13 ms·

What's up with the many insults? A bit of professionalism amongst developers would be nice...

by Aardwolf 12y ago

test1235 12y ago
Sounds like regular ol' Linus to me ...
stickydink 12y ago
This is just Linus, unfortunately
Svip 12y ago
So it will get posted on HN and other news websites.[0] Notice how no one else in the thread cares about Linus' language. [0] He is after all warning about the use of gcc-4.9.0
- Argorak 12y ago
  > Notice how no one else in the thread cares about Linus' language. Except Sarah Sharp and others.
  - Svip 12y ago
    I cannot seem to find her mail or the others' in this thread. Am I missing something or are you referring to previous instances of Linus' outbursts? I guessing on the latter, in which case I specifically wrote 'the thread' for this reason.
    - Argorak 12y ago
      Meh, yes. Shouldn't post replies like that at 40 degrees celsius outside ;). You are right.
rsynnott 12y ago
As in, Torvalds being mean about the compiler, or something else? That seems pretty par for the course in the context of a badly-broken thing that people tend to expect never to be broken.
- Sharlin 12y ago
  Also note that his tone in the actual gcc bug report is professional and matter-of-factly: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=61904 https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=61904
  - forgottenpass 12y ago
    And in the GCC bugzilla Richard Biener of gcc is willing to say the following about the behavior. This all feels like much ado about nothing. so that spill is right before the asm and we immediately re-load it into a register required by an asm constraint (stupid register allocator).
gkya 12y ago
Professionalism? Torvalds is a teenager with too much privileges.
- watwut 12y ago
  Professionals come in various shapes. Torvalds is not the most polite man in the worlds, far from that. However, he achieved a lot, whether because or despite of it. So, yeah he reserve respect and deserve to be called professional. Although not to be called "the most polite man".
- dasil003 12y ago
  Torvalds has earned his privileges as much as any developer alive or dead. In fact, if his abstract power ranks up there with Fortune 500 CEOs and national leaders, I'd say he deserves his privileges more than most of them as well.
  - gkya 12y ago
    It'd be better if he knew some manners though. I can't believe the amount of people who will most selflessly throw themselves between Linus and criticisms.
    - nitrogen 12y ago
      It'd be better if he knew some manners though. At some point arguing over manners is like arguing what serialization format is best; it's just another way of exchanging information.
    - sjwright 12y ago
      Sure, I'd love to see Linus be more civilized in his criticisms. As it happens, nobody is perfect and I think Linus's imperfections are laughably trivial compared to many other people's.
    - watwut 12y ago
      Some of us have worked for corporation where all problems were sugar coated in nicely sounding phrases. They got hidden so nobodies feelings are hurt and criticized person did not even recognized there is a problem with his work. The whole system becomes dysfunctional in its own right.
Argorak 12y ago
Linus wants to keep this tone and considers it important. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-torvalds-defends-his-right-to-shame-linux-kernel-developers/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-...
- chippy 12y ago
  >Torvalds doesn't want a "code of conduct," saying that "venting of frustrations and anger is actually necessary, and trying to come up with some ‘code of conduct’ that says that people should be ‘respectful’ and ‘polite’ is just so much crap and bullshit.” This is interesting when one compares it with other projects such as Django which have gone the whole other way in addressing modern views of how to approach diversity, gender issues, conduct etc.
  - watwut 12y ago
    Arent diversity and gender issues orthogonal to this? You can have room full of diverse women, man, blacks, whites, young, old swearing a lot. You can have young-white-male-only group talking nicely to each other (while still being exclusive club rejecting anyone else).
    - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
      They tend to be correlated though don't they and there's often a common root of "I don't care who you are, take me as I am, it's your problem".
    - Intermernet 12y ago
      Yes they're completely orthogonal. Linus (seemingly) doesn't care about a person's race, creed, gender, or sexual preference. He cares that they are breaking Linux (https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75), spreading misinformation about Linux (http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/linus-torvalds-remove-rdrand-from-dev-random-4/responses/9066 http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/linus-torvalds-remove-...), releasing software that breaks Linux (GCC 4.9.0), or being generally, and consistantly anti open-source (http://youtu.be/iYWzMvlj2RQ http://youtu.be/iYWzMvlj2RQ)
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
walshemj 12y ago
Non native speakers often don't have the instinctual grasp of slang and swearwords in English and so tend to use the F C and S words a lot without fully understanding the severity of the words. "seriously crazy shit" seems a bit restrained for Linus though
- Svip 12y ago
  No, we understand them all right. We are just not generally as prudish as English-speakers. Perhaps it's more a culture difference than a language barrier.
  - cstross 12y ago
    Same goes for vernacular Scots, where the F-word isn't far off being verbal punctuation, roughly equivalent to "eh" in Canadian English.
    - Intermernet 12y ago
