
25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds - axiomdata316
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/25-years-later-interview-linus-torvalds
======
ben165
>Bob: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer
science students?

>Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math
and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until
university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand
the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I
came from at all.

This is a problem I don't understand too. If you are really into something you
motivating yourself in doing things. You can see how stupid people are when
you just read the questions on Stackoverflow today. Nobody seems to figure
things out by themselves anymore.

Same with YouTube, when people explaining simple math things with extremely
effort people complaining then that today's teachers are shit. But it's more
your own lack if you're not able to imagine these thing inside your mind by
yourself.

~~~
jaabe
I don’t think stackoverflow is a problem at all, I think it’s much better to
have people ask stupid questions than to call them stupid.

That being said, I do think people owe it to themselves to read the
documentation first. I’m extremely rarely in a situation where the official
documentation isn’t monumentally better than every other option. There are a
few exceptions of course, when the official documentation flat out sucks.

I do think we have a general issue with how we teach CS though. Especially
outside the hardcore CS degree, because we’re really not teaching young people
computation anymore, we’re teaching them how to produce results. This is
especially true for places like Udemy and YouTube, but it’s frankly also true
on more UX centric or academy/bachelor level degrees.

I do external examinations on academy levels, and earlier this year I went to
a place where they teach associate degrees in CS. Only they opted to build
their places as a “gaming education”, so they had a heavy emphasis on Unity.
And sure enough, the students were pretty good at unity, but only a handful of
them knew how to calculate Big O of a few simple examples and only a single
student knew how a computer actually works.

When I did my own freshman year, one of my first tests was to decode a hidden
message by altering the contents of a bitmap file using C. That’s pretty
useless, sure, but it teaches you a lot of things, including how to read the
official documentation for a bitmap, which is a much more useful skill than
knowing how to use a certain version of some framework. At least in my
opinion.

~~~
madez
It seems to me there is some kind of political war going on when it comes to
education about computers.

One side argues, they must know what a computer is, how it roughly works, what
it can do and cannot do, and how you can program it.

The other side says, knowing how to use Microsoft Office and Excel, and
Facebook and Instagram 'responsibly' is enough, and they fight tooth and nails
that the education doesn't become deeper.

This is my experience in Germany, though, where digitalization is understood
as replacing books by tablet computers from Apple in school.

Have you made similar experiences?

Edit: Let me reiterate on that. I think part of the fierce resistance against
deeper education is fueled by fear.

To explain that, I see how mathematics is used in schools as a rough
intelligence test. And the results in math are important, not because people
would need differentiation of nested functions at work, but because the grade
in math is used as a proxy by the society.

Abstract thinking is difficult for many. And they dislike it. A fundamental
education in computers requires abstract thinking. So with that, there would
be even more filterng between those who think good, and those that don't.
People are afraid of that. So they fight that change.

I think people are afraid of loosing out and becoming meaningless and
irrelevant in a world of computers, i.e. a world of abstract thinking.

~~~
Faark
Feels like what you are describing was the state of affairs like 15 years ago
when i was in secondary school. We had an "Informationstechnischer Grundkurs"
teaching office / excel and a separate programming course for guys like me who
wanted to focus on that. I don't really follow the state of education that
closely, but would be quite surprised if the latter is not at least more
widely available now.

Does everyone need to know how to program? I don't know, probably not. Us
humans specializing is the only way we have to handle the huge amount of
knowledge necessary to support our society. I certainly would have a hard time
just surviving by myself. Also education slots are limited, we'd have to
abolish other courses in exchange. This obviously will generate opposition.

Now let imagine we have an open slot to teach "CS" for 90min a week for a year
in such a young age. What do you teach that would actually be useful to most
of them later on? A bit of python? Basic C, since it doesn't come with many
complicated abstractions on top? Javascript, since many of its courses quickly
give colorful results? Even the programming bachelor I later did had trouble
answering those questions, they switched from c->java->c++ to teaching 3
courses java. Plus all the languages other courses used and had to teach
pretty much from scratch.

