[michaelt]

> however in contexts where there are objective criteria of quality elitism is just being a professional good at his job.

Imagine I look at the Linux kernel source code and I feel it's lacking in automated integration tests, and that C is a poor choice of language for security-critical code.

Am I a competent professional, applying objective quality criteria?

Or am I an arrogant dilettante, to imagine I know better than some of the most influential living programmers?

[nathias]

It depends on you and the context, are you actually working on Linux kernel and have worked on a lot of similar type projects?

Objectivity does not imply that it's easy to discern adequate criteria or that they are easy to know or that there is a consensus about them, just that it isn't purely subjective, and code isn't.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Tell Linus his code sucks.

That should end well.

[thefaux]

Linus has a terrible attitude.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

That may be so (I think so, myself), but there's no arguing with his prowess.

He was annoyed at his options for configuration management, so he took a couple of weeks off, and wrote Git[0].

Now, that kind of skill doesn't come in a Cracker Jack box...

[0] https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/blog/10-years-of-git-an...