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Comment by X-Istence | Hacker News Reader

People keep bringing up Linus' C++ in git rant, and I don't understand why it is used as an example, as it contains no real substantive reasons as to why to dislike it.

There is no real argument made one way or another. If we look at the linked article there are real arguments as to why people don't like C++. Templates, multiple inheritance, and a whole other range of stuff. All Linus is yelling is "I hate C++, I hate STL, them Boost guys aren't worth anything" with absolutely no reasoning what so ever.

As a project leader it is okay for him to disagree about using C++ within his source code base, and within context it is a perfectly valid email, but to use as an example as to why C++ is bad, it is a very bad email to quote.

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From my impressions of how he conducts himself, Linus is usually yelling with no reasoning what so ever.

He explained it more than once: Nuances are lost in the internet on one hand, and (apparently) Finnish culture is very in-your-face with everything made more extreme for dramatic effect.

You may not like it, but it is extremely effective, and Linus _is_ herding thