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Linus Torvalds on Social Media: 'It's a Disease. It Seems To Encourage Bad Behavior.' (linuxjournal.com)
From a wide-ranging interview of Linus Torvalds with Linux Journal on the magazine's 25th anniversary: Linux Journal: If you had to fix one thing about the networked world, what would it be?
Linus: Nothing technical. But, I absolutely detest modern "social media" -- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It's a disease. It seems to encourage bad behavior. I think part of it is something that email shares too, and that I've said before: "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle". When you're not talking to somebody face to face, and you miss all the normal social cues, it's easy to miss humor and sarcasm, but it's also very easy to overlook the reaction of the recipient, so you get things like flame wars, etc., that might not happen as easily with face-to-face interaction. But email still works. You still have to put in the effort to write it, and there's generally some actual content (technical or otherwise). The whole "liking" and "sharing" model is just garbage. There is no effort and no quality control. In fact, it's all geared to the reverse of quality control, with lowest common denominator targets, and click-bait, and things designed to generate an emotional response, often one of moral outrage.
Add in anonymity, and it's just disgusting. When you don't even put your real name on your garbage (or the garbage you share or like), it really doesn't help. I'm actually one of those people who thinks that anonymity is overrated. Some people confuse privacy and anonymity and think they go hand in hand, and that protecting privacy means that you need to protect anonymity. I think that's wrong. Anonymity is important if you're a whistle-blower, but if you cannot prove your identity, your crazy rant on some social-media platform shouldn't be visible, and you shouldn't be able to share it or like it.
Linux Journal: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students?
Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all.
Linus: Nothing technical. But, I absolutely detest modern "social media" -- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It's a disease. It seems to encourage bad behavior. I think part of it is something that email shares too, and that I've said before: "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle". When you're not talking to somebody face to face, and you miss all the normal social cues, it's easy to miss humor and sarcasm, but it's also very easy to overlook the reaction of the recipient, so you get things like flame wars, etc., that might not happen as easily with face-to-face interaction. But email still works. You still have to put in the effort to write it, and there's generally some actual content (technical or otherwise). The whole "liking" and "sharing" model is just garbage. There is no effort and no quality control. In fact, it's all geared to the reverse of quality control, with lowest common denominator targets, and click-bait, and things designed to generate an emotional response, often one of moral outrage.
Add in anonymity, and it's just disgusting. When you don't even put your real name on your garbage (or the garbage you share or like), it really doesn't help. I'm actually one of those people who thinks that anonymity is overrated. Some people confuse privacy and anonymity and think they go hand in hand, and that protecting privacy means that you need to protect anonymity. I think that's wrong. Anonymity is important if you're a whistle-blower, but if you cannot prove your identity, your crazy rant on some social-media platform shouldn't be visible, and you shouldn't be able to share it or like it.
Linux Journal: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students?
Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all.
I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?"
So the advice he's really giving here, just in a roundabout way, is "Do what you like".
That is, if some aspect of computer technology is not complying enough that you want to try and work with it for fun, move around until you find something that does so move you.
I would say there are a lot more areas to explore now than there used to be when studying CS, so it's easier for younger students to feel a bit lost and not really know what to do. Explore niches and find out what is naturally fun and interesting, even better if it cross-correlates with any other interests you have.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Did they actually interview Linus? He wasn't calling anyone stupid or ugly in his response, so I can't be sure that it was actually him.
This should be construed as sarcasm, in case you couldn't hear me being subtle.
... the reality is the internet has shown us the true face of the human race - everyones reality is right and it's those other guys who are incorrect. It has been the average human being and the masses getting internet. We've seen everyone come online over the last 20 years.
Watching the last 20 years of slashdot comments has been surreal. The rise in anti intellectualism as more normal people came online and the dumbest shit you can possibly imagine getting upvoted. The outright destruction of PC gaming and the masses falling on their own sword and falling for the mmo scam, drm and steam. As an original nerd from the 90's, the masses getting internet has just shown us how stupid the human race is from every class and every walk of life.
Everything PC nerds in the 90's were worried about came true, and what a gift the internet has been to the corporate world that the average human being is so uncaring and unflinchingly stupid, they'd literally bend over to have their rights and freedoms taken away but do so willingly.
