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...even if the Hurd didn't depend on Linux code (and as far as I know, it does, but since I think they have their design heads firmly up their *sses anyway with that whole microkernel thing, I've never felt it was worth my time even looking at their code), I don't believe a religiously motivated development community can ever generate as good code except by pure chance.

Linus Torvalds#52

DevelopmentQualityIdeology

About this quote

What does it mean?
He argues that religious or ideological motivation in development rarely yields quality code.
In plain terms
Ideological passion doesn't guarantee good software.
What can you take from it?
Pragmatism beats ideology in engineering.

Where it applies

  • open source projects
  • team culture
  • technical decisions

Putting it to work

  • focus on code quality
  • avoid ideological debates

Questions to consider

  • Does ideology help or hurt engineering?
  • What motivates good code?

Another view

Passion can sometimes drive innovation.

More from Linus Torvalds

  1. I claim that Mach people (and apparently FreeBSD) are incompetent idiots.

    Permalink to quote #51
  2. I'm a huge believer in evolution (not in the sense that 'it happened' - anybody who doesn't believe that is either uninformed or crazy, but in the sense 'the p…

    Permalink to quote #53
  3. EFI is this other Intel brain-damage (the first one being ACPI).

    Permalink to quote #50

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