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"I don't know how to make a screenshot" Linus Torvalds often says that he does not know how to do X (like install a Linux distribution, or other simple stuff).
by zvmaz 10mo ago
"I don't know how to make a screenshot"
Linus Torvalds often says that he does not know how to do X (like install a Linux distribution, or other simple stuff). I wager that it's a status thing.
- hombre_fatal 10mo agoIt’s disdain.
- ekjhgkejhgk 10mo agoNah, I think he's right, it's signaling. I think Linus and Stallman don't have disdain for "civilians". I think Linus in particular has deep disdain for people who pretend to be competent and then are not up to scrutiny; but he doesn't have those blowouts with dumbasses that he doesn't work with. On the other hand, someone who strikes me has having universal disdain is Carmack.
- ekjhgkejhgk 10mo ago> I wager that it's a status thing. Yes, it's a form of signaling. It's like a milloinaire showing "I have so much money that I can dump 10k on a Rolex and not even think about it", or a billionaire showing "I have so much money I don't even need to dump 10k on a Rolex to show how much money I have". These guy's version is "I'm so technically accomplished, that I can tell you I don't know X basic thing and you'll interpret it as a sign of my genius". That's ok. In our society we attribute too much importance on money, I don't mind if the likes of Stallman and Linus get a bit more fanhood from the wider society than they currently do.
- opan 10mo agoDue to these sorts of quotes from them, I often say semi-seriously that programmers don't know how to use computers. Another thing in this vein I often recall is Notch saying he finds both vim and emacs too confusing/difficult (while many non-programmers can use them both without issue). It may be an over-specialization. With modern labels you could say they put everything into "Dev" and only the bare minimum into "Ops".
- mmsimanga 10mo agoYou could be right but I would like to put forward another possible reason. They could be telling the truth. I studied computer science late 90s and to this day I cannot use MS Excel beyond summing a column of numbers. To make matters worse I work in data engineering space. So people often assume I do not want to help them when I tell them I cannot help them with their fancy spreadsheets. I have never owned a Mac book and sometimes I get asked for help and I haven't a clue how to help. The answer is how come but you have been working with computers for all these years.
- anthk 10mo agoDitto here. Word, Excel and clones, mostly at Wordpad level and a bit more in sheets. For the rest, I know awk/perl/tcl and Gnuplot. And md2Groff-> PDF does magic. PowerPoint? Magicpoint or sent(1).
- manmal 10mo agoI thought Excel is the bread and butter in your space. How is this possible?
- mmsimanga 10mo agoIMHO, speaking from a data engineer perspective. Excel is used excessively by industry specialists who aren't in IT or but IT people who are being constrained by environment. As in they don't have a better tool to work in. It is a great tool to quickly mock up a report. Why am I am not good at excel, it is because I am the person who tends to fetch the data from the different systems and consolidates it for the analysts to analyse and some do use Excel to analyse the data.
- Loocid 10mo agoWhen did Linus say he doesn't know how to install a distro? My understanding is he's only said he prefers to use simple to install distros.
- zvmaz 10mo agoThanks for asking, I had to search the quote since I recalled it from memory. I couldn't find it, but here's the closest I got [1]. The disdain and arrogance of this person is just incredible. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHGTs1NSB1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHGTs1NSB1s