I guess we don't encourage bad behavior.
Thank you Linus for saving me from becomming nuts. I'm so happy to find out i'm not the only one - that's trying to avoid at a high cost these awful social media. Thank you for linux - thank you for this kind supportive message.
That is, if some aspect of computer technology is not complying enough that you want to try and work with it for fun, move around until you find something that does so move you.
I think this is applicable to any relatively technical profession. I remember seeing an ad for a home computer (Atari?) when I was 7 and I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Been hooked since then. I hear similar stories with doctors, lawyers, etc... If it doesn't grab your attention right away, it's probably not worth the investment in time and money to figure out, once you have a JD or MD or BS in CS, that it's just not that interesting enough. IE, if you aren't sure right away, then the answer is probably no. Not always, but usually.
It's good that they're electric because people are going to travel much more when they don't have to do the driving.
Somebody who spends three hours a night on social media now can, in the future, hop in a car and go hang out with real humans for two hours.
Internet interaction is cheap and easy - install lots of solar panels to charge your car and real human-human interaction becomes nearly as cheap and easy. Yes, you have to put pants on, for most meetups, but the reward ought to be sufficient for the effort.
There are those who would just rather avoid human contact, but they make poor friends online and off. Seriously, you people, go be a hermit - that's a legit lifestyle choice for certain kinds of people.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Emails are rude to one person or a small group, and probably between people that know each other to some degree. Social media is broadcast worldwide. Linus even points out that email has some of the same problems for the same reasons.
I don't think Linus would disagree that he's often an utter prick either. In most cases I think he fully intends to be.
It's important to remember that the crappy stuff is what we tend to hear about. Meanwhile 3+ nines of usage of these platforms is perfectly bland, uninteresting, and useful. Facebook has been a great tool for keeping in touch with my dispersed sisters. No one is forcing me to read a bunch of empty shitposts, and I don't. I used to avoid Twitter until a colleague demonstrated how it could be very useful as an information source for our job. The majority of usage on these platforms is all like this, not very interesting. But the shitposts get all the attention. It's much like when I used to work in a bookstore. Co-workers used to complain all day about how these 'stupid customers' could not put books back in the right place. I admit, I made that mistake too, until one day a mentor told me to look at how many people came in and out of that store every day (I date myself, this was pre-Amazon) and think about how few actually put the book back wrong or some other annoying thing. Come to think of it, that little piece of advice may have turned my life around..anyway, stop being such a negative nellie.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
WTF?
Linus is known for rudely telling off people that needed to go away and stop bothering him. Like a 'gentleman', he is never rude by accident. He doesn't start there, just ends there.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
He is putting his NAME on his ideals and thoughts. He isn't hiding behind anonymity.
No one cares about your crap channel, stop spamming already.
It's not social media per-se that is the problem (IMO), it's the AI employed by these companies that decides what you should see, and the AI employed by advertisers and malicious entities to drive advertising profits. A.I. is not yet self aware, so it can't be classified as malicious itself, but it is pernicious. AI has learned to manipulate the algorithms that decide what you see in your news feed and even worse, it has learned to manipulate people. AI is responsible for most of what we see online and it has learned that political content that divides us is the most effective at keeping people engaged. I honestly believe that the use of AI with the goal of keeping people attached to their screens is probably responsible for the global political divide that continues to grow. AI may yet cause the extinction of humanity even without becoming self aware.
"if you cannot prove your identity, your crazy rant on some social-media platform shouldn't be visible, and you shouldn't be able to share it or like it"
In about 99% of the cases, I do have to agree with him. Anonymity is abused. Someone who wants to spew hate, drop f-bombs, disrupt discussions with ad hominem attacks - they almost always hide behind anonymity. If they acted like that IRL, someone would punch them. Make them put their real name* to their posts, they might moderate their speech, and add in some politeness and discussion.
The practical problem is: how do you allow speech by true whistleblowers, or by other people in a position where they genuinely cannot speak with their own voice? How can a platform allow them to use true anonymity, without allowing it for the ACs? I don't think it's really possible. Moderation systems like /. or Soylent are the best compromise I've seen: start ACs with less visibility, and let mods raise them or bury them. It's not ideal, but it's better than almost any other system I've seen.
