this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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Some inspiring quotes from our supreme leader (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] brbposting 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Heaven help the community if “flawed & inefficient”, “poor practice…pattern” aren’t direct enough feedback! Linus’s style being an outlier suggests polite criticism is enough to make the world turn.

I think you could even simply replace capslock GARBAGE with capslock [FUNDAMENTALLY] FLAWED, leave the “AGAIN”, and it’d be OK if harsh.

Glad he did some teaching after the flaming in any case.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Heaven help the community if “flawed & inefficient”, “poor practice…pattern” aren’t direct enough feedback!

This was not directed towards the Linux community. It was directed towards a Google engineer. The community is the ones that you're indirectly proposing that deserve worse software for the sake of that part of Google's corporation.

And "worse" is not just a matter of "oh, I got a kernel panic. Damn. Reboot." It's actually serious shit; that kernel code will end being used in things from medical applications to sending Ingenuity to Mars. Worse code might literally mean "we detected your cancer too late, last time you were here the MRI wasn't working".

He is not even getting personal in this case dammit. I concede that getting personal (he does it sometimes) would be over-the-topic, but in this case he's insulting the code, not the person.

Linus’s style being an outlier suggests polite criticism is enough to make the world turn.

Torvalds' style is an outlier but so is the kernel. And the kernel being an outlier suggests that harsh criticism actually works.

Most of our [we = human beings, including you and me] production is garbage, even if acknowledging this offends our sensibilities.

It's almost like you guys [you + people across this thread] want to believe that only the carrot is effective. The stick is also effective, even if you don't want to believe that it is.

I think you could even simply replace capslock GARBAGE with capslock [FUNDAMENTALLY] FLAWED, leave the “AGAIN”, and it’d be OK if harsh.

Dunno if you noticed, but this is actually ruder in hindsight.

  • Torvalds' approach: "your code is garbage."
  • Your approach: "your code is garbage but since you're a fragile little piece of junk I can't tell you that directly, I got to mince some words."

And odds are that, if he did it the way that you're proposing, people would complain again that he's being rude, and expect him to mince words even further.

Glad he did some teaching after the flaming in any case.

He did it before, during, and after bashing Rostedt.