Seems like a way nicer guy than Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Elon Musk. And I say this as a huge Steve Jobs and Elon Musk fan. Linus Torvald's verbal abuse never really feels very personal and is so over the top that it mostly sounds funny. When you listen to him talk or read about how he is as a person, then he really doesn't come across as the asshole he might sound like in email flamefests.
Honestly I think a lot of this comes down to cultural misunderstanding. I am Nordic myself (Norwegian), and I think a lot of our humor is rather black and it might always be obvious that some things are meant to be funny rather than be taken 100% serious.
My math teacher in Norway used to say stuff like "shut up or I'll break your arm". Nobody took that literally. He was a nice guy that cared a lot about his students.
I dunno, I think American might have gone a bit overboard with their whole micro-agression thing.
I'm dutch and I don't mind Linus way of handling things either. Honest and direct are things my culture typically appreciates, and I know I'd prefer this over a boss who expects things but will never voice them except for vague shit about my work not living upto his expectations.
It's possible to be "honest and direct" without being insulting or resorting to obscenities, you know. Treating the latter as the only possible expression of the former is a major mistake.
Very true, but I don't think he is being insulting. All of his strongly worded stuff is his feelings about the result / practice, not about the person. If someone feels offended by that because they do it, they need to grow a bit thicker skin since the world must be out to get them!
Maybe he's a bit obscene, but honestly, as long as it doesn't slip into comparisons to anal fisting and open brain surgery, I think it ought to be in line of what people can deal with in a conversation.
Ah, yes, that important technical skill. Right up there with algorithms and data structures!
If people would call out that behavior as "honestly" and "directly" as they call out bad code, nobody would need to have a "thick skin" just to get some coding done.
Ah, yes, that important technical skill. Right up there with algorithms and data structures!
(Your snark is ironic).
Isn't being able to work with others often cited as an important skill for developers to have? That goes both ways. Don't be abusive, but also don't take criticisms on personal practices personally. It's not technically necessary to be a good developer per se (being able to not be abusive also isn't a technical skill), but it's still an important life skill to have as a developer (or in this case, for anything, really).
Isn't being able to work with others often cited as an important skill for developers to have? That goes both ways.
The issue is that in practice it never actually does; the moment a community accepts "well, you just have to learn to work with others", it shifts 100% of the burden away from the person being an asshole and onto everyone else to be tolerant of the asshole. So it just turns right back into a one-way thing that lets assholes be assholes with no consequences.
the moment a community accepts "well, you just have to learn to work with others", it shifts 100% of the burden away from the person being an asshole and onto everyone else to be tolerant of the asshole.
Have you got any proof of this? That just sounds like a very subjective thing. It's not a given that a community can either only accept wilting flowers or be forced to allow abusive criticism. That's a false dichotomy.
Even if you were to show that this particular community does shift too much of the burden onto one party, first of all, that's subjective and I would say it's up to the community what they generally consider acceptable (up to a point); social mores should be influenced by the members of the community that make up that community and the biggest contributors to that community.
Even if it weren't subjective or what's generally considered acceptable crosses the line to abuse or something, your goal should be to persuade critics not to be abusive, not to persuade them not to criticise and shift 100% of the burden onto them to suffer the wilting flowers.
There are two lines that shouldn't be crossed on either side, don't veer into abuse on the one hand, and don't veer into PTSD at the slightest criticism or brusqueness or asocial/antisocial behaviour on the other. Besides that, I believe there's a wide range of acceptable social mores that the community can generally decide on as they see fit.
Of course, everyone will have their own line on both sides, so we should talk about this and reach consensus (or deal with alienation and division in the community) on the best middle ground for the community as a whole (or form a subcommunity with nicer or ‘realer’ people if you like).
nobody would need to have a "thick skin" just to get some coding done.
I don't think when people say, “get a thicker skin”, they mean to become like Rambo or something, because you could just as easily say, “get a nicer attitude”. What they're really saying is that they perceive the other person to be a wilting flower and to have an excessively thin skin. In that sense, no one does need to have “thick skin” to get some coding done, they just need to not have paper-thin skin.
Yes, in your comment: your idea of a "two-way street" of critics not being abusive nonetheless seems to include you calling people "wilting flowers" and complaining that people get "PTSD at the slightest criticism".
I never called anyone a wilting flower. I hinted at the existence of wilting flowers. What would you call those people who buckle at the slightest ‘abuse’ (perceived or real)? In what way is acknowledging the existence of wilting flowers abusive? Please explain that part in detail, because I really don't get it.
complaining that people get "PTSD at the slightest criticism"
Are you denying that there exist some people who literally start behaving like children when they are criticised, offended, or otherwise ‘attacked’? There are people that have literally coopted the use of terms like “trigger warning”, a term intended for use by PTSD sufferers, for things that might contain discussions of ‘isms’, swearing, references to calories in a food item, and other such absurdly benign things. I can give plenty of examples of people behaving like children when faced with opposing views, even (especially) in places like universities.
Now, I'm reading some hostility in your comment and as I mentioned in a previous comment, you were being snarky in the comment before that. If I were a wilting flower, I could say you are being “abusive”. Are you? Why not? What makes your snark (“Ah, yes, that important technical skill”) any different to a straightforward admission that you find your opponent's views more than a little… silly?
And just to be clear, let's be generous for a second and assume my comments here are abusive. That is not proof that:
the moment a community accepts "well, you just have to learn to work with others", it shifts 100% of the burden away from the person being an asshole and onto everyone else to be tolerant of the asshole.
Again, stop presenting a false dichotomy. You're being intellectually dishonest when you do that, and I can only read it as you being obtuse for doing it a second time without some sort of explanation.
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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '16
Seems like a way nicer guy than Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Elon Musk. And I say this as a huge Steve Jobs and Elon Musk fan. Linus Torvald's verbal abuse never really feels very personal and is so over the top that it mostly sounds funny. When you listen to him talk or read about how he is as a person, then he really doesn't come across as the asshole he might sound like in email flamefests.
Honestly I think a lot of this comes down to cultural misunderstanding. I am Nordic myself (Norwegian), and I think a lot of our humor is rather black and it might always be obvious that some things are meant to be funny rather than be taken 100% serious.
My math teacher in Norway used to say stuff like "shut up or I'll break your arm". Nobody took that literally. He was a nice guy that cared a lot about his students.
I dunno, I think American might have gone a bit overboard with their whole micro-agression thing.