~~~
zrobotics
Personally, I think there is far too much focus on 'which language', rather
than on the fundamentals of how to think/reason about a program,
troubleshooting, and exposure to the actual documentation. Once you have a
solid grasp of one language, picking up others becomes much easier. So someone
who only has Javascript experience would likely be able to at least grok the
basic structure of a c++ program. I feel the main problem with all the intro
courses I have ever taken was too much reliance on textbooks/tutorials, and
too much desire to over-simplify. I remember multiple people I took CS101
(Java) with who had no idea how to do anything outside of eclipse, and when
they wanted to expand their skills through self-study had no idea how to use
the documentation in a helpful manner. They knew how to write a class diagram,
but all functions & classes had been introduced piecemeal, so they got
overwhelmed looking at the official docs & just gave up out of frustration.

That said, I don't think something like haskell or straight assembler is a
good choice, but any of the C-likes or Python would be fine, the differences
just aren't great enough to matter much for the absolute beginner. A strong
case could be made for Javascript, simply for ease of development, since any
computer is almost guaranteed to have the basic software for writing,
executing, & debugging. It is far from my favorite language, but for early
intro courses I think pedagogy is far more important than language or tooling.

And personally, I feel that the only 'CS' that should be required for all
students is keyboarding. Does someone who wants to go into the trades
(excepting trades like machining) really have any urgent need for programming?
However, almost any job will require typing skills.

Students have limited time, and I think it's foolish to force everyone to
learn to program. Those classes have their benefits, but so do music classes.
But, given avaliable time and resources, should we also require all students
to learn an instrument?

------
qlk1123
> Bob: Anything else you want to comment on, either publicly or otherwise?

> Linus: I've never had some "message" that I wanted to spread, so ...

It's a pity that a man with such influence has no message that he wants to
spread, but I can somehow understand this respond. My personal take of this
quote can refer to another quote from his TED interview[1]:

> I’m an engineer. I’m perfectly happy with all the people who are walking
> around and just staring at the clouds and looking at the stars and saying,
> “I want to go there,” but I’m looking at the ground and I want to fix the
> pothole that’s right in front of me before I fall in.

While I wish such leader can speak for values like democracy or human rights,
it is just not possible to happen.

[1]
[https://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_lin...](https://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_linux/transcript#t-1020235)

~~~
coldtea
> _While I wish such leader can speak for values like democracy or human
> rights, it is just not possible to happen._

Why would he have any great insight on "democracy or human rights" compared
the average population? Because he wrote successful software?

~~~
bsaul
That is such a true remark. I’ve always been shocked by the unsufferable ego
one needs to have to feel authorized to give public statements on complex
global issues or life advices.

~~~
zeropnc
Yeah we live in an age where professional athletes, musicians and celebrities
play an integral role in shaping global socioeconomic policy.

What the fuck could possibly go wrong

~~~
coldtea
Or worse, career politicians and career policy advisors. That is, people
totally removed from any implication of their policies for others, and usually
far removed (economically, socially, culturally) from the population they
decide for.

I think the ancient Athenian democracy had it right: some law-making bodies
should be filled by lottery -- akin to juries or the draft.

------
eljimmy
Linus’ view on anonymity was surprising to read. I’m not sure I agree with him
on that but his view on social media being a platform for the lowest common
denominator sure seems agreeable.

~~~
bch
He’s essentially a performer/personality though, and I’m inclined to say his
answer is a self-serving performance itself. It would be fine, except that he
writes out people who have valid reasons for anonymity - from “i feel like
it”, on up. I’m personally not fussed by Linus’ antics, but cringe thinking
about sensitive people, maybe still forming their personalities or sense of
self, looking up to him.

Hard to argue with his technical chops and many successes, but that doesn’t
make him expert in everything he’s got an opinion on. He even punts on a
softball question and makes it about himself: “what advice do you have for
young programmers and students?” - how about “have fun, exercise and stay
healthy and dive in!”

I’m sorry to be negative here, but I wish Linus did better in this regard.

~~~
adwn
> _He even punts on a softball question and makes it about himself_

That's because it _was_ about himself! Bob asked _him_ for _his_ advice.

