Re: Coding style - a non-issue

Victor Yodaiken
2001-12-04T00:12:12Z

On Mon, Dec 03, 2001 at 01:55:08AM +0100, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> I'm sure Linus does have quite considerable talent for design, but I haven't
> seen him execise it much. Mostly he acts as a kind of goodness daemon,
> sitting in his little pinhole and letting what he considers 'good' stuff pass
> into the box. There's no doubt about it, it's different from the way you
> like to develop, you and me both. Equally clearly, it works pretty well.

This is a good explanation of why Linux may fail as a project, but it is
pure fantasy as to how it has so far succeded as a project.

The tiny part of system I wrote directly and the larger part that
I got to see up close involved a great deal of design, old fashioned
careful engineering, and even aesthetic principles of what wasgood
design.

Don't drink the cool aid. Go back and look in the kernel archives and
you will see extensive design discussions among all the core developers.
Linus has a point about the development of Linux not being in
accord with some master plan (at least not one anyone admits to) , but
that's about as far as it goes.