Linus Torvalds goes on epic rant over Linux devs' comment syntax
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Linus Torvalds may be a driven, motivated technological genius, but where he fails so spectacularly is as a decent human being. I wrote a blog[^] about his behaviour only recently.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare Home | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter
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Read it here, without adblock-restrictions: Linus Torvalds in sweary rant about punctuation in kernel comments • The Register[^]
SteveKing wrote:
Read it here, without adblock-restrictions:
Thanks! It was too late at night to go searching. Hah! I agree with him! Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Contributors Wanted for Higher Order Programming Project! Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
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SteveKing wrote:
Read it here, without adblock-restrictions:
Thanks! It was too late at night to go searching. Hah! I agree with him! Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Contributors Wanted for Higher Order Programming Project! Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
After incrementally blocking all js on the site up to and including jquery I was able to get the plain text from the source to be displayed without munging. OTOH before I went nuclear I domain blocked several 3rd parties I wasn't sure what they did. Thuggish anti-adblocking attempts only manage to shoot all your sites partners in the foot
headbecause I've got better things to do than to start rolling back various blocks that might not have actually been needed. :doh:Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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It takes me back to when I wrote in COBOL. Comment blocks preceded paragraphs that awere to be kept to 50 lines or less, comment marks slewed each paragraph to the top of page on hardcopy, and horizontal tabs (HT characters) right-aligned asterisks for the right wall of the box. Given monochromatic and mono-type source editing and printing, a comment box was a useful construction. They were also where your versioning notes were placed.
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Linus Torvalds may be a driven, motivated technological genius, but where he fails so spectacularly is as a decent human being. I wrote a blog[^] about his behaviour only recently.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare Home | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter
A blog written at 2AM nonetheless (according to the timestamp)... ;P Think he gets to be that way because in the open source community, there are a lot of people that may not know what they're doing yet they're trying to give feedback (report bugs, fix bugs, add features). Although you may think he's only discouraging work, I think it's probably because you can only get so many bogus emails from developers-to-be before you lose your cool. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt, he may have just gone through volumes of lousy emails before he lost his cool on someone. I can't even imagine how many emails he gets every day.
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A blog written at 2AM nonetheless (according to the timestamp)... ;P Think he gets to be that way because in the open source community, there are a lot of people that may not know what they're doing yet they're trying to give feedback (report bugs, fix bugs, add features). Although you may think he's only discouraging work, I think it's probably because you can only get so many bogus emails from developers-to-be before you lose your cool. Give the guy the benefit of the doubt, he may have just gone through volumes of lousy emails before he lost his cool on someone. I can't even imagine how many emails he gets every day.
Albert Holguin wrote:
Give the guy the benefit of the doubt
He's had plenty of that given to him over the years, yet he continues to behave the way he does. As I said in my blog, he's lost top talent from his behavior and been sidelined by parts of the technology community. And if he can't take the pressure from the workload, then there are plenty of other people who would share it with him. There is NO excuse for behaving like a total jerk.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare Home | LinkedIn | Google+ | Twitter
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Coding Guidelines are good for teams, and those guidelines may include how comments should be written. But they are a convention only, it does not mean that other conventions are bad, and calling people following different conventions "brain-damaged" is not acceptable. Well, see: in some countries, people drive on the left side of the road, in other countries on the right side. Both versions are possible, and none of them is superior. Problems will arise only when you mix them.
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Linus is a asswipe, but he's also correct (in this instance). I personally prefer the C++ style:
// this is a comment
#SupportHeForShe Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
I use C++ comments for actual comments. I use C style comments for commenting out stuff.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
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:laugh:
My blog - www.FaceLaptop.com
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I use C++ comments for actual comments. I use C style comments for commenting out stuff.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
Rob Grainger wrote:
I use C style comments for commenting out stuff.
I just delete the offending code and let source control do it's job.
#SupportHeForShe Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Rob Grainger wrote:
I use C style comments for commenting out stuff.
I just delete the offending code and let source control do it's job.
#SupportHeForShe Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
This is only ever employed while investigating issues. I remove such offences well before checking in. Commented out code under source control is, without doubt, an abomination.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
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Rob Grainger wrote:
I use C style comments for commenting out stuff.
I just delete the offending code and let source control do it's job.
#SupportHeForShe Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
This is only ever employed while investigating issues. I remove such offences well before checking in. Commented out code under source control is, without doubt, an abomination.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
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This is only ever employed while investigating issues. I remove such offences well before checking in. Commented out code under source control is, without doubt, an abomination.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." Alan Kay.
:thumbsup::thumbsup:
#SupportHeForShe Government can give you nothing but what it takes from somebody else. A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you've got, including your freedom.-Ezra Taft Benson You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun