
Linus Torvalds fires off angry 'compiler-masturbation' rant - amlgsmsn
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/11/01/linus_torvalds_fires_off_angry_compilermasturbation_rant/
======
toothbrush
I really find it a poor show, Linus running his mouth like that, and all the
others scurrying to reply deferentially and civilly to his adolescent rant
(whether he is technically right or not, which doesn't even seem clear from
the follow-up mails). IMHO, it's not the way to build an inclusive community,
and it's not the way to encourage newcomers (who may be unfamiliar with your
coding practices but could have useful expertise in their own right).

Really, i long for the "coolness" and "macho" around the Linux project to die.
It's doing free software everywhere a disservice thanks to the project's high
visibility. Maybe this makes me a wuss or whatever (i freely admit to being
extremely non-confrontational), but it'd be nice if people of all cultures and
communication styles would be welcomed as volunteers to great libre software
projects such as these.

EDIT: I wonder if it would help if news sites would be more critical of such
outbursts? This article seems to remain relatively neutral, but perhaps public
condemnation of emotional outbursts would help towards taking the glamour out
of it. I wonder if it'd also help stop "hero-worshipping" emulation of such
behaviour.

~~~
tdkl
I'll take a brutal honest man like Linus any day before a smooth talking
bullshiter. At least he'll stand up by his words with responsibility and
without excuses.

Compared to professional liars who brought mass murder, civil wars and refugee
crisis in the last decade to the middle east, admitting them later and still
walking the Earth without trials, I'd say the news sites can leave their
critique from Linus and give some more focus somewhere else.

~~~
toothbrush
That's a pretty serious straw man you've set up. There isn't a single-axis
spectrum of characters ranging from smooth-talking bullshitters to straight-
talking foul-mouthed Linuses (sp?).

The fact of the matter is that one can just as easily be a brash and insulting
bullshitter, or a friendly and polite straight-talker. I am strongly in favour
of the latter: it is more inclusive and comes off as a lot less macho and/or
insecure.

~~~
mistermann
> The fact of the matter is that one can just as easily be a brash and
> insulting bullshitter, or a friendly and polite straight-talker.

Yes it is _possible_ to be so, however, it is not always possible to know if a
friendly and polite person is a straight-talked or a bull-shitter - the
advantage of Linus' personality is that there's is absolutely no question
which one you're dealing with. I wouldn't recommend this as appropriate
behavior when dealing with unknown people on a new project, but for a long-
running project like Linux, I can't imagine most people can't unemotionally
disregard Linus' language as "just the way he is" \- if he was the type of
person who if you were to disagree with him, he would then try to destroy your
career to teach you a lesson, now then I think you'd have good reason to
condemn him. I personally have no idea how he handles disagreement though. In
my experience, I'll _gladly_ take a harsh but righteous person over a polite
politically-savvy self-promoting bullshit artist any day of the week....these
people are a lot more common than many people think.

~~~
DanBC
Except Linus' behaviour influences how other people behave, and their
behaviour is off-putting for some devs.

Linux loses good devs because some people emulate Linus.

------
lobster_johnson
Original ML mail:
[http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html](http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html)

Someone rewrote the rant in polite English:
[http://catcode.com/comments/2015/cf20151101.html](http://catcode.com/comments/2015/cf20151101.html)

~~~
luso_brazilian
Although the polite version is semantically identical the syntax of the
message in many cases as important as the message itself.

Much of what makes human communication universally intelligible across
cultures and languages like tone of voice or body language is lost in writing
and the human tendency is to replace it with similar substitutes as it helps
to convey meta-information that would be hard to convey otherwise.

I believe if one would analyze every single email sent by Linux to the list
the great majority of them would have similar syntax to the polite English
above but, of course, those wouldn't make the news.

The bitter rants seem to be reserved to the cases where it is imperative that
everybody, involved or not, understand very clearly why that behaviour is not
tolerable and the reason for that. Similar cases like the refusal to merge Kay
Sievers further submissions [1] until he cleaned up and owned up to his
mistakes or the reprieve of a maintainer [2] that broke userland with a kernel
commit seems to follow the same pattern.

The difference to a professional setting is that, in person in a company, one
can always call a closed doors meeting and express with tone of voice and body
language the same message without the public spectacle.

Even in those cases, specially when everybody knows what it mean to be called
to the boss presence, it can be as embarrassing and intimidating as what
happens in those forums.

[1]
[http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html](http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html)

[2] [https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75](https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
At some point, will we stop making excuses for this guy? Because the rest of
us manage to communicate without constantly offending.

~~~
Mikushi
Offense is taken not given. While Linus can be exceedingly colourful at times
I for one don't find it offensive. Moreover you, and I, can't fathom the
amount of times he probably had in depth discussions on various kernel topics,
by now he probably knows that sometimes being abrasive is the only way to get
message across.

~~~
malandrew
Exactly. Relevant SBMC comic:

[http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2164](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2164)

------
beagle3
I urge all the people who haven't to actually read the mailing list post (link
[0] from lobster_johnson), and note that (from the register article):

""" The rant is entirely impersonal: it rails against code, not people. Those
who contributed the offending code will have no doubt of Torvalds' feelings
towards it and the open nature of kernel development means it would not be
hard to identify those responsible. Torvalds names no names, however. """

Linus is passionate about what he does, and as he has explained several times
before, the reach and the medium make him easily misunderstood if he is all
polite and politically correct, so he makes sure there is no way he is
misunderstood.

Let me ask you this - after this issue, does anyone here think Linus will be
willing to accept the usub()/uadd() calls into the kernel any time soon? Had
Linus answered politely and politically correct, he would have had to do that
about ten times as much, because (a) other people wouldn't notice or think
that this response doesn't apply to their special snowflake code, and (b)
those who know it applies to would feel that there is room for discussion.

Linus is herding cats without paying them, and has been doing this amazingly
well for over 20 years now. Whether or not you subscribe to it, his management
style works, produces amazing results. At the scale that linus manages, you
(probably) have to be dictator, and (likely) cannot be a polite one.

[0]
[http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html](http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html)

------
rurban
Eventually Linux will find out that those new overflow functions produce
better ASM code by checking the overflag FLAG. This is in HW, use it, and
don't fallback to inline assembly. jo +2 is much better than the previous
code, even if the C function looks insane, yes. I agree with that. I also
replaced all our crazy manual overflow checks with these new builtins, and
with mult and signed add/sub it made it much faster and easier to read. The
uadd/usub cases are indeed quirky, but at least consistent.

Summary: Linus is way off here.

------
bra-ket
brilliant

