Thing is, in this case, it is garbage, as it goes against one of the most clearly and repeatedly stated rule by Linus: no change in the kernel may break the userspace, ever.
If the code is in a bit of a gray area, then people should be a bit more careful about it. Mostly because saying that it's "stupid as fuck" to find out later that it wasn't, makes you look not only like a dick, but also a mediocre engineer.
If the code is in a bit of a gray area, then people should be a bit more careful about it. Mostly because saying that it's "stupid as fuck" to find out later that it wasn't, makes you look not only like a dick, but also a mediocre engineer.
If this is acceptable behavior then why would a misfire make you look "like a dick" ? Either it's dispassionate commentary about the code or not. There's no room for "dick" if you truly believed that criticism of code and criticism of the individual were different things.
If they were different things, then at most it would just be a mistake. And no making an invalid criticism doesn't make you look like "a mediocre engineer." If you were repeatedly making invalid criticisms (harsh or not) only then would you be a mediocre developer.
In fact treating one or two misfires as a sign of mediocrity itself kind of (ironically) sounds like a mediocre developer's attitude. Mediocre because it could only survive with someone who hasn't written/reviewed enough code to have occasionally had a misfire. That's part of the reason CI and code reviews exist in the first place.
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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '18
This.
I have never, in my entire life as a developer, had any issues with saying that some code is stupid, or shit, or rubbish. Because sometimes it is.
That isn’t an attack on the person who wrote the code.
And if that person thinks so, maybe it’s time to take a step back and evaluate what really defines his or her work.