*Yes, I practice what I preach: my pseudonym leads pretty directly to my real identity, and that is not an accident. It's just difficult enough to dissuade most trolls...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Yep, exactly. I've been in IT for 40 years, since the age of 12 when I received my first TRS-80 and taught myself BASIC and Assembler. It's been a magical self-taught ride ever since.
A distinction with Linus is that generally he calls some piece of CODE ugly or stupid, not a -person-. In the vast majority of cases, anyway. I've written a lot of stupid code, and I'll call my own stupid code stupid. I've written code that has a comment saying "this is ugly, but don't try to fix it because ....".
I've written plenty of stupid and ugly code. I'm not stupid*. I think in Linus's mind that distinction is so obvious that he forgets it's not so obvious to some other people. He forgets that other people take "this code is still crap" as a -personal-insult; they hear him saying something about them, as opposed to saying something about the code. That's normal. It's just not how Linus thinks, and I personally have had to practice keeping in mind that people take things personally. -I- don't mind if you tell me my Makefile is goofy ASF. It probably is. That doesn't inply anything about me, other than that I'm not the King Guru of makefiles.
* I am ugly
The problem with social media seems largely that we have not have time for the culture to learn what are helpful and unhelpful ways to use it. We just assumed it was wonderful and everyone should be on Facebook. Slowly a set of principles will develop about how to use the new media and parents will teach their children to use it wisely. But the first decade of social media has indeed been a disaster as Linus indicates.
Linus giving lessons on subtlety of language and expression, lol. Social media was precisely made for screaming zealots like Linus Torvalds.
You know of anything else that'll work? Name it! Or STFU!
were no different than current social media.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
"Do what you like" will leave you with lifelong debt and a degree that leaves you completely unemployable.
Few are far between are people who have an authentic passion for something that pays well.
If you are considering a degree in a field with a completely saturated job market, think again. On the one hand, every single one of the successes in that field will go on and on about how they stuck with it and persisted. And it makes you think "all I have to do is stick with it and persist!" But it is not true, because for every one of them, there are thousands of others who were just as talented and persisted just as long and wound up going broke and eventually burning out. Because there just aren't enough slots for everyone.
It isn't a feel-good thought, but most of the work that provides stability and income is work that people don't enjoy doing. Find something you don't hate, that gets your hands dirty, and you will be WAY better off than chasing that dream of being a journalist.
1) Requiring someone to know at least three programming languages by the end of high school is a particularly idiotic form of gate keeping because it ensures that everyone who 'passes' has wasted their time learning the syntax for various languages rather than actually learning how to program in those languages.
2) Nobody has ever said "must know three programming languages" is sexist and nobody would. That's entirely in your imagination.
3) Nobody has claimed college is faster than self-training. It is, however, more thorough and forces you to study subjects you would otherwise skip and forces you to follow through with projects rather than abandoning them. The breadth of knowledge and discipline that you have to develop to get the degree is what people value about college over self-training.
Your a douche (this was not sarcasm)
Maybe we can improve ourselves by not assuming that we truly know things. Even when we're not insufferable enough to think that we know everything, there are still things we believe that could be wrong, and it's probably a longer list than we'd assume. Therefore, it pays to not get too attached to them.
That lack of attachment could help prevent future discord in social media, but I'm not really sure. It's just something I've thought about lately.
Worst case: We can always do without.
you associate with. I dont get that on FB, its a great way to keep updated on how family is doing, sisters, grandkids, nieces nephews, Its nice in that regard.
[($)]
Stay away.
Stay far away.
Stay very very far away!
Corporatism != Free Market
Many flavors of social media are not broadcast to the world. Some do.
Not advocating it, but ultimately Facebook allows you to choose who your message reaches.
One of my more favorite social networks is /. And it is one of those that is broadcast to the world.
Caution: Contents under pressure
Spoken like a true "Anonymous Coward"... ;-)
Caution: Contents under pressure
One person's "rational statement" is another person's "crazy rant". Defending the Second Amendment or each state having (as the Constitution specifies) equal suffrage in the Senate or deportation of illegal immigrants would qualify as "crazy rants" in some circles and companies.
