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Linus Torvalds In Sweary Rant About Punctuation In Kernel Comments (theregister.co.uk)

An anonymous reader shares a report on The Register: Linus Torvalds has unleashed a sweary rant on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, labelling some members "brain-damaged" for their preferred method of punctuating comments. "Can we please get rid of the brain-damaged stupid networking comment syntax style, PLEASE?" the Linux Lord asked last Friday. "If the networking people cannot handle the pure awesomeness that is a balanced and symmetric traditional multi-line C style comments, then instead of the disgusting unbalanced crap that you guys use now, please just go all the way to the C++ mode."Torvalds despises the following two comment-punctuation styles (with his comments):/* This is disgusting drug-induced
* crap, and should die
*/
and:/* This is also very nasty
* and visually unbalanced */
Torvalds prefers the following two styles:/* This is a comment */ and:/*
* This is also a comment, but it can now be cleanly
* split over multiple lines
*/

13 of 523 comments (clear)

  1. I quit writing comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Because of shit like this. fuck you.

    1. Re:I quit writing comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Linus? Is that you?

  2. I don't use comments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I like to make people work harder to figure out what I did.

  3. Torvalds Must Die! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Funny

    Linus has been known as an acerbic and rude individual, but he's never dared to touch the sacred unbalanced comment before. He's gotten bolder as we've taken his stuff. We really should have held the line, called an end to it before now. This is what we get for pandering to him.

    It's too late to simply eject him from kernel development. We can't have him hectoring us from the sidelines. I'm afraid that we must entirely erase Linus Torvalds from the noÃsphere.

    Think of it as evolution in action!

    rot13: whfg xvqqvat

    1. Re: Torvalds Must Die! by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Funny

      Dare you to support the wretched Torvalds, infidel! You shall reap the consequences. Those who are not for us are against us! Witness my horde of angry hackers. That is, for the moment that you can...

  4. Parkinson's law of triviality by OpenSourced · · Score: 5, Funny

    At last a Linux development post where everybody can have an opinion! Gone are the obscure race conditions and unstable semaphores, where prudent programmers preferred to watch in silence and seem ignorant, rather than open their mouths and dispel all doubts.

    --
    Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
  5. Re:Who Cares? by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah! It's not like the guy fucking invented Linux or something!

  6. Torvie's got it all wrong by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    They are not comments, they are Perl.

  7. Re:Whom The Gods Destroy... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I code and write on Windows, would it kill you penguin lovers to include a CR with your LFs?

  8. Re:Arguing over the subjective by lgw · · Score: 4, Funny

    There is no problem that one can solve with object oriented design that cannot also be solved with structs and function pointers.

    There is no problem that can be solved with structs and function pointers than cannot also be solved with raw assembly code, written directly to disk using a sector editor (or butterflies). But it's fucking stupid to choose such a non-productive way to code if you're doing it for a living (I recommend everyone does it once for fun, though).

    The *only* advantage to object oriented design is more intuitive code organization, and that only within certain problem spaces.

    Even if you never use inheritance or polymorphism (which certainly only makes sense for certain sorts of problems), putting your functions into the same namespace as the data they operate on is always going to make for cleaner code.

    That right there is a significant win for C++.

    For almost all kinds of problems, the fact that C++ destruction can automatically release resources, so you can safely return from anywhere in a function instead of having goto fail all over the place is a significant win for C++. Too many programmers are just hopeless at getting the "clean up everything before you exit the function" right 100% of the time.

    For code organization, sometimes C++ "concepts" (static polymorphism, so no function pointers) are a nice win. Questionable whether the many lines of code you can save justifies the fact that you're writing template code, however.

    The more you look, the more places you'll find clean little wins for C++, with no performance cost.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  9. Re:Whether he's overall crazy or not... by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 5, Funny

    /* no comment */

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  10. Re:Arguing over the subjective by msauve · · Score: 5, Funny

    Emacs ... Use a real editor kid...

    "When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi *and* Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time...Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED!... When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!"

    -Ed is the standard text editor.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  11. Re:Arguing over the subjective by cmiller173 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I don't know about empathy but I try to live by -- "code/comment as if your code will be maintained by a psychopath who knows where you live."