
Linux Torvalds: Every developer thinks that their code is so special and magical - ekianjo
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=b4b8cbf679c4866a523a35d1454884a31bd5d8dc
======
mirko22
It's easy to call Linus a bully, abrasive what not... But I think a lot of
people in his position, who get huge amount of code to review, and some of it
pretty horrible would handle this even worse.

Also I think this is his way of filtering people that can't cope with him. If
you are strong-willed enough you will go over what he said and try to make
your code better otherwise you will just leave. Anyway he did not lose
anything in his opinion.

I fully support his style of communication and think everyone should be able
to choose how to lead their personal projects. If you don't agree with the
community nobody is forcing you to join it. Not everything in life has to be
nice towards you. Some stuff you remember better if it hurts.

~~~
tyingq
It would be difficult to determine if his style has been an overall net
benefit or net deficit though. Certainly things worked out well, but would
they have worked out better if he took a different approach?

~~~
owebmaster
One thing for sure is that nobody complaining made it better. RMS has his
differences from Linus but isn't like these small issues. Linus is just
straightforward.

~~~
tyingq
>One thing for sure is that nobody complaining made it better

Talented people, that made concrete contributions, have left because they
didn't want to deal with him. One example:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/06/linix_kernel_dev_wh...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/06/linix_kernel_dev_who_asked_linus_torvalds_to_stop_swearing_quits_over_swearing/)

~~~
ralfn
Wouldnt the opposite be true as well?

I can imagine some one staying away from certain ecosystems because they are
too nice to inconpetence. For example, say, how pythons standard JSON library
intentionally and likely well intended, breaks the the standard and causes
hours of debugging nightmare.

In a less friendly world this wouldnt fly and if i need something that
actually works ill have a strong bias for the products of the "mean people"

------
Cephlin
"Every developer"... that's a bold statement.

I don't think my code is so special or magical, maybe specially bad and
magically bad...

Also I believe his name is Linus, not Linux ^_^

~~~
the_common_man
Maybe he doesn't consider people with such mindsets a developer :) ?

~~~
Cephlin
He just considers people developers if they think their code is special and
magical? haha

------
noncoml
I am very critical of my code and think it is pretty crap and can always
improve.

I respect Linus' work but other than that I don't care about his opinions as
he is a bully.

------
_asummers
I mean, I get it, but is that necessary? To me, it takes significantly less
effort to say "X processor is not popular enough at this time to have this
driver enabled by default. If this changes in the future, we can reevaluate,
however I don't anticipate this changing any time soon." If he gets enough of
these that it warrants this kind of response, maybe have an official policy on
what can be enabled default and the reasoning behind it.

~~~
dis-sys
I think he is playing too nice, delaying the offending module's inclusion for
a few months can be a better choice - it is a community maintained big project
affecting hundreds of millions of devices, all parties should play nice, no
one should sneak in anything surprising just for the benefit of your
code/project/company.

------
dis-sys
This reminds me a similar incident that wasted me lots of time -

AMD Ryzen + Gigabytes motherboard does not boot on recent Ubuntu versions
because the old buggy AMD GPIO module is enabled in Ubuntu by default. You
might think "hmm, they might need that GPIO module to control some other
hardware". Well - that module is only required when you have a AMD laptop
touch pad, sadly, as of writing there is no AMD Ryzen laptop, period. All
other distributions do not have the same issue - they don't enable it by
default.

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1671360](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1671360)

Enabling the very cute Cavium security processor (which will never ever be
popular) by default in the linux kernel to potentially impact everyone? That
is just plain stupidity demonstrated in a whole new level.

Everyone should be happy for the fact that Linus is doing what he can to avoid
such stupidities to be repeated in the future.

~~~
tyingq
I don't think anyone here is arguing the outcome, just the approach.

~~~
dis-sys
Indeed, see my other comment, Linus is too nice to such company trying to
sneak in this unwanted surprise purely for the benefit of their "security
processor".

~~~
tyingq
>trying to sneak in

That's really the point. Assuming malice, and reacting in kind. It's quite
possible no malice was involved here.

------
fjfaase
Only when I came to the comment session, did I realize the problem. Linus is
from Finland and, I guess, that is an important thing to remember. He is from
a non-American (that is U.S.A.) cultural background, where this kind of remark
is not viewed as rude, by some even as a form of humor. I am from the
Netherland myself and have worked together with people from Finland.

~~~
devdoomari
guess that explains a lot... thought this was 100% sarcasm

------
jaimex2
He's right, else we wouldn't bother coding it to begin with.

------
franciscop
Ah that is true, when I started programming I had a lot more of attachment to
my code than now because it was so special and magic.

Nowadays I do realize most code (including mine) is expendable; it should be
thrown under the bus when no need of it and partly rewritten to improve it;
but that perfect code never gets shipped. Just try to make something that
works, then improve it so it's not painful to use it but that's it.

I still do not agree with the tone, but again I am not Linus nor in his shoes.

------
gorbachev
This isn't matching my experience at all. Unless we're talking about junior
programmers, most of who do think this way. Once their magical code breaks in
spectacular ways once or twice, the smarter ones will realize their code is
just as crappy as everyone else's.

------
malmsteen
Cute (and harmless) example of "projection" in psychology

------
bryanlarsen
Linus does not say "every developer except me", he says "every developer". I
read a lot of self-deprecation in that comment.

------
gjvc
Ad hominem by Linus here. He could have quite well made his point without
referring to the author at all by just saying that uncommon devices should not
be marked as m.

~~~
tyingq
I agree. I can support his tirades when it's warranted, but this is a bit over
the top.

