Re: Coding style - a non-issue

Daniel Phillips
2001-11-30T21:52:27Z

On November 30, 2001 08:05 pm, Larry McVoy wrote:
> Huh. Not sure I agree with that either. It's definitely a dicey area
> but go through the archives (or your memory if it is better than mine)
> and look at how the various leaders here respond to bad choices. It's
> basically public humiliation. Linus is especially inclined to speak
> his mind when he sees something bad. And people stick around.

There's an additional pattern, you'll notice that the guys who end up wearing
the dung are the ones with full time Linux programming jobs, who basically
have no option but to stick around. Do that to every newbie and after a
while we'll have a smoking hole in the ground where Linux used to be.

A simple rule to remember is: when code is bad, criticize the code, not the
coder.

> I think the thing you are missing is that what I am describing is a lot
> like boot camp. Someone with more knowledge and experience than you
> yells at your every mistake, you hate it for a while, and you emerge
> from boot camp a stronger person with more skills and good habits as
> well as a sense of pride.

Thanks, but I'll spend my summer in some other kind of camp ;-) I'm sure it
works for some people, but mutual respect is more what I'm used to and prefer.

> If there was a way to "lead by example" and
> accomplish the same goals in the same time, don't you think someone
> would have figured that out by now?

Somebody did, and as hard as it is for some to fit it into their own model of
the universe, there is somebody leading by example, not running a command
economy but a self-organizing meritocracy. Do we achieve the same goals in
the same time? Sometimes it doesn't seem like it, but because this thing
just keeps crawling relentlessly forward on a thousand fronts, in the end we
accomplish even more than Sun does.

--
Daniel