Linus Torvalds has come out strong against proposed support for RISC-V big endian capabilities within the Linux kernel.
In response to a mailing list comment whether RISC-V big endian "BE" patches being worked on would be able to make it for this current Linux kernel cycle. Linus Torvalds initially wrote:
"Oh Christ. Is somebody seriously working on BE support in 2025?
WHY?
Seriously, that sounds like just stupid. Is there some actual real reason for this, or is it more of the "RISC-V is used in academic design classes and so people just want to do endianness for academic reasons"?
Because I'd be more than happy to just draw a line in the sand and say "New endianness problems are somebody ELSES problem", and tell people to stop being silly.
Let's not complicate things for no good reason. And there is NO reason to add new endianness.
RISC-V is enough of a mess with the millions of silly configuration issues already. Don't make it even worse.
Tell people to just talk to their therapists instead. That's much more productive."
I think it is very possible to speak plainly and even rather assertively without actually devolving into personal attacks and abusive tones, and I don't think it's too much to ask. I would even suggest that it would be better for everyone if we could all just be a little bit nicer.
Example from Linus:
This code is GARBAGE.
A better way to get the same point across:
This code does not make any sense to me.
I agree with that
I agree, personal attacks are bad
But here is the problem. Your two versions are not the same. The problem is not that Linus does not understand the code. The issue is that he does.
I believe strongly that high performance culture requires that it be absolutely ok to talk about the quality of an idea or about the work and that this NOT be seen as attacking the person.
“You are an idiot” is not ok. “This code is garbage” has to be (at least from the guy whose job it is to determine code quality). You can say “this code is very low quality” or “this code is totally unacceptable” if you like.
Co-pilots will allow pilots crash planes out of respect. Engineers allow bad designs to crash planes too. Neither of these are preferable to speaking openly and plainly, at least not in my view.
Lives absolutely depend on the Linux kernel. It is ridiculous to say they do not. What do we value more, comfort or safety?
Please be nice. Please also say exactly what you mean. At work at least. Suffering fools gladly is a better strategy at play and at home.
I think it depends on the definition of "understand" in this context. In my example I used the words "does not make sense", but I did not quantify what that meant.
It could be interpreted as making sense in the context of doing things in a way that's acceptable to him.
If that doesn't "make sense" to you either, feel free to insert whatever other wording gets your point across, but I think you understand what I'm trying to say, which is that I think there is still room to be much nicer than Linus currently is, without losing the intended effect, but at the same time also not angering near as many people for (IMO) unnecessary reasons.
That is my point exactly. Thank you for illustrating my point.
If you can be nice while also being direct, please do. We agree on being nice. We disagree on the value of speaking less plainly. When these two goals collide, speaking plainly has to prevail.