      Yes, but "Fook" isn't actually a swear word anywhere except Scotland, so it's ok.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Maybe up to a point - though it can make you look like your going off the deep end over trivial matters.
  - jnbiche 12y ago
    >We are just not generally as prudish as English-speakers. So you're speaking on behalf of the entire non-English speaking world? I think it's important here to distinguish between swearing about something ("aww, fuck") versus swearing at someone ("fuck you"). If you are more inclined to swear about something, then yes, perhaps you can say you're "less prudish". But if you're more inclined to swear at someone, then it has nothing to do with prudishness and everything to do with aggression and rudeness. Is your culture more aggressive and rude than that of many English-speaking cultures? Some are....
caf 12y ago
You'll notice that the insults are entirely directed at an inanimate piece of software.
- sjwright 12y ago
  I don't know. If there's any kind of software that can get emotional and hurt, it's a compiler.
  - DonHopkins 12y ago
    Good point. I've been misinterpreted by some pretty emotional interpreters, too. I'm not going to name and shame the interpreter in question, but the person who originally wrote it was the same person who wrote the compiler in question, Richard M Stallman. ;) http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html
- kabdib 12y ago
  "Hey, Michaelangelo, what is that piece of shit you're carving?" I don't think so.
  - wolf550e 12y ago
    1. The letter was to a user of the compiler, not to its author. 2. Linus is a Finn, their culture is a bit different, people who post on LKML know this.
  - caf 12y ago
    Well, for one thing a C compiler is a considerably more utilitarian creation - "Hey, McDonalds, Big Macs taste like shit". And of course even purely artistic creations have always been subject to quite blunt appraisals - you won't have to look far to find them about, say, Jackson Pollock's paintings.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Pollack and others were funded through CIA programmes to demonstrate the power of the creative free thinking West. Listening to the God-awful Jazz they play at my local coffee shops makes me wonder just how effective this campaign of psychological warfare was.
recalibrator 12y ago
Linus is just being Linus. I've been following him since Red Hat 5.2 and the open source culture has always been "colourful". His words shouldn't be taken too personally, just as getting bitten by a grizzly bear shouldn't be taken personal.
- dalke 12y ago
  Interesting analogy, but in a way I don't think you meant. Problem bears are translocated or killed. That's not due to taking things personally but to prevent future bad interactions. If your analogy has merit, shouldn't we do the same (metaphorically) with Torvalds?
  - recalibrator 12y ago
    Good point. Bears are being forced into close proximity with humans due to urban sprawl. Their existence is threatened daily. Look too closely and the analogy breaks.
    - dalke 12y ago
      My belief is that the analogy breaks even looking at a distance. Relocation policies aren't based on taking things personally.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  That may be so but I'm pretty sure that pretty much every study that's been done on this says insulting people is demotivating and generally destructive behaviour. Linus can believe what he likes but the evidence contradicts him.
  - riquito 12y ago
    > Linus can believe what he likes but the evidence contradicts him. The evidence shows that his way works to lead the people working at Linux.
tonfa 12y ago
If you read the gcc bug, he is rather professional.
macspoofing 12y ago
First time with Linus?
smcl 12y ago
I initially felt the same, but imagine if you'd spent countless hours getting to the bottom of an obscure bug that turned out to be a completely bone-headed compiler problem outside your control. Sometimes I think Linus goes a bit far, but this time I think he's justified in his venting his irritation
- anthracis417 12y ago
  People in IT are assholes. I've only worked in retail, food, biotech and IT but IT has been my least favorite because of my coworkers. I see the shitty attitude is just an in-general IT thing and accepted.
  - oldmanjay 12y ago
    a friend of mine once told me that everyone in Phoenix is an asshole. I laughed and pointed out that there was no way she had met even a significant fraction of people, that human relationships are built with all sorts of biases, and there was no way she could make that assessment without generalizing to the point of uselessness. she called me an asshole in reply. you have pretty much the same problem here. you have no reasonable basis upon which to make that statement. it is offensive and generalized to the point of uselessness.
    - thisisaguy 12y ago
      "If everywhere you look, everyoneais a jerk, you might be the jerk." (Not saying anyone here is a jerk. That quote kind of changed my perspective on a situation)
  - thisisaguy 12y ago
    I wouldn't say it's accepted. IT and engineering staff are often given very little respect outside of their own departments in organizations, but they're tolerated. I hope we see the "shitheads get ahead" mentality give way, or at least recognize that we're first and foremost facilitators of business and that working to earn respect from coworkers is an important part of that.
  - 12y ago
droopyEyelids 12y ago
He isn't a peer though. It's like how the hermit at the top of the mountain will smack the novice martial artist for making little mistakes. That doesn't make the novice resentful. Instead, he's glad for the training.
cottonseed 12y ago
I'm reminded of this: http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-for-software-engineers http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-...

