I talk a lot about how you can’t be a great developer without great communication skills, but I don’t think people grok how _directly_ your communication skills are reflected in your codebase. Let me give you an example.
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Torvalds has acknowledged his communication issues and is seeking help. There are many stories about it, eg.https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/after-years-of-abusive-e-mails-the-creator-of-linux-steps-aside …
The thing is - just because someone has been an asshole on the Internet doesn't automatically discredit the intelligent things they have said.
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Yes it does. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ See also: RMS, aka the whole reason the free software movement remains marginalized even among engineers
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There are many other folks saying things with equal or more insight on the same topics, who AREN’T assholes. Being an asshole is like sending a cover letter with the wrong company’s name when applying for a job. Your resume can be discarded at that point, no matter what’s on it.
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Not because the people doing the screening are mean or arbitrary, but because it indicates a lack of care that will carry over into your work. Similarly, being an asshole indicates a deficit that compromises all of your thought processes, to some degree.
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So, I don’t put credence on anything rms or esr or linus say - nor anything their apologists say - unless I also hear it explained well by someone who isn’t an asshole. That’s just a thing for you to know about how it looks when you quote assholes.
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RMS has a great quote about how Conway’s law works, but I don’t use it anymore in my presentations, because I found equally smart comparisons made by better people. The ones I found avoid the “ew, RMS” reaction that many people have, which make them quite simply more convincing.
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Ok, I understand a lot better now. You're totally right. I'm sad, though, because "on the Internet nobody can hear you being subtle" is a great way of expressing that idea. And I feel like saying it unattributed may seem like I'm passing it off as my own.
End of conversation
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