> _how about “have fun, exercise and stay healthy and dive in!”_

That's such an overused, uninspired, undistinguished answer. Why would you ask
Linus if that's what you want to hear?

~~~
bch
It is - a simplistic throw away I came up with as I typed, and still more
valuable than “don’t ask me”. I’m just bemoaning that after 25 years he’s
still an antihero.

~~~
SimplyUnknown
I'm still more comfortable with an antihero that is down to earth and knows
when to shut up like Linus than with a full-time worshipped Hero persona, e.g.
Elon Musk.

------
eartheaterrr
>As to C, nothing better has come around.

>The kind of languages people see under active development aren't for low-
level system programming.

I found it interesting that he didn't mention Rust. Or is Rust not suitable
for kernel development?

~~~
FrederickZh
He was once asked about Rust during an interview:
[https://www.infoworld.com/article/3109150/linux-
at-25-linus-...](https://www.infoworld.com/article/3109150/linux-at-25-linus-
torvalds-on-the-evolution-and-future-of-linux.html)

~~~
ekianjo
> I'm not convinced about Rust for an OS kernel (there's a lot more to system
> programming than the kernel, though), but at the same time there is no
> question that C has a lot of limitations.

> To anyone who wants to build their own kernel from scratch, I can just wish
> them luck. It's a huge project, and I don't think you actually solve any of
> the really hard kernel problems with your choice of programming language.
> The big problems tend to be about hardware support (all those drivers, all
> the odd details about different platforms, all the subtleties in memory
> management and resource accounting), and anybody who thinks that the choice
> of language simplifies those things a lot is likely to be very disappointed.

------
Nr7
Btw. ice hockey is _not_ the national sport of Finland (it's not even the
national sport of Canada!). The Finnish national sport is pesäpallo (Finnish
baseball).

~~~
Ardon
Hockey is the national sport of Canada. But so is lacrosse.

~~~
Nr7
Looks like you're right. Ice hockey is the national _winter_ sport of Canada
while lacrosse is the _summer_ sport.

~~~
sah2ed
OT: you could fix the intended italics in your comment by using '<asterisk-
char>' instead of '_'.

> Looks like you're right. Ice hockey is the national _winter_ sport of Canada
> while lacrosse is the _summer_ sport.

See here for the formatting options supported:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

~~~
Nr7
Too late to edit now, but thanks. :)

------
decoyworker
I'd like to see someone ask: If you were to redesign Linux from scratch right
now what would you do differently?

~~~
std_throwawayay
Would he use C++ or Rust?

~~~
LandR
IIRC, I think he's said previously that he doesn't want C++ in the kernal and
doesn't think Rust is suitable.

~~~
chrisseaton
I think you're replying to a joke.

------
mortdeus
What a boring interview.

The questions he asked doesn't even give us new insight into Linus's opinions
on tech.

------
tomcam
A meta issue here...

> Nancy and I and our three daughters are all doing well. Our eldest, Zoe, who
> was 11 when Marc and I started Red Hat, is expecting her second
> child—meaning I'm a grandparent.

First off, I don’t give a damn about the interviewer’s family, Red Hat founder
or not. Not sure why it’s included in the article. But you know who does?
Identity thieves. I feel like Young should be more aware of the issues this
kind of thing can pose. He’s a high net worth guy and it seems reckless to
publish anywhere, much less an unprotected article like this one.

~~~
wcarron
You're going to have to learn to deal with some editorialization. That's part
of life and reading articles on the internet You're an anonymous observer to
two peoples' conversation, who clearly have a history that spans decades. Stay
in your lane.

~~~
tomcam
> Stay in your lane.

Meaning what?

------
teekert
Ah, Id love a video of this. Is there a video?

------
tannhaeuser
Heh, he's using an XPS 13. Take that, Thinkpad snobs.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Snobs? I have an XPS after previously being a ThinkPad fan, the XPS was _much_
more expensive.

~~~
rb808
ooo, I was just about to choose thinkpad over xps mainly because of the
keyboard. Does XPS have any advantage?

~~~
bgeeek
Price. That's literally it.