In a world where technology companies have gone overboard with political and societal issues unrelated to their product, anyone who doesn't adhere to the hive-mind is putting their career at risk by posting under their real identities. It's easy for Torvalds to take this stance as he doesn't need to work for anyone else on a regular basis and he's already known as a "flaming asshole" (which, by the way, was something I used to like about him -- as a thought leader in his area, he made high contrast statements without sugercoating which got the message across to all much more effectively than carefully worded "policy statements" and advice to "you may want reconsider introducing an error not previously returned by an API").
So, no, it's not just whistle-blowers who should enjoy anonymity. Apparently when Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay were publishing the Federalist Papers under the anonymous pseudonym "Publius" they didn't think so either.
Of course, being a native Finn, perhaps Torvalds doesn't quite grok a diverse culture for some reason.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Not the way browsers treat plaintext HTTP vs. self-signed HTTPS, not the DNS or BGP security clusterfucks, not the CA system, nothing? Really?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Thankfully, the founding fathers disagreed. And published much under aliases.
Social media is a wasteland where relationships go to die. I was thinking about this just yesterday, the number of times that people say dumb shit online that ruins their chances with a woman they've just met, or when they have a brain explosion in a depressed moment that would have only been shared with one friend in the past, which now blasts out across social media permanently imploding that person's social standing. Facebook especially, is a toxic cesspool where people read and see things about people they never would have in the past. Where both guys and girls stalk each others photos, and past relationships/images of relationships have to be carefully curated to sanitise perceptions. And the social media companies like it that way. They'll never let you easily split your contacts/walls into the streams you actually want e.g close friends/family, and acquaintances with separate feeds for each category. It's now almost a taboo to unfriend people, even though more than half the people in your contact list it'd be generous to call acquaintances. That's before you even get into the clickbait, ads, and other crap behaviours. Oh and they're profiteering from increasing depression/misery through advertising as well.
Your opinion has no value even if it does have your real identity attached.
The content of an that opinion, however. . .
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Yeah we could just off loudmouths like you. No tech required, you're such a pussy posting shit online I can probably break your spine in 1 punch.
It's not possible. The trolls are a relatively small percentage of the "problem." The bigger "problem" is that what half of the population sees as legitimate whistleblowing, the other half sees as toxicity that must be silenced and the perpetrators unmasked and banned.
On a meta level, the problem is that we're trying to assign categories to speech based on how we perceive it, rather than on the intent with which it's said. What's sounds like a legitimate anonymous complaint to one person is toxic speech to someone else. Speech really needs to be assessed on the basis of the intent of the speaker, not on how the speech makes you feel. The PC crowd is the one most guilty of this. Someone finds "Negro" printed on their sofa and gets all offended, and sympathetic PC advocates in the media make the story go national. When "negro" is the Spanish word for "black", and the (black) sofa was manufactured in a Spanish-speaking country. Prioritizing people's reaction to the word over the intent with which the word was printed creates a non-existent racial offense.
If you could magically know the speaker's intent, you would know if they're a troll, or if they were being genuine in what they're saying. Unfortunately there is no magic that can tell you this (though occasionally you can tease it out through logical gymnastics - a troll will sometimes exhibit behavior contradictory to if they actually believe what they say). But people are unsatisfied with calling this an unsolvable problem. So they keep trying to solve it by insisting on judging speech based on how the speech is perceived by others.
Well, if you're going to that, then the only metric which works is whether anyone judges the anonymous speech to be useful to them. And if so, then the speech should be allowed. Which is the inverse of the standard currently being used - where people try to get it banned if anyone gets offended by it. If you carry that standard out to its logical conclusion, all speech will be banned because someone, somewhere will be offended by anything that's said.
I absolutely detest modern "social media" -- Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. It's a disease. It seems to encourage bad behavior.
Couldn't have been said any better. This 100% on the mark. Now let's start discussing the cure.
I don't think taking away anonymity for everyone is going to help very much. So let's just skip that thought.
Quite frankly, my only idea is to just shut all that stuff down. It's ills far outweigh it's benefits.
Here's the thing:
I'm not an expert at everything - and I KNOW that.
That's awesome because thinking "don't know" equals "stupid" PREVENTS learning.
