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The Linux distillery The wit and wisdom of Linus Torvalds
The Linux distillery The wit and wisdom of Linus Torvalds | The wit and wisdom of Linus Torvalds |
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| The Linux distillery - The Linux user and switcher blog | |
| by David M Williams | |
| Tuesday, 18 November 2008 | |
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Page 2 of 2 On software development, in terms of passion Linus demonstrates a sound hands-on approach. He likes to see code. He likes to see good, well-written, well-structured code. He even likes to see people program because they enjoy it. And most definitely he wants to promote open source.Featured Whitepaper
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“Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.” “Shareware tends to combine the worst of commercial software with the worst of free software.” On software development, in terms of striving for quality, Linus emphasises the need for well-written and well-documented code. “You know you’re brilliant, but maybe you’d like to understand what you did two weeks from now” (referring to maintaining a good coding stlye.) “I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.” Finally, on software development again, but in terms of what Linus doesn’t like, you can be sure there is no ambiguity relating to his preferred desktop environment: “I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE. This ‘users are idiots, and are confused by functionality’ mentality of GNOME is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don’t use GNOME because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn’t do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE.” “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.” Do you have a personal favourite Linus quote of your own to share? For me, Linus embodies all that’s good in computer science and software development. He’s excited about software. His quotes show a clear and keen bias towards free and open source software, but yet Linus is a pragmatist too. He’ll use the right tool for the job. He ponders about what he does and does not like within technology. |
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