Linus is hellbent on not working with "substandard programmers" and chooses his tools accordingly. Bad programmers are really counterproductive and he's damn brilliant for weeding them out so aggressively.
In his "I'm a bastard" post to the linux kernel thread in 2000, he lambasted people arguing for a kernel debugger. His argument, clear as day, says he doesn't want to work with people who depend on the debugger , he wants people to understand the code as a whole.
"Oh. And sure, when things crash and you fsck, and you didn't even get a clue about what went wrong, you get frustrated. Tough. There are two kinds of reactions to that: you start being careful, or you start whining about a kernel debugger.
Quite frankly, I'd rather weed out the people who don't start being careful early, rather than late. That sounds callous, and by God, it is callous. But it's not the kind of "if you can't stand the heat, get out the the kitchen" kind of remark that some people take it for. No, it's something much more deeper: I'd rather not work with people who aren't careful. It's Darwinism in software development."
Here, 7 years later, he applies much the same argument to C++:
"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. Quite frankly, even if
the choice of C were to do nothing but keep the C++ programmers out,
that in itself would be a huge reason to use C."
"And limiting your project to C means that people
don't screw that up, and also means that you get a lot of programmers that
do actually understand low-level issues and don't screw things up with any
idiotic "object model" crap."
Call him a prick, call him selfish, call him egotistical, the bottom line is he's in charge of a product that is much bigger, more complicated, diverse, mature, and successful than the majority on the planet. Smart hackers will get past their emotion and understand his principles are sound, proven, and successful.
It was also a uniquely useless comment he responded to. Imagine the alternate universe where Linus responds, "you're right! Git hackers, commence the rewrite!"
In a job interview, statements like Dmitry's are what I'd call a "leading indicator". NO HIRE.
In his "I'm a bastard" post to the linux kernel thread in 2000, he lambasted people arguing for a kernel debugger. His argument, clear as day, says he doesn't want to work with people who depend on the debugger , he wants people to understand the code as a whole.
"Oh. And sure, when things crash and you fsck, and you didn't even get a clue about what went wrong, you get frustrated. Tough. There are two kinds of reactions to that: you start being careful, or you start whining about a kernel debugger.
Quite frankly, I'd rather weed out the people who don't start being careful early, rather than late. That sounds callous, and by God, it is callous. But it's not the kind of "if you can't stand the heat, get out the the kitchen" kind of remark that some people take it for. No, it's something much more deeper: I'd rather not work with people who aren't careful. It's Darwinism in software development."
Here, 7 years later, he applies much the same argument to C++:
"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. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do nothing but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C."
"And limiting your project to C means that people don't screw that up, and also means that you get a lot of programmers that do actually understand low-level issues and don't screw things up with any idiotic "object model" crap."
Call him a prick, call him selfish, call him egotistical, the bottom line is he's in charge of a product that is much bigger, more complicated, diverse, mature, and successful than the majority on the planet. Smart hackers will get past their emotion and understand his principles are sound, proven, and successful.