The Business Insider recently published an interview with Linus Torvalds, the father and namesake of Linux (as if anyone here didn't already know this), in which he discusses various topics of interest. The interview offers a concise summary of what Linus had to say:
- He's quite happy with how far Linux has come. "I think programming is fun, and the community around the kernel is great, but a project has to be relevant too."
- The patent system is fundamentally flawed. "There are tons of honest people who are trying their best to do what they really think is right, and not all patents are crap. But the systemic incentives are just out of whack, both on the patent application/granting side and on the litigation side."
- No regrets over making Linux open source. "Me trying to make a business around Linux would have been a total disaster. It would have made it impossible to get the kind of community around Linux that we have, and that was so instrumental in making Linux what it is today."
- Torvalds family gear is largely Linux-based. "We're a Linux household, surprise surprise. The computers I have may have originally come with Windows or OS X pre-installed, but for some odd reason they all run Linux in the end."
- Computer programming is not for everyone. "I think it's reasonably specialized, and nobody really expects most people to have to do it. It's not like knowing how to read and write and do basic math."
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Another Interview with Linus (yes, that Linus)
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday June 11 2014, @11:28AM
"Computer programming is not for everyone. [..] It's not like knowing how to read and write and do basic math."
Hint, hint code dot org etc..
Some people just don't see through problems and structure them properly. If it works => it's right or If it's right => it works.. It can make a difference of obscuring a bug that will bite you in the feature or having it ironed out right away.
In other news BSD [freebsd.org] is [openbsd.org] the [netbsd.org] shit [dragonflybsd.org]. ;-)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RaffArundel on Wednesday June 11 2014, @02:13PM
Okay, but you are just saying people should be taught Problem Solving skills (which I completely agree, and we don't do enough of) not that they should learn templates in C++, simple control structures, design patterns, etc. People have been solving problems for a very very very long time without computers, so programming isn't the only way to teach those skills.
I do believe that basic computer literacy, including privacy and security, is almost as fundamental as literacy and math in developed nations. However, I agree that programming certainly isn't for everyone (including some CS grads I've had to deal with) and "structured" problem solving isn't the only solution.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 12 2014, @02:01AM
I think people should be taught simple things like converting one text file table to another etc. And interacting with a computer ie typing in forms and how storage works. And as you say privacy and security. However telling people the truth about governments may not be allowed in school..
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday June 11 2014, @07:52PM
Actually, it was an article at El Reg [theregister.co.uk] about Linus's view on that which point me in the direction of this article.
Linus is right, of course. Coding is not for everyone. I have known several people who have tried to learn it and failed. Coding is not for the faint of heart or those intellectually don't have the ability. There are some very smart people who just can't do it well. My dad, the smartest person I know, is one of them. But then his sister has told me that I'm the smartest person she knows, so maybe I'm completely wrong.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 12 2014, @02:04AM
Discipline and paying attention to details usually get you far in programming. Regarding your capabilities in general. Test them, you might be surprised! ;)
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday June 12 2014, @03:57AM
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 12 2014, @12:17PM
I thought about that called intelligence in general terms. People with lot's of it may underestimate their own capability.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday June 11 2014, @11:44AM
From personal experience you can have fun with the opposition to the "Computer programming is not for everyone." people by doing a search and replace on programming with all kinds of human experiences and then asking if that's true too. They get super flustered. I'm not claiming trolling is a nice social interaction, but making the point that their whole position is based on never questioning their base assumption because they typically have no justification that isn't self referential, and they don't really have a specific argument other than bland cliches that can apply to anything.
"Playing DnD"
"Making homemade fireworks"
"Knitting"
"Raising Livestock"
"Skeet Shooting"
"Play the flute"
"Middle Management"
I'd never get in the way of someone who wants to code or has an aptitude for it, I'd help out, but its certainly not a universal life skill, or at least one to aspire to, like the ability to read.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 11 2014, @01:36PM
Reading, writing, arithmetic, calculus, so on so forth, aren't for everyone either, but they get forced on people anyway.
Because, the benefits of having the supermajority of the population knowing this shit.
Having everybody get programming at least on a basic level would probably have similar benefits, at least in the sense that people knowing h
(Score: 3, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Wednesday June 11 2014, @01:53PM
reading, writing and calculus are the basic requirements for being a functional human in our modern society.