I'm not under the delusion that I'm an expert at everything, or that I'm supposed to be. I'm grateful that nobody ever put into
my head the idea that if I have room to learn, I suck, or am stupid. I would hate to have that wrong idea because a need to insist that you know everything prevents learning.
I can't count the number of times there has been discussion here on Slashdot and somebody posts a mistaken idea of what the law is. That's fine, if they aren't an employment attorney, they aren't SUPPOSED to know everything about employment law. I'll post the actual text of the law and far too often the person who guessed wrong gets defensive and has to try to argue that the law doesn't say what it says. The actual text of the law is "employers may not ..." and they feel the need to argue it means "employers must", just because that was their first guess. They completely miss the opportunity to learn anything.
They have this crazy idea that if they were wrong, that means they're stupid, so they will go to any length to avoid recognizing that their first try was wrong, and therefore learning something. Thinking they are supposed to already know prevents them from ever knowing. Being afraid of LOOKING stupid ensures they permanently ARE stupid.
A couple of hours ago I posted a messages in my company chat practically beggingmy new co-workers to tell me what's not very good about the work I just did at my new job. I did that because I want to improve it. I would my work to *actually* be good, so I want to know how to improve it, rather than me just pretending it's good. Why? Because of how and why I got hired here.
At my last job, two months ago, I was teaching classes, making presentations to educate co-workers about security and programming topics, with a side-dish of law. I really enjoyed doing that and wanted to do more of it, but I knew I wasn't great at it. I earnestly asked my co-workers / students for feedback after every presentation, telling them I needed their help to improve. Three weeks ago I landed what may be my dream job. I'll now spend my days mentoring my a thousand programmers on security and creating robust software systems - and getting paid quite well to do it. I got this job because I was able to talk about how I had taught programmers at my last job, the successes in mentoring. I never would have had success mentoring if I wasn't constantly asking co-workers to tell me how they think I could improve.
I'd have to say "Pascal and BASIC" and you'd have to say, "Get the hell out of my office, Grandpa!"
> It IS a personal insult if you put all your best effort into something and the immediate reaction from the receiver is that it is stupid.
There are a lot of smart people here on Slashdot.
If you handed out cadavers to all of us and had us "put all our best effort" into a practice brain surgery, approximately 100% of us would make several major mistakes.
Not because we're stupid, because we haven't mastered the application of a specific skill in a particular context.
Stupid people can do things well. For example, a lot of idiots are good at getting elected. Stephen Hawking is brilliant, and his cake decorating really, really sucks. He's smart, he hasn't mastered the particular skills of cake decorating.
Smart is having the ability to learn. Stupid is not learning.
Bottom line, here's the difference between smart people and stupid people.
When they become aware that they did something stupid:
Smart people learn from it and then know next time.
Stupid people get offended.
No I think it's quite different. Linus has never been an attention whore, posting silly content for the sake of increasing his popularity. He cursed a lot of times in a way that wasn't subtle, sure, but the goal was not to increase his popularity or lower that of a competing guy, which seems to be the primary goal of social media. That's the tragedy of social media: it encourages to focus on the links instead of the content, up to the point where negative content creates more links and is thus more valuable than anything else. That's a damn low SNR.
Disclaimer: I don't do social networks, and I've never seen anything tagged social media in the regular press that I have found positive or worth anything.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
I don't always agree with Linus and he has a well deserved reputation for being...well..prickly at times. But his comments on social media are bang on. Even at work, I don't know how many times I have sent an email to someone and it was misinterpreted. All they have are the words on the page. They don't hear my voice or see my face and sometimes when all you see are the words it can come across as more harsh than it was intended. If it starts going back and forth I usually just pick up the phone and it all gets sorted out rather quickly.
Imagine how much worse it is when you don't know the author of the comments. Or it is written in ALL CAPS (implying yelling at you). Or the grammar and spelling is horrible which makes it even more difficult to understand them. On top of all that, there are people out there that will write stuff expressly to piss people off. It is one of the main reasons that I don't respond to anonymous comments on /. I'm just not going to take the bait.
I remember seeing an ad for a home computer (Atari?) when I was 7 and I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.