What's up with the many insults? A bit of professionalism amongst developers would be nice...

test1235 12y ago

Sounds like regular ol' Linus to me ...

stickydink 12y ago

This is just Linus, unfortunately

Svip 12y ago

So it will get posted on HN and other news websites.[0] Notice how no one else in the thread cares about Linus' language. [0] He is after all warning about the use of gcc-4.9.0

Argorak 12y ago
> Notice how no one else in the thread cares about Linus' language. Except Sarah Sharp and others.
- Svip 12y ago
  I cannot seem to find her mail or the others' in this thread. Am I missing something or are you referring to previous instances of Linus' outbursts? I guessing on the latter, in which case I specifically wrote 'the thread' for this reason.
  - Argorak 12y ago
    Meh, yes. Shouldn't post replies like that at 40 degrees celsius outside ;). You are right.

rsynnott 12y ago

As in, Torvalds being mean about the compiler, or something else? That seems pretty par for the course in the context of a badly-broken thing that people tend to expect never to be broken.

Sharlin 12y ago
Also note that his tone in the actual gcc bug report is professional and matter-of-factly: https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=61904 https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=61904
- forgottenpass 12y ago
  And in the GCC bugzilla Richard Biener of gcc is willing to say the following about the behavior. This all feels like much ado about nothing. so that spill is right before the asm and we immediately re-load it into a register required by an asm constraint (stupid register allocator).

gkya 12y ago

Professionalism? Torvalds is a teenager with too much privileges.

watwut 12y ago
Professionals come in various shapes. Torvalds is not the most polite man in the worlds, far from that. However, he achieved a lot, whether because or despite of it. So, yeah he reserve respect and deserve to be called professional. Although not to be called "the most polite man".
dasil003 12y ago
Torvalds has earned his privileges as much as any developer alive or dead. In fact, if his abstract power ranks up there with Fortune 500 CEOs and national leaders, I'd say he deserves his privileges more than most of them as well.
- gkya 12y ago
  It'd be better if he knew some manners though. I can't believe the amount of people who will most selflessly throw themselves between Linus and criticisms.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    It'd be better if he knew some manners though. At some point arguing over manners is like arguing what serialization format is best; it's just another way of exchanging information.
  - sjwright 12y ago
    Sure, I'd love to see Linus be more civilized in his criticisms. As it happens, nobody is perfect and I think Linus's imperfections are laughably trivial compared to many other people's.
  - watwut 12y ago
    Some of us have worked for corporation where all problems were sugar coated in nicely sounding phrases. They got hidden so nobodies feelings are hurt and criticized person did not even recognized there is a problem with his work. The whole system becomes dysfunctional in its own right.

Argorak 12y ago

Linus wants to keep this tone and considers it important. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-torvalds-defends-his-right-to-shame-linux-kernel-developers/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/linus-...

chippy 12y ago
>Torvalds doesn't want a "code of conduct," saying that "venting of frustrations and anger is actually necessary, and trying to come up with some ‘code of conduct’ that says that people should be ‘respectful’ and ‘polite’ is just so much crap and bullshit.” This is interesting when one compares it with other projects such as Django which have gone the whole other way in addressing modern views of how to approach diversity, gender issues, conduct etc.
- watwut 12y ago
  Arent diversity and gender issues orthogonal to this? You can have room full of diverse women, man, blacks, whites, young, old swearing a lot. You can have young-white-male-only group talking nicely to each other (while still being exclusive club rejecting anyone else).
  - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    They tend to be correlated though don't they and there's often a common root of "I don't care who you are, take me as I am, it's your problem".
  - Intermernet 12y ago
    Yes they're completely orthogonal. Linus (seemingly) doesn't care about a person's race, creed, gender, or sexual preference. He cares that they are breaking Linux (https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75), spreading misinformation about Linux (http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/linus-torvalds-remove-rdrand-from-dev-random-4/responses/9066 http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/linus-torvalds-remove-...), releasing software that breaks Linux (GCC 4.9.0), or being generally, and consistantly anti open-source (http://youtu.be/iYWzMvlj2RQ http://youtu.be/iYWzMvlj2RQ)

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

walshemj 12y ago

Non native speakers often don't have the instinctual grasp of slang and swearwords in English and so tend to use the F C and S words a lot without fully understanding the severity of the words. "seriously crazy shit" seems a bit restrained for Linus though

