from Hacker News

Interview: Linus Torvalds – I don't read code any more

by hiperlink on 11/14/12, 5:22 AM with 69 comments

  • by wisty on 11/14/12, 6:21 AM

    Deceptive title.

    tl;dr:

    Linus doesn't read kernel patches anymore, because subsytem maintainers do and just send him a summary. He's been working with them for about 10 years, so he trusts them. Most of his work on the kernel is sorting out arguments, and making sure things go to the right person.

  • by zanny on 11/14/12, 8:55 AM

    I want to pull out a quote I really like:

    > Now people are taking adding a USB device for granted, but realistically that did not use to be the case. That whole being able to hotplug devices, we've had all these fundamental infrastructure changes that we've had to keep up with.

    Did anyone else notice this? In the last ~5 years, half a decade, we went from every major OS crashing on hot swaps or usb plugins or not recognizing devices or other crippling issues on hot swapping almost any hardware, to being able to swap out everything including memory and CPUs without major kernel panics on most mature platforms.

    That is really amazing tech, and in this era of touch phones and web apps, we are still having huge leaps at the lowest levels of usability.

  • by dkroy on 11/14/12, 7:20 AM

    Very very clever title, this is an example of context giving a different meaning. He still reads code, just not from his trusted network of kernel developers since he has worked with them so long, and it has already gone through a few layers of people. He also doesn't want to shoot down all of their hard work.

  • by utefan001 on 11/14/12, 2:13 PM

    "When I was twenty I liked doing device drivers. If I never have to do a single device driver in my life again, I will be happy. Some kind of headaches I can do without." Linus Torvalds

  • by wyclif on 11/14/12, 6:18 AM

    Oh, how I wish h-online would get that spreading an interview like this over four pages, just so they can grab more page impressions for the ads, isn't cool.

  • by reedlaw on 11/14/12, 2:03 PM

    If Linus doesn't read code (I know that's an exaggeration--he has trusted subordinates who do) and there are ~1000 people contributing code changes, I'm curious about who actually ensures that no one sneaks in a backdoor to the kernel. I mean if somehow something bad like that got passed on through the hierarchy all the way past Linus, would Distros just pass it on to users, or are there some other safeguards in place?

  • by shadyabhi on 11/14/12, 7:12 AM

    On a different node, I am disappointed that kernel developers haven't been able to solve this bug https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48721 since last 2 months. I am an avid linux fan but this drives me crazy.

  • by 16s on 11/14/12, 4:27 PM

    "Google has worked more on the kernel side, they've done their own filesystems."

    What custom filesystem is he referring to? Does anyone know?

  • by fotoflo on 11/14/12, 6:25 PM

    super interesting. thanks.

  • by bravoyankee on 11/14/12, 2:02 PM

    If I was Linus I'd be miffed about the title and the prominence of the quote. It's badly taken out of context and it's a betrayal of trust.

    I felt kind of ripped off too when I got to that part. Again, it betrays the trust of Linus, who gave his time to do the interview, and the reader, who gave of their time to read it.

  • by Intermediate on 11/14/12, 6:02 AM

    I don't read interviews with Linus Torvalds anymore. He's a harsh and selfish person and seems like his number one hobby is not software development, but swearing at people.