoYet it would be so, so, so easy to do that in a way that isn't so mean and sad to watch. It's a passionate founder with an abuse problem doing something that doesn't require abuse but being abusive anyway and, because they're too important, no one can easily prevent it.
- eviks 3y agoYou've added a bunch of irrelevant qualifications to a, to borrow your language, highly paid jerk in power enjoying being a jerk. This is also much easier to picture and much closer to describing the situation
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- groby_b 3y agoSo what? First, if you fly off the handle every time somebody pushes some bad code, you might want to find some help, because it's going to happen a lot. Everybody writes bad code from time to time, and the more people you work with, the more likely you are to encounter cases. Linus is sure working with a lot of people. Second, Linus has always been rude. This isn't because his beloved work of 30 years got sullied, it's because he has a temper and can get away with it. He had that temper back in 1991, and he's been at most slightly successful at tempering it since. He's repeatedly making the choice to be that way. He could choose a different response, but he prefers replying this way, for whatever reasons. You can argue if that is or isn't OK. But either way, it's a choice to be rude, not an innate emotional response because some dirty peon has sullied the œeuvre of the great artist.
- voidfunc 3y agoI'm surprised by so many people taking offense at it. Very direct and to the point, it's great. People have become so fragile in the last decade or so. It's pathetic.
- ranguna 3y agoOffended? Sorry my message must've hit a traumatic chord on your brain, but I didn't say I was offended, just that it was aggressive. Like watching wwa show, it's aggressive, but entertaining. Please try to not project your thinking too much next time you read someone else's comment next time.
- endisneigh 3y agoThe exact same points could’ve been made in a nicer fashion. Needlessly aggressive language imo. Would you speak to your teammates this way? Your child?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- withinboredom 3y agoYes. We need more pointing out when people do idiotic things, not less. Otherwise, in a few generations, we'll be wondering why you would water plants with toilet water.
- dustyleary 3y agoIs it possible to point out that you disagree with something without being rude or aggressive in speech?
- withinboredom 3y agoHow was he rude or aggressive? He just said what he saw: shit code he'd have to maintain and he clearly didn't want to.
- 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- orangepurple 3y agoMatthew Wilcox dunked on it savagely too in https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/ZS6Ea4%2FKI0mKiRMv@casper.infradead.org/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/ZS6Ea4%2FKI0mKiRMv@casper.infra... It is your job to do this. You seem to have taken the attitude that you will give the Chrome team exactly what they asked for instead of trying to understand their requirements and give them what they need.
- cozzyd 3y agoAnd to add to the submitter's rough day, Theo de Raadt has joined the conversation. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/55960.1697566804@cvs.openbsd.org/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/55960.1697566804@cvs.openbsd.or... mseal() is a clone of mimmutable(2), but with an extremely over-complicated API based upon dubious arguments.
- alain94040 3y agoAnd notice how his comment is constructive despite the lack of name calling or abusive language.
- withinboredom 3y agoI'd love to see the name calling. I've read it several times now. I see him saying that this random patch out of the blue, without any discussion, doesn't follow any of the guidelines to submit a kernel patch, doesn't make any sense (in fact, seems to reimplement things already in the kernel), and isn't being accepted without a significant rework. He never, ever, once, demeans the person who submitted the patch or shows a pattern of abuse to that person -- if you look up the definition of "abusive" you'll see it says (emphasis mine): "extremely offensive AND insulting". While the text may be offensive (to some, to my ex-military eyes, this is being nice), he never once insulted the author.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kramerger 3y agoI like that Linus isn't wasting time on niceties and goes right down to business. Sucks to be on the receiving end, but in the end its better for everyone. Wish our developers could work like this.
- generalizations 3y agoIronically, I've taken to asking ChatGPT to "Please be blunt, Linus Torvalds-style" - it results in far more useful feedback.
- water-your-self 3y agoHonestly the tone of his email seemed very nice. He was informative and gave substantial feedback.