So where are the ads for openly programmable computers these days? I keep seeing phones/tablets which seem to be targeted for social media consumption, and gaming PCs which are likewise consumption-oriented. Well, there's also the middle ground of somewhat regular laptops aimed at students for light coursework. But the excitement of writing your own code is nowhere to be seen. I could see this was already hard in the 90s with Windows, where everything is hidden and the "users" are separated from "developers" as much as possible, but it's looking much harder now.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
If I provide my real name, my reputation just might make you believe the subject. Alternatively, it might make you *disbelieve* that 2+2=4. That's how propaganda works. The only reason we're paying attention at all is because it's Linus. Let's see some AC put forth a good argument against anonymity. If it's a compelling argument, it won't matter that it's an AC.
Otherwise though I agree with him about simple thumbs up/down and re-tweet being garbage. That's why I'm still here, still pseudonymous after all these years. It's stood the test of time better than sites that require your real name, and better than sites that try to distill everything into a simple up/down vote, and sometimes, Sometimes, ACs put forth the best arguments right on this very site..
I submit this site as empirical evidence against his opposition to anonymity, and for his arguments against simpler moderation and sharing schemes.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
That why we need the tech, to zap yer violent ass! Teach you some respect!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Linus underestimates the psychological damage you do to yourself when posting with your name. Facebook exploits this human trait like sugar industry exploits our being wired to get as much historically rare carbs as possible.
I had a username for a long while here. I stopped using it a couple of years back. The trolls just became too toxic. There was a time when /. was a really great place for technical discussions. I wondered if it was just me but I asked friends and they agree, the trolls now are just plain noxious - Not just on /. too.
Sure there were trolls on the old /. but many were funny and they weren't usually mean-spirited. Technical discussions here were great. I always read everything, OK, OK, skim-read everything. Yes I could crank up the filter but that changes the experience a lot.
I think this is a general phenomenon in all social media. It makes me seriously wonder about who these people are that seem so angry and so hate filled that they spend the time writing super nasty posts. I'm not wired that way. I will stick up for a person being picked on, and if someone is saying something I'm not into, I'll just let them do there thing, assuming it isn't hurting others. But some people seem loathe to allow anyone else to have any views different from their own.
Linus isn't wrong that social media is a hell hole.
Emails aren't rude, that's just people being picky about their preferred type of communication (more often you hear "phone calls are rude!"). In many organizations it's very difficult to find a common time for a small group of people to meet regularly and discuss something. Email allows for discussions to continue at a speed each person's time permits, and further, writing allows you to collect our thoughts and lay them out much more effectively.
Sure, you could argue there's some better tool for an ongoing threaded discussion, but that's what email is nowadays anyway.
Did Linus say that, or was that Accujack, commenting on Linus's words (on Reddit in 2013)?
Accujack's "brain dead" comment was his reaction to Linus's 2007 response to a troll saying it's "bullshit" that Linux didn't write git in C++. Linus's actual response to the troll explained what the technical problems are with C++ for such an application, and did mention that C++, in it's brokenness, does attract less capable programmers.
I'll skip the technical details and quote the part where Linus wasn't being very nice:
--
C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it.
[Technical details of problems with C++]
So I'm sorry, but for something like git, where efficiency was a primary objective, the "advantages" of C++ is just a huge mistake. The fact that we also piss off people who cannot see that is just a big additional advantage.
If you want a VCS that is written in C++, go play with Monotone. Really. They use a "real database". They use "nice object-oriented libraries". They use "nice C++ abstractions".
--
Linus wasn't super nice to the person who called his work bullshit, and he did NOT say all C++ programmers are braindead. That was Accujack who said that, six years later.
Ohh! What wouldn't I have given to have Pascal! I sometimes would hang awake at night dreaming of a practical language.
BASIC and Assembly (in DOS's Debug). I didn't get access to a compiler until I got to Uni.
I guess I'm too old for HornWumpus. He'd rather have the kids that know 10 languages and make a chat program that takes up 500MB.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
I think what he is trying to say is that anonymity means you can be careless with your message and generally not give a crap about accuracy or who you piss off. As it can't be traced back to you, you have no skin in the game.
Being held accountable in your opinions means that you are much more careful in phrasing your opinion. You have to ensure that your point of view is interpreted correctly, otherwise there are consequences. This - I believe - gives rise to more reasoned debate and a better signal to noise ratio.
