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
*/

Comments

Whether he's overall crazy or not...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I happen to agree with his stance on this particular issue.

Re:Whether he's overall crazy or not...

[hcs_$reboot]

/* no comment */

I don't use comments

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:I don't use comments

[swillden]

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

I used to get a chuckle out of doing that... but then I figured out that the guy working hard to understand my code later is almost always me. I strive to write clean, clear code with useful comments to avoid making myself work harder to figure out what I did. Sometimes it even works.

Re:Arguing over the subjective

[tripleevenfall]

I'd remind him from the real world that he should be glad there are comments at all.

please just go all the way to the C++ mode

[vux984]

Seeing as 'C++ mode' // comments were added to the C99 spec; this would be my preference. I've always hated all forms of /* */

Re:please just go all the way to the C++ mode

[tlhIngan]

Am I the only one who wishes languages had different semantics for disabling code versus actual comments? Sometimes it's nice to have, plus it helps avoid the issue of having a block of code with a /* */ comment in it, then putting another /* */ around that block of code to disable it, only to find out that the first */ closed the outer comment.

C does this quite well.

Use

//

and

/* */

for textual comments.

Use

#if 0
....
#endif

for code comments.

Bonus is many editors recognize the #If 0 idiom and automatically block-comment the code out!

And the preprocessor is self-balancing, so every #if must have a corresponding #endif making it ideal for commenting out blocks of code.

Parkinson's law of triviality

[OpenSourced]

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.

Linus is right

[jgotts]

Linus is right. I've been using the Linux kernel coding style as much as possible in all of my programming, regardless of the language, since around 1994. I get nothing but compliments.

When it comes to the kernel, the most important thing is writing code that other people can read and modify. Anybody can write new code. It takes an artist to write code that other people can easily understand.

Re:I quit writing comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus? Is that you?

Re: Arguing over the subjective

[Kjella]

Linus got an abundance of coders and by far most are paid, you can't compare it to other projects where you're lucky to get volunters at all. The kernel runs everything from cell phones to supercomputers and the markets it doesn't dominate is not the kernel's fault. He can well afford to only take high quality code that follows the style guides. Linux is simply not like most projects.

Re:Arguing over the subjective

[msauve]

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.