[V_Terranova_Jr]

There's more to the Linus-style jerk phenomenon than just telling entitled people to piss off (I would be reluctant to call that being a jerk if that's all it was). See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33058906 for an example thread and associated comments. If you're just ranting or passing off subjective POVs as truth and obvious and those disagreeing with you as doing so out of incompetence or malfeasance, that isn't being direct, honest, or straight to the point. It's being a dick.

I've seen brilliant colleagues for whom I have the utmost technical admiration completely fail to improve bad designs implemented by others, because the brilliant person was so dickish about how they communicated to others.

[pdimitar]

I don't see anything offensive in this:

> And the reality is that there are no absolute guarantees. Ever. The "Rust is safe" is not some kind of absolute guarantee of code safety. Never has been. Anybody who believes that should probably re-take their kindergarten year, and stop believing in the Easter bunny and Santa Claus.

It's an exaggeration. Means that he disagrees with people who blindly repeat something that, on the level Linus operates, is objectively not true.

I have no context on the broader discussion but it seems both sides haven't equalized the plane on which they discuss. In that context I'll agree Linus was a dick.

But, consider what was said upthread: many high-profile open source contributors hear the same crap every day. No matter how gracious you start off, you'll start rolling your eyes and ultimately resort to sarcasm. And some go even further: start insulting. Ask anyone who works in retail.

So again, to me Linus' statement basically uses an exaggeration to illustrate a point: "Stop repeating something as if it's unequivocally true. It's true only in your context (userland application development). It's not true in kernel context."

That people get offended by that says more about them than about Linus.

Finally, I'll agree it can and should be toned down. Not disputing that. But it's also not so difficult to extract out the true point in such a rant and move on.

[V_Terranova_Jr]

We probably won't get much further going back and forth on this. For what it's worth, you seem very reasonable, I've appreciated your comments for a long time, and I'm sure we'd get along fine if we were to work together.

I think you could let Linus off the hook by trying to find the kernel of truth as you suggest, and that seems to be the way key Rust team members work. There's been plenty of needless rancor in HN comments about Rust and you can see people like @pcwalton just not engage with the emotional content while still continuing to engage with the technical points. I'm personally impressed by this, but wouldn't be surprised if it contributed to the burnout.

Should we all aspire to be like that? Doing so seems like the human communication equivalent of Postel's Robustness Principle, which sounds great but in practice leads to shitty implementations getting away with being shitty because of the "robustness" on the other side. Maybe the better play here, especially with asynchronous communication, is to expect people come back to their message draft when they are not so pissed/emotionally triggered and then snip out tangential emotional crap. Especially the ragey condescending stuff.

[pdimitar]

> I'm personally impressed by this, but wouldn't be surprised if it contributed to the burnout.

I think that people who contribute to languages are of a certain psychological type. They are generous, nice, kind, they want to contribute and are not interested in the social and people drama. They are a special breed of people whom I admire.

At the same time, and as you point out, that makes them more vulnerable to burnout because the social / people drama always creeps in, and they seem less well equipped to deal with it (though I've known of very impressive exceptions).

Personally I found out that bottling up negative emotions is futile; they inevitably erupt and the longer you have bottled them up, the more violent the explosion and the worse the ramifications for your mental health.

That's my main reason for not mincing words anymore. I prioritize my mental health. I am OK if that means I part ways with people and companies. I was a victim of FOMO for most of my conscious life; I want to live my remaining years being more at peace.

> Maybe the better play here, especially with asynchronous communication, is to expect people come back to their message draft when they are not so pissed/emotionally triggered and then snip out tangential emotional crap.

Obviously that's best but I can bet each and every one of us has been in a situation where they knew they had to do that and still didn't. :D Myself included, not proud of some of my comments on HN during Corona time...

But expecting most people to be like that? Super tall order, turns out. :(

--

> We probably won't get much further going back and forth on this.

Likely not, but I am grateful that you entertained it as much as you did. :)

> For what it's worth, you seem very reasonable, I've appreciated your comments for a long time, and I'm sure we'd get along fine if we were to work together.

That's an extremely surprising and very warm message that I couldn't predict if I lived for 1000 years. Thank you! Still very surprised and your message is definitely the highlight of my day now.

[pdimitar]

And, talking about condescending / emotionally triggered, apparently I attracted an interesting reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39033023