And I totally understand the usual reasons given forth for anonymity. For example, in some places your life is in danger if your sexual orientation doesn't match certain values of "oppressive-regime-correct". But the bulk of communication doesn't involve those issues. Having your posts traceable back to you physically (as opposed to fire-and-forget) is a good moderator for your actions, and as you care about the responses it also forces you to try and figure out how to best interact with other people effectively. And I think that's what's missing in the bulk of online communication - there is little effort taken in getting your point across and actual communication of ideas and concepts suffers as a result.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Social media is the foundation for a lot of the problems of our age. The messed up times we live in now will be remembered for the copy-cat mass murderers, fake news, and large scale state-sponsored social manipulation. Do something good for yourself and everyone in your life - delete your social media accounts and get back to being human again.
Stupid people can do things well. For example, a lot of idiots are good at getting elected. Stephen Hawking is brilliant, and his cake decorating really, really sucks. He's smart, he hasn't mastered the particular skills of cake decorating.
It's also difficult to decorate a cake from beyond the grave, even if you aren't mostly paralyzed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I did some web searches the other day and I've concluded that you can find a Torvalds quote to the effect that "____ is a disease" for most values of "____".
Not that I think he's wrong about those socmeds.
Congratulations on proving Linus Torvalds correct.
It's trivial to not use a real name on Facebook, and I assume it's true elsewhere.
Linus underestimates the psychological damage you do to yourself when posting with your name. Facebook exploits this human trait like sugar industry exploits our being wired to get as much historically rare carbs as possible.
This is a most insightful comment. Social media is looking more and more like a shared psychosis. Even a cursory study of the reward related dopamine responses in the brain with respect to UI behavior reveals what FB is doing to make people addicted.
In time I suspect that social media will be recognized as toxic as smoking.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
You do know that YouTube's algorithm actually allows people to sink channels they don't like? All that (quite a few, but still, if you piss off enough people...) people have to do is go there, downvote it and flag every video in the "related" list that belongs to you as "not interested".
And unlike them flagging it for improper content, you can't even report it. Hell, you don't even notice it. At least 'til YouTube no longer recommends your videos to people because enough people flagged your videos as "not interested", when you notice that nobody watches your videos anymore except those that already subscribed, clicked the bell-notification and actually care enough about those notifications to click on your video.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And it's bullshit.
CS isn't BA. You can't just cram it into your head, add a lobotomy and you'll excel in the field. Provided you're a psychopath. When trying to write code, at least if you don't want to be a copy/pasting cargo cult programmer, you first of all have to understand what you're doing. And this is something you will not be taught in any school. Because that's not what our tests test. What's tested is whether you managed to soak up the curriculum and barf it onto the test before forgetting it again.
That works great in some fields, but not when you're trying to learn how to create working code.
So far nobody managed to convince me that there's even a chance you get a good programmer out of someone who shows zero interest to invest his time into self training and only relies on whatever he's taught at some school. And I really doubt there ever will be one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It was possible but less practical. Say someone switches to another ISP and loses access to his or her old email. Using email directly puts the burden of continuing to stay in touch after the change on the other participants. Using a web board allows each user to update his or her own authentication. And Facebook is somewhat less likely than hobbyist-run web boards to remain in operation as opposed to shutting down due to lack of money or interest.
What you know at the end of high school doesn't matter. That's unnecessary gatekeeping.
What matters is what you are willing to teach yourself when you have the opportunity.
Someone with the potential who develops interest later--or who just didn't have the time/resources early on--is just as capable if they do it later. If that happens to be in college when they decide to "go into computers" without knowing what that entails, then so what? As long as we're advising them up front that this is a self-teaching field, they'll either learn or move on.
So where are the ads for openly programmable computers these days?
I think this space is now occupied by the likes of Raspberry Pi, Arduino, etc.
The maker movement, arduino, and raspberry pi. Those communities are full of the excitement of not only writing your own code, but writing code that interfaces with the physical world. They're also very affordable, and much more welcoming and accessible than many of the old machines some of us grew up on.
