An oldie, but a goodie
Did that demonstrably happen?
If there’s a surplus of talent (sounds like Mauro was dead weight) then at most he was just rude on Mauro’s way out the door.
I’m not saying it’s cool to be rude, but if it’s Linus’ review then you get what you get. To be butthurt about someone being rude to you should motivate you to learn your code interactions better. (In this case error handling)
You are just going to die on this hill, aren’t you? Even Linus recognized that his attitude was toxic, eventually, and that it was having a negative impact on the kernel development community. Yes, people left. Talented people decided it wasn’t worth the abuse.
You’re making judgements on people’s utility and ability based on the volatile reactions of man who admits to having issues. That creates toxic environments where people are not encouraged to do better, but any amount of change is due to fear of repercussions. This does not promote growth or new ideas that would genuinely improve something, but rather a fear of failure if they attempt something new. This also isn’t useful programming criticism because the actual useful criticism is buried in an emotional slurry that’s going to make something less receptive to the useful information.
Fear in the weak, those that can’t handle stern words.
Something line Kernel dev is not the space for fast and loose, and people need to be held accountable. Not coddled
And yeah, I’m making utility judgements based on Linus Torvalds. I’d say he has a pretty good eye for utility.
You want some stern words?
You are a useless peace of dead weight in this community. Your comments suck and you have no idea how people work and how to professionally communicate. I hope you never have a job, let alone one in a management role. You should leave and never come back. Get aborted retroactively! You make the world a worse place by your mere existance!
How do you feel about that? Are you going to change your behavior because of these “stern words”? Or are you going to think “What an idiot” and ignore everything I said?
And we both are just anonymous randos on the internet and while this comment is public, not a lot of people are going to read it and it will have zero impact to either of our lives.
Now imagine I was your boss, both of us are publically known people and I post this on the company social media account together with your full name.
And people still dig this up 10 years later to laugh at it.
Please reconsider your interpersonal behaviour.
You’re making a false equivalency where stern is the same as toxic. There are more professional and clear ways to communicate the issues with code quality. No one is disagreeing that those need to be communicated. The Issue is how.
And because you seem to take stock in what Torvalds says, then consider that if he himself admitted these were harmful and inefficient methods of communication then they probably were. If it was leading to fantastic results in the kernel i don’t see why he would’ve stopped. My guess is that he learned something that it seems you may still have yet to: empathy.
Yes people left and were not heard at the time:
No, was the product reduced or damaged, not did people leave. No one cares about individuals, if they can be replaced without blocking the progress of the project.
Those articles are very whiney. They chose to work on that project, with a singular leader. It’s his house, his rules, his standards.
