7 Linus Torvalds Quotes on Development

Linus Torvalds quotes on development

16. Portability is for people who cannot write new programs.

22. In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people.

31. 'Regression testing'? What's that? If it compiles, it is good, if it boots up it is perfect.

35. 2.6.<odd>: still a stable kernel, but accept bigger changes leading up to it (timeframe: a month or two). 2.<odd>.x: aim for big changes that may destabilize the kernel for several releases (timeframe: a year or two) <odd>.x.x: Linus went crazy, broke absolutely _everything_, and rewrote the kernel to be a microkernel using a special message-passing version of Visual Basic. (timeframe: 'we expect that he will be released from the mental institution in a decade or two').

52. ...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.

62. I think Leopard is a much better system [than Windows Vista] ... but OS X in some ways is actually worse than Windows to program for. Their file system is complete and utter crap, which is scary.

64. Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say 'hey, that _almost_ works for me', and they'll get involved in the project.