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Comment by 4ad | Hacker News Reader

> there are a ot of ways to say what you want without plainly insulting someone over and over again

Sure, and in the above context they are less effective. So why would he care?

> he might calm down a little and learn one or two things about social interaction

Why? What purpose would that serve? The LKML is one of the last few places where politically correct bullshit does not prevail. Communication is efficient and effective. There is no evidence that changing the tone would make it more efficient and more effective, but there's evidence galore that the opposite would happen. Experience has thought me that the only people hurt in the process are technical morons, and such people have no place in a technical discussion.

If someone cares more about the language or social niceties than about the correctitude of technical solutions they have no place in a technical community.

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Writing a wall of text with insults and a low amount of real communiction is not effective. It's also nothing to do with political correct. Linus' second post in the mail thread is much more technical and much less insulting.. more effective.

On the contrary, reading Mauro's e-mails before and after Linus' post proves that it is very effective.

I would hardly say that it proves it. It doesn't prove that being a little bit more polite and to-the-point wouldn't be as effective.

The only thing it proves is that people working at Red Hat have to deal with linus rage outbursts by the very nature of their jobs.

You are saying that a man that brought to reality one of the biggest and successful software projects in the history of humanity is wrong calling mediocrity for what it is.

I don't know if you have already accomplished something like that, if you don't go ahead and prove that you can with your political correct methods.

I don't understand how linus being a good programmer makes him less wrong.

There are a lot of people who are nice and successful software project leaders. Being a dick is not inherent to being successful in the software field.

I think that what matters the most about Linus is not being a good programmer (in the beginning of linux maybe it was important) but his capacities for project management, maintaining a vision for so long, and calling shit "shit" when is necesary for the goodness of the project.

Well, posting an angry rant is beneficial in at least one way: It's guaranteed to be read by all the kernel devs. Hell, we're reading it, and I doubt everyone on HN is a kernel dev or follows their mailing list. If Linus had been more polite, perhaps his comment would only have been noticed by those involved with the patch in question. Instead, he has simultaneously corrected Mauro's personal misconception and reinforced an important design constraint in the minds of all budding kernel devs.

I do agree that the second post was more effective in explaining Mauro's mistake, and would prefer myself to err on the side of politeness, but I suppose there can be benefits to acting like an asshole from time to time. Some changes are not ok to make, and perhaps it's justifiable to "make an example out of someone" from time to time to ensure that everyone understands why.

"There is no evidence that changing the tone would make it more efficient and more effective, but there's evidence galore that the opposite would happen."

What is this evidence? Do you have an example of a project that failed because the tone of its community changed from hostility to politeness?

Everything you've said here is simply dismissive.

"Kernel dev. policy is not to break user space. ENOENT is not a valid return from ioctl. Kernel maintainers are expected to know and adhere to this" is the only point that Linus had to make in this discussion.

People just don't understand why he added a bunch of swearing and questioning of the dev's basic intelligence. That's all.

Obviously, to make it hurt and set an example.

"Sure, and in the above context they are less effective"

This is absolutely, 100% false. Do you have any sort of data to back this up?

"There is no evidence that changing the tone would make it more efficient and more effective, but there's evidence galore that the opposite would happen."

Again, completely, 100% could not be more incorrect.

Do you really think that just saying "X is true" makes it so?

"If someone cares more about the language or social niceties than about the correctitude of technical solutions they have no place in a technical community."

I'm not really sure its an issue of "more" one versus the other, but why can't you communicate with someone in a correct manner without screaming and swearing at them in all caps? Its not mutually exclusive that one can either talk like my grandmother or be a technical wiz.

This is probably the worst post I've ever seen on HN, and that's saying something. Every single point relies on evidence you seemed to make up in your head?

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