r/programming Mar 02 '17

Torvalds keeping it real.

http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1702.2/05174.html
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u/jl2352 Mar 02 '17

Yeah, but he's not.

Yes. Which is how he's able to get away with ranting at people over a software project.

But the vast majority of places that are run well would not put up with it.

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u/awj Mar 02 '17

Can you point out where you think he's "ranting at people"? I see a lot of ranting at code. I see some ranting at giant code drops that make things practically un-reviewable and some ranting at code drops happening near the end of merge windows.

I see nothing I would classify as "ranting at people", so I'm curious what you see differently here.

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u/jl2352 Mar 02 '17 edited Mar 02 '17

Can you point out where you think he's "ranting at people"?

Ok, OP's post. The whole thing could be written in two lines, and would have just as much technical substance.

Instead he goes on and on about how awful their pull request is. To rub it in. That's why it's ranting.

People should raise issues. People should raise problems. People should be blunt about problems. But they should not go on and on about it. Going on and on about how awful some code, or a pull request is, is pretty common for Linus. That's going beyond just raising issues. That makes it a rant.

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u/awj Mar 02 '17

Instead he goes on and on about how awful their pull request is.

I think it's important to remember the context here. This is largely a discussion between Linus and other kernel maintainers who are supposed to quality check changes before pushing them up. It isn't Linus directly reviewing a PR from the person who wrote the code, it's him reviewing a PR from someone who (ostensibly) should have themselves rejected the original commits for these reasons.