As someone who grew up with a trash 80, survived the rise of windows, and recently returned to hobby electronics/robotics/programming, I can tell you with no uncertainty that playing with tech is much more accessible and affordable now than it was back in my day.
Mindstorm, scratch..
Cheap storage VM.
haha yep I'm a whippersnapper.
Although, to be fair I made a TCP/IP server in Python in a couple of hours with a bit of time on stack exchange.
Couldn't do that in Pascal. :)
If you didn't learn 6502 assembler, you are lame.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Drinkypoo. You need to get out more. 24x7 /. trolling is making you even _more_ stupid and insane.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Everybody's happy!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Should Julliard also accept students that will go on to 'develop interest later' or should they continue to only accept people that play instruments?
Computers are everywhere today. Sure the 'coder market' in 1970 was different.
Face the fact: You learned much quicker when you were younger, everybody does.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I don't think you would know a good programmer if you met one.
I don't think you _are_ a good programmer. 99% of non-coders can't tell the diff.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Go away and stop bothering me, you snotty nosed malodorous pervert.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Perhaps I can summarize my point more succinctly:
Ad hominem:
No way I'm going to vote for that bill, the traitor Trump proposed that. He's a crook and he smells bad.
Note it doesn't mention the pros or cons of the policy, rather it attempts distract attention away from the policy by attacking a person associated with it.
Not ad hominem:
Total tax rates of over 50% cause significant damage to the economy and are essentially immoral because it is taking from someone, by force. Any proposals for major policy changes at the federal level should first be proven at the state level, to the extent possible. As the recent letter from the AFL-CIO points out, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed massive new taxes and huge new federal bureacracies. Those bureacracies would be tasked with implementing policies which have utterly failed when they have been tried at the federal level. I won't vote for AOC because voting for her would be supporting these mistakes.
Note the reasons given are why the POLICIES or ideas are bad. The only mention of the person is that they are pushing bad policy.
How does know N programming languages before college translate into being a good programmer/engineer? If you ask that question or interviewee's, then you need to ask yourself what you are really trying to get of someone by asking them that question. My personal hobby in high school was playing bass guitar nearly every damn day, and learning the entire Rush catalog. I knew 0 languages proficiently because of this before I went to college for EE, and I still four pointed all but one class related to my major. So while it would have been nice to have more exposure to programming before I went to college, I wouldn't say that it has hindered my success. (As a side note, I graduated in 2003 so it wasn't like I didn't have a computer and couldn't find a compiler/interpreter somewhere for C++, Java, etc.). Currently I do signal processing which is a coding heavy field, but it aligns well with my music experience and interests. Coding is just a means to an end.
The point being, the only reason that I could think you would ask that question would be someone who is fresh out of school, at which point, what is more important? Is it that they can type "Hello World" in N languages, or that they know how to apply concepts which they learned in school? Personally I would rather have the person who could think for themselves and not need to be hand held on how to solve technical problems over some code monkey that you need to spoon feed. Programming, like anything else, takes practice. And languages can be learned. But if you are as dumb as a rock, then I can only help you so much since you will starting sucking out my productivity.
Right. I'm getting my moral philosophy from Mr. Torvalds. And, I might be a Chinese Jet Pilot....
Translated to remove ego: You're such a shitty coder, the only jobs you can get are 'pissing on fires' for organizations that build broken shit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
>It's also difficult to decorate a cake from beyond the grave, even if you aren't mostly paralyzed.
I imagine you're probably right. :)
I don't know for sure, he *could* be in a cake decorating class with Saint Francis right now.
That's a completely separate issue.
There is a vast gap between "did you learn?" and "when did you learn?".
There are cognitive abilities that decline with age--much less so than people assume. But that's completely irrelevant to the skills that someone has at the time that you're judging them. They should be judged on the skills that they have at that time. Someone with high aptitude who just happened to be doing other things in life is going to be a better performer than a low aptitude candidate who started early, especially if they have the same amount of experience.
Maybe we should just remove the commercial incentives of social media to generate clicks, i.e. remove advertising from society.
IMHO, advertising is like paying for disinformation and lies with your time and money, since all advertisement is paid for by the profit margins of companies, i.e. everyone buing products, even when never watching advertisements. It is like a horrobiel tax on top of everything, that spreads lies and hatred.