Svip 12y ago
No, we understand them all right. We are just not generally as prudish as English-speakers. Perhaps it's more a culture difference than a language barrier.
- cstross 12y ago
  Same goes for vernacular Scots, where the F-word isn't far off being verbal punctuation, roughly equivalent to "eh" in Canadian English.
  - Intermernet 12y ago
    Yes, but "Fook" isn't actually a swear word anywhere except Scotland, so it's ok.
- walshemj 12y ago
  Maybe up to a point - though it can make you look like your going off the deep end over trivial matters.
- jnbiche 12y ago
  >We are just not generally as prudish as English-speakers. So you're speaking on behalf of the entire non-English speaking world? I think it's important here to distinguish between swearing about something ("aww, fuck") versus swearing at someone ("fuck you"). If you are more inclined to swear about something, then yes, perhaps you can say you're "less prudish". But if you're more inclined to swear at someone, then it has nothing to do with prudishness and everything to do with aggression and rudeness. Is your culture more aggressive and rude than that of many English-speaking cultures? Some are....

caf 12y ago

You'll notice that the insults are entirely directed at an inanimate piece of software.

sjwright 12y ago
I don't know. If there's any kind of software that can get emotional and hurt, it's a compiler.
- DonHopkins 12y ago
  Good point. I've been misinterpreted by some pretty emotional interpreters, too. I'm not going to name and shame the interpreter in question, but the person who originally wrote it was the same person who wrote the compiler in question, Richard M Stallman. ;) http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/text/rms-vs-doctor.html
kabdib 12y ago
"Hey, Michaelangelo, what is that piece of shit you're carving?" I don't think so.
- wolf550e 12y ago
  1. The letter was to a user of the compiler, not to its author. 2. Linus is a Finn, their culture is a bit different, people who post on LKML know this.
- caf 12y ago
  Well, for one thing a C compiler is a considerably more utilitarian creation - "Hey, McDonalds, Big Macs taste like shit". And of course even purely artistic creations have always been subject to quite blunt appraisals - you won't have to look far to find them about, say, Jackson Pollock's paintings.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Pollack and others were funded through CIA programmes to demonstrate the power of the creative free thinking West. Listening to the God-awful Jazz they play at my local coffee shops makes me wonder just how effective this campaign of psychological warfare was.

recalibrator 12y ago

Linus is just being Linus. I've been following him since Red Hat 5.2 and the open source culture has always been "colourful". His words shouldn't be taken too personally, just as getting bitten by a grizzly bear shouldn't be taken personal.

dalke 12y ago
Interesting analogy, but in a way I don't think you meant. Problem bears are translocated or killed. That's not due to taking things personally but to prevent future bad interactions. If your analogy has merit, shouldn't we do the same (metaphorically) with Torvalds?
- recalibrator 12y ago
  Good point. Bears are being forced into close proximity with humans due to urban sprawl. Their existence is threatened daily. Look too closely and the analogy breaks.
  - dalke 12y ago
    My belief is that the analogy breaks even looking at a distance. Relocation policies aren't based on taking things personally.
Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
That may be so but I'm pretty sure that pretty much every study that's been done on this says insulting people is demotivating and generally destructive behaviour. Linus can believe what he likes but the evidence contradicts him.
- riquito 12y ago
  > Linus can believe what he likes but the evidence contradicts him. The evidence shows that his way works to lead the people working at Linux.

tonfa 12y ago

If you read the gcc bug, he is rather professional.

macspoofing 12y ago

First time with Linus?

smcl 12y ago

I initially felt the same, but imagine if you'd spent countless hours getting to the bottom of an obscure bug that turned out to be a completely bone-headed compiler problem outside your control. Sometimes I think Linus goes a bit far, but this time I think he's justified in his venting his irritation

anthracis417 12y ago
People in IT are assholes. I've only worked in retail, food, biotech and IT but IT has been my least favorite because of my coworkers. I see the shitty attitude is just an in-general IT thing and accepted.
- oldmanjay 12y ago
  a friend of mine once told me that everyone in Phoenix is an asshole. I laughed and pointed out that there was no way she had met even a significant fraction of people, that human relationships are built with all sorts of biases, and there was no way she could make that assessment without generalizing to the point of uselessness. she called me an asshole in reply. you have pretty much the same problem here. you have no reasonable basis upon which to make that statement. it is offensive and generalized to the point of uselessness.
  - thisisaguy 12y ago
    "If everywhere you look, everyoneais a jerk, you might be the jerk." (Not saying anyone here is a jerk. That quote kind of changed my perspective on a situation)
- thisisaguy 12y ago
  I wouldn't say it's accepted. IT and engineering staff are often given very little respect outside of their own departments in organizations, but they're tolerated. I hope we see the "shitheads get ahead" mentality give way, or at least recognize that we're first and foremost facilitators of business and that working to earn respect from coworkers is an important part of that.
- 12y ago

droopyEyelids 12y ago

He isn't a peer though. It's like how the hermit at the top of the mountain will smack the novice martial artist for making little mistakes. That doesn't make the novice resentful. Instead, he's glad for the training.

cottonseed 12y ago

I'm reminded of this: http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-for-software-engineers http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-...