Computers are the most amazing invention humans have ever devised, it would seem prudent to add it to the list.
Genrally, ff you cannot see how being educated benefits you, then perhaps you are missing the point?
The "supermajority" does indeed want the "people" to know enough to do the menial jobs that makes them money.
But guess what? You can always raise your profile by educating yourself beyond their requirements....
On the article, Linus has a point. It might be possible to teach programming to everyone, but not everyone "gets it"...
(Score: 2) by skullz on Wednesday June 11 2014, @02:20PM
"Middle Management" [is not for everyone]
I don't think anyone on this site would argue with you on this one. It takes a special kind of person to continually move deadlines and scream about TPS reports.
(Score: 2) by velex on Wednesday June 11 2014, @03:40PM
I like this. I'd like to add babysitting to the list.
Would you hire a teenage boy as a babysitter? Would you bring your child to a day care with an all-male staff?
The gender dynamics almost balance out (but not quite) with what code.org and the Ada Initiative are up to.
(Score: 2) by velex on Wednesday June 11 2014, @03:43PM
(Admittedly, a teenage boy as a baby sitter is a bit audacious unlike the idea of a woman programmer. I'd pick babysitter, though, because the thing it has in common with the women in programming problem are the gender stereotypes that women and some men adhere to.)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by gman003 on Wednesday June 11 2014, @01:59PM
Most people don't need to know how to make isopropyl bromide. We don't teach most people how to, but we do teach the fundamental theories of chemistry.
Likewise, most people don't need to know how to develop an application. We shouldn't teach them to, but we should teach them how computers and programs work.
Now, we do teach chemistry by walking students through some very basic (and safe) reactions, so perhaps teaching some very rudimentary programming might be worthwhile. But it should be focused on "this is how computers work", not "this is how to make a program". Honestly the LOGO class I took in third grade was probably enough of that for most people.
(Score: 2) by skullz on Wednesday June 11 2014, @02:31PM
Check out Google's Blocky:
https://code.google.com/p/blockly/?redir=1 [google.com]
Graphical programming using HTML5 magic. That would be enough to get the bare bare basics of loops and conditions. Other than that they would have to start talking about bits (drives, memory, instruction sets, network signals) because any programming is just too abstract to understand how a computer works.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday June 11 2014, @07:58PM
This sounds vaguely like something Sun Microsystems tried in the late 1990's with Java Studio v.1.0. I have a copy of it around somewhere although it won't run in a modern VM. I found it to be a clever way to create simple web applets but that's about it.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday June 11 2014, @02:37PM
Way back in the 80s when I was in public school, they taught us programming in 7th grade. They had a computer lab with Apple ][ computers, and we had to learn Apple BASIC and write some simple graphics programs. This was a general class that all kids had to take, and they seemed to handle it reasonably well.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday June 11 2014, @02:44PM
You have to be realistic about the modern educational system. Want all you want, what you'll actually get is they'll remove some math classes to add some Scantron tests in 2016 like
1) In the excel 2007 toolbar, the "data" section is to the right of the "formula" section
A) True
B) False
and this will be sold as "preparing our youth of the 2010s for the high tech STEM jobs of the 2030s" and anyone opposed to what they're doing is a luddite or perhaps racist or is somehow ignorant that computers are important. And rising test scores on tests like this will be proof we have a successful school system.
If you know with certainty they're going to screw it up more in the future than they screwed it up in the past, then doing nothing is the wisest choice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by theluggage on Wednesday June 11 2014, @04:23PM
So? I think that's a pretty good attempt by the education system to satisfy the employers who, in 2006, were complaining that they couldn't find school leavers with 10 years experience in Excel 2007 :-)
Actually, here in Old Blightey that has 'been and gone'. We had a high school subject that the department of redundancy department named "Information & Computer Technology (ICT)" that basically consisted of the students showing their teacher how to do paste the result of the annual cat & dog survey from Excel into Powerpoint. It has recently been put out of its misery. Progress at last!
The thing to remember, though, is that if you take the utilitarian attitude and say 'Not everybody needs to learn to code' you'll soon run in to 'Not everybody needs to learn history', 'Not everybody needs to have read a Shakespeare play' and, more specifically, 'not everybody needs to know the difference between an irrational number and a rational number or solve a quadratic equation by factorisation'. The Math curriculum still has a gaping hole when it comes to computer science, and a spot of programming could make a fun and effective pre-algebra topic, or spreadsheets could be used for modelling (rather than the aforementioned cat and dog survey). The main thing is to avoid the professors of hard sums screwing it by insisting that kids will be damaged for life if they are taught anything other than functional programming concepts in Haskell (or whatever paradigm and language was trending at the time).
NB: I did RTFA, and Linus was clearly saying that coding shouldn't be forced on everybody, not that it shouldn't be available. Of course, that's the problem - we have too many people who can't get promoted from Junior Assistant Bottlewasher to Sub-Assistant under-Chief Bottlewasher because they flunked quadratic equations. It would be a pity to do the same with programming.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday June 11 2014, @05:05PM
"we have too many people who can't get promoted from Junior Assistant Bottlewasher to Sub-Assistant under-Chief Bottlewasher because they flunked quadratic equations"
That's a problem on this side of the pond now, we produce (at great .edu and bank profit) way too many vocational degreed grads so our bartenders and waitresses and receptionists and sales droids all have a degree in early childhood education or whatever else. That means we aren't far away at all from the restaurant dishwasher not being promotable to sous chef because he flunked out of the masters program for .edu due to inability to use gnu R successfully, and the previous sous chef had a doctorate in English Lit so he's just unqualified. They'll hire from the outside, maybe get a PhD in history to be their sous chef. Screwed up, isn't it?
Just a few generations ago, if you actually got a doctorate, you could probably have an academic career. Now your best hope of a career is asking if the customer wants fries with that.
Which leads to even more disillusionment about vocational training, if the kids going to end up unemployed or profoundly underemployed, it doesn't really matter vocationally if they can program or not. Never seen a walmart cashier write a lambda function while paying for my toilet paper, and the unemployed kids playing xbox certainly don't need it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 12 2014, @10:15AM
Eh, but if they know programming, maybe they'd be more likely to gravitate to playing games on an uncrippled computer and maybe even write a game?
(Score: 1) by meisterister on Wednesday June 11 2014, @05:33PM
It's not even really necessary to teach programming so much as it is the ideas behind programming. It would be invaluable to teach students how to work though logical rules, abstractions, and lists of steps. Just knowing how to do that alone gives students a massive advantage. For example, you could teach students how, specifically, to raise values to every power in a certain range (ie. "To square, you do x*x, to cube you do x*x*x..."), or you could tell them to multiply x by itself the number of times listed in the exponent. There are actually schools (or a certain university) that teach the first way.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 11 2014, @03:42PM
Has Linus Torvalds ever written an in-depth personal opinion/critique/article/essay on systemd?
I note that Richard Stallman explores and publishes his feelings on important watershed issues, and I was thinking that 'systemd' seems to be one of these issues.
I would have expected the BDFL of Linux to publish his exact thoughts and feelings on this matter. I find it very strange how 'systemd' was not mentioned in the list of topics covered by Linus in the summary.
With the above in mind, if I was giving advice to potential new Linux users, I would tell them this:
"... DO NOT USE any flavour of Linux which uses the 'systemd' init system until you personally see in-depth manifestos made by these key people: Lennart Poettering, Kay Sievers, Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman. An "in-depth manifesto" means a complete analysis and coverage of the subject from every possible perspective _AND_ all four of those people have opened their mouths and made honest replies to all questions by userland at public forum threads"
Until the above issues are fully exhausted, 'systemd' should be viewed as nothing more than the creation of an aloof elitist arrogant mind licking the ass of some oligarchy.
(Score: 1) by bart9h on Wednesday June 11 2014, @07:12PM
> DO NOT USE any flavour of Linux which uses the 'systemd' init system
Doesn't that leave you with a small pool to choose from?
Which ones don't use systemd nor upstart?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 11 2014, @08:03PM
Which distros are still commited to NOT using systemd? - Discussion thread, Feb 2014 [reddit.com]
List of every distro that does not ship systemd [distrowatch.com]
(Score: 2) by mendax on Wednesday June 11 2014, @08:00PM
I suspect that most Linux users, myself included, could care less about systemd. They're far more interested in their desktop Linux working in such a way so that they can get their work done.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday June 11 2014, @08:05PM
wait. what?
Are you saying that any setup running systemd is inherently compromised? If so can you elaborate on that.