1. What's in practice conflicts with what the standard prescribes
2. The reason it conflicts is because the standard is misguided and everyone knows that; for reliable code-generation you have to take the approach in the kernel
3. He disagrees with the rationale for the change, and wants a better reason for it
(I think most of the swearing was about that)
Regardless, if standards should be questioned, then surely Linus also should be questioned. I think a better rule would be: Appealing to the standard is sufficient reason for a change, unless a good argument can be made that the standard is BS.
By my count there is one f*cking, one bullshit, one shit and one arse, hardly "so much swearing". I think anyone complaining about that is way to sensitive.
Yes, yes, that's Linus. Most of us have learned to get past that.
Have we really? The post is over 100+ points right now. People seem to LIKE this swearing thing Linus does.
I don't think its healthy for the general programming community. The tone that was written here is certainly not acceptable behavior on YCombinator in general. But we put up with Linus because... well... Linus is an elevated programmer and we all respect him. For better or for worse.
Also don't forget to contrast the occasional (about ~1/month) rant with the thousands of emails where he's level headed and polite.