A slowgoing development for him, still I sympathize and wish him the best while wondering ironically if personal issues aside what works best.
It brings to mind fundamental organizational and management. Is it better to have a "rude" organization? Calling bullshit early and often instead of polite everything is fine stacks of lies since it would be impolite to point out having O(N!) code just can't work for anything of appreciable size? The optimal approach likely varies on several variables.
Code reviews fly around our team without any trace of vitriol or insults, even when the mistakes are mindnumbling stupid or disagreement on approach is strong. You don't have to be insulting to maintain code quality. If insults are the only way you can make your point, you've got some way bigger personal issues to deal with.
The thing is, being insulting is largely counterproductive. Even where the best response from the person being insulted is that they shrug it off, it still modifies the relationship and attitudes towards the insulter.
Can’t you blend them? In other words I’d love to work in an organization that can politely call bullshit early and often. It is possible to fundamentally disagree without making it personal.
Really good to see him acknowledge this and tackle it head on. I hope he gains a better perspective. Thank goodness for Linus and Linux!
I think it's possible to blend a polite environment and a no-nonsense environment as long as you're physically working together, or at a minimum doing video conferences. IIRC, Linus said that one of the reasons he used such strong language and is so abrasive on the mailing list is because so many communication cues are lost when you don't have tone of voice and body language to add context to the actual words. Being over the top aggressive and harsh was his way of ensuring that his message was completely unambiguos. That said, most people don't want to work with someone like that, and he addresses this when he talks about people leaving kernel development specifically because of him. If they continue using the mailing list for development, I think we need to expect that development will slow a little at first since there will probably be more back-and-forth between developers. That said, hopefully having a better working environment will encourage more people to be kernel developers, negating the slowdown caused by a more cordial mailing list. I'm also really happy to see Linus setting a positive example for taking care of yourself in addition to your project.
I don't see why you'd ever need to go further than "I strongly believe that your view is incorrect, and here is why". Attacking people is not "calling bullshit"
In my experience saying the words "your view" often makes it personal for the other person, which can lead to them defending that view much stronger than if the criticism goes towards "this view", which invites objectivity.
Probably not a huge game changer, but it's definitely a little hack that I think has served me well over the years.
Why do so many people on this forum seem to believe that being polite inherently implies lying to each other? I just want to understand this line of thinking.
My workplace is extremely polite to each other AND we don't lie to each other. I recently submitted a code review that was full of violations of the style guide, and nobody was rude nor dishonest.
Criticize the behavior, not the person. Linus often included personal attacks against people who were making errors. You can get a message across without telling people that they are worthless scum.
If someone reviews your code, it will sting when they point out silly mistakes. The insults that the kernel devs fling about just aren't needed to drive home the point.
Agreed. What can be worse than having a comment to the effect of "if x is -1, which is feasible, this will cause undefined behaviour resulting in a crash". For most people this stings more than enough.
There’s a difference between negative feedback and being rude. The former is necessary when crappy work gets submitted, the latter drives people away before giving them a chance to improve. The way you phrased your question implies that there’s an exclusive choice to be made here, which is not the case.
How much toxicity a project can tolerate is in inverse proportion to how important it is, but every project has its limits no matter what.
I think this is a wise choice. Either Torvalds needs to figure out people better, or he needs to bring in a lieutenant who can handle people more effectively than he does.
Depends on how rudeness is defined as well. Based soley on people's feelings or above and beyond objective truth. Saying that Bob hasn't proven good at network programming and is prone to spaghetti code may be absolutely true yet he would likely take offense to it.
Linux is by far the most successful floss project in the history of mankind. God knows there are plenty of floss OS projects out there, most of which have far nicer leaders but a small fraction of the success. Either you're overplaying the effect on productivity or the relevance of being nice.
Correlation does not imply causation. It's absolutely possible that Linux is the exception. There are many oss projects which don't have the same level of abuse.
It brings to mind fundamental organizational and management. Is it better to have a "rude" organization? Calling bullshit early and often instead of polite everything is fine stacks of lies since it would be impolite to point out having O(N!) code just can't work for anything of appreciable size? The optimal approach likely varies on several variables.