The point of technical fora is to have effective, high bandwidth discussions on technical matters.
If I want a hug, I can go get a real one from a real live human being - and I'll interact with them in an appropriate way for that context, too.
And yes, this is a throwaway account. It might be worth considering why I created it to respond to you, just based on your post above.
My opinion is my opinion, and you're welcome to hold a different one, but I'll damn well stand behind holding mine and explain the reasons why I do as myself, with my reputation and my ability and everything I've ever said attached to it, including the stupid, horrible mistakes (of which this post may later seem to me to be one :). Because the fact that I do my best to make less such mistakes every year speaks for me as well.
You are absolutely right that it is worth considering why you created an anonymous coward account, as slashdot calls them, rather than speaking your opinions as yourself - no matter how strongly you disagree with me I respect your right to do so even if I have no respect at all for your arguments or position. But now I have no way to know you, and no way to respond to a human being rather than a (to me) meaningless transient front so I don't really feel like I can draw any useful conclusions from such consideration.
I don't know why you'd want that.
If you want to disagree with me, disagree with me as -you-, so I know who I'm debating with and can frame a constructive reply.
Perhaps the fact that I would rather disagree honestly with another human being, and that you would ... I don't know what you'd rather ... is the point. Perhaps it isn't. But now I can't know.
Arguing for "most people" holds no weight with me when I'm unable to even confirm that you're a person. Maybe I'm too web 1.0 or something. If so, sorry.
Please do, however, consider responding to me authentically; I'm always willing to debate whether I'm right or not, but I've always been rather fonder of debating people than will-o-the-wisps.
Maybe that's just me. Deciding that is left as an exercise to the reader :)
Of course such options exist. Honest and authentic communication is a crucial tool to avoid disagreement descending into flamewars.
Linus' original post attracted a message from an original developer saying "yeah, I hate that too, we'll try and get round to fixing it". That suggests that his choice of option was really rather constructive, peanut gallery interruptions to the useful parts aside.
I disagree with Linus's digression to insult a member of the peanut gallery, no matter how useless and unnecessary said member's interjection. In my mind, a "No, that's wrong." is sufficient if it even merits comment.
Who cares if Torvalds has 'more' technical chops than DHH...DHH might be more abrasive, but it is a good abrasive. He is always pushing the community forward and encouraging Rails developers to be a little better. He is not afraid to embrace new technologies and give credit where its due.
Can't tell when last I have seen these older guys do the same.
I have never once bashed his contributions to the community and OSS. Just like I would never do the same for the creators of Java, C, PHP, all of which I don't use and have no interest in. But there is significant value in all of them and we are all better off for their existence.
My point was, more often than not....you hear the creators of these 'foundational' contributions complaining about new things (either new approaches which were different than theirs, or they shit on new languages because those languages don't have some purist function that theirs does or doesn't achieve the same low-level execution speed that theirs does).
DHH can be a dick, but I have never seen him shit on someone for trying something new (even within the Ruby & Rails core). That being said, I am not saying he doesn't disagree with the approach that people take....but there is a difference between shitting on someone/something and disagreeing with it.
What Linus did here was shit all over Github's implementation of the pull request - because it is different than his implementation would have been.
I'm not going to speculate, but it's clear you are talking out your ass.
Linus has spend the last 20+ years building one of the most important pieces of software in existence. Not only that, but he created git, without which the Github guys, DHH, and everyone else would be using fucking Subversion. The process that he follows for kernel development does not exist out of vanity, it serves an actual proven purpose. Linus' care and attention to detail are a big part of why you can rely on the stability of Linux over time. For you to come in here spouting off some nonsense about why he does this or why he does that without clue #1 as to the real reasons, and then to pay homage to the guys who are "trying something new" all the time standing on the shoulders of said giants, well, it's a slap in the face. Respect is due my friend.
I think for all software engineers who are old enough, we all know writing software is a social activity and sometime it is better to make projects manageable.
I think any one who creates technologies has to understand that design decision is an "Opinion".
I doubt we are better off for PHP's existence (only mentioning the oxymoron "PHP security" should be enough to make this point), many would argue the same for Java (unless you are a consultant or book publisher), and some have argued the same for C.
And just because something is new doesn't make it good, in the programming world the number of square wheels built grows every day, and we are in danger of the resulting mountain collapsing and burying us all in a tangle of inscrutable complexity of bad solutions to problems that were solved long ago.