So what, if the spec says "jump off a cliff", you'd do it?
This isn't relevant to the technical issues at hand; it's just an insult. Exactly what I was trying to criticize Linus for doing. (That was actually the point of my comment.)
Are you all seriously thinking that Linus doesn't know about performance?
No, that's completely unrelated to anything I said.
I'm not familiar with the history of glibc here. I didn't read anything except the single comment from Linus that was linked to. And I'm only addressing the comments he made in that post.
You have not addressed what I actually said, at all.
I'm thoroughtly disgusted with the way I've been treated here, especially the number of downvotes I've gotten. What happened to the hacker news ethic of voting up things you like, but only voting down when someone is rude or malicious? Unbelievably, I'm now actually at negative votes. I guess I ought to take this as a signal that my comment was a disservice to this community, and consider that maybe I'm not wanted here.
By the way, I'm not interested in continuing this thread.
> I'm thoroughtly disgusted with the way I've been treated here, especially the number of downvotes I've gotten.
The first sentence of your post that is being downvoted is okay; it contributes something to the conversation:
> A spec is a contract between programmers and in the long run, it's better (for users and programmers) to follow specs and expect others to follow them, rather than to let others break them willy-nilly and just bend over backwards to accomodate.
I believe your second sentence is the reason you're being downvoted:
> Oh, but I guess since this point requires actual thinking to understand, it's not in the realm of reality...
That sentence is sarcastic, insulting to people's intelligence, and contributes nothing to the conversation. If you lose that attitude, I think your contributions would be better received.
Your comment was a passive-aggressive declation of stupidity in the other party.
Well, that is exactly how I perceived Linus' comment, which is why my comment came across that way.
Clearly I was wrong, but I thought everyone would find it obvious that Linus' reply was pretty much unacceptable (and thus understand the point I was trying to make... which was not a passive-agressive declaration of stupidity in the other party, despite how it came across).
As least in the comment that was linked to, all he does is "yell" (all caps) at the person he's attacking, and although he presents an argument, it doesn't address the things his attackee actually said; I (personally) found it to be thoroughly unsatisfying in an intellectual/technical sense.
Uhm, have you actually read the whole thread? This Andre guy was being an obnoxious rigid pedantic idiot and Linus was trying to help all the other people to just the the damn thing to work. I think behavior like this Andre guy's is not criticized enough in the industry - it's toxic attitudes like that that poison the whole environment, and I applaud Linus for not tolerating bullshit, in no uncertain terms - even in the 'position of authority' he's in.
No, I in fact have not; I just looked at Andre's last comment and Linus' flaming response which did not address his points and was very rude.
You may be right that Andre was being a pedantic, obnoxious, rigid idiot. I have no idea, I didn't read the thread. My only point is that "THE USER IS ALL THAT MATTERS" is not a valid software principle and that rather than communicate anything useful, Linus just yelled at people (in the particular commen that was linked to from HN).
I was baffled as to how you could make a dozen comments in this thread and be so consistently dead wrong, but with this confession it makes sense — you simply have no idea what you're talking about.
Even worse, you aren't interested in getting a clue by reading the damn material.
I never wanted to spend the time reading the 100+ comments in the original thread; while it would be interesting and enjoyable to do so, I have other things that are higher priority right now.
However, I was pissed off by one of Linus' comments (which, taken by itself was pretty ridiculous), and made a comment on HN about it.
My comment was sarcastic in a way that I think was misunderstood and made many people angry. Many insults were hurled my way, and I tried to defend myself, resulting in an ever-worsening spiral. It's pretty much just become a massive shitfest.
I wish people hadn't been so quick to attack myself and my character (yourself included). This kind of thing is definitely contributing to the decline of HN, which is something being discussed lately (as always, I guess). And, yes, I'm contributing to it too by even trying to defend myself, or maybe by defending myself too aggressively.
I can understand if you read the whole 100+ thread and then point out that what I'm talking about is completely unrelated. That's true, but I wasn't talking about the whole discussion; just picking at a bit of unreasonable rudeness on Linus's part that failed to make any intellectually worthwile point. And I stand by that: the individual comment I was picking at (i.e., the one linked from this HN post) was pretty ridiculous.
Ah... thanks for correcting me, and I must say, I'm very surprised to find that I was wrong about this.
EDIT: Well, on second thought, notice that in both cases, although pg stated the he thought downvotes should be used to express disagreement, more upvotes were given to other commentors that though downvotes should only be used to boo rudeness (which is my personal opinion, as well). So I think maybe there is a division in the community on how this is supposed to be done.
Actually, the experience I was just whining about is case in point for why some people think downvotes should only be used to boo rudeness. I think a lot of people downvoted me just because there was a response to me that was strongly worded, even though it was (in my opinion) not really even relevant.
I intentionally parodied Linus in my comment about "ignoring reality" to demonstrate how one should not act, but I think some people missed that that was a parody. If you're talking about something else, please let me know, because I have not been "arguably malicious," and I'd be surprised if you can find an instance where I'd been rude (except perhaps in defense against someone else's rudeness.. if you're talking about stuff in my past history).
This isn't relevant to the technical issues at hand; it's just an insult. Exactly what I was trying to criticize Linus for doing. (That was actually the point of my comment.)
Are you all seriously thinking that Linus doesn't know about performance?
No, that's completely unrelated to anything I said.
I'm not familiar with the history of glibc here. I didn't read anything except the single comment from Linus that was linked to. And I'm only addressing the comments he made in that post.
You have not addressed what I actually said, at all.
I'm thoroughtly disgusted with the way I've been treated here, especially the number of downvotes I've gotten. What happened to the hacker news ethic of voting up things you like, but only voting down when someone is rude or malicious? Unbelievably, I'm now actually at negative votes. I guess I ought to take this as a signal that my comment was a disservice to this community, and consider that maybe I'm not wanted here.
By the way, I'm not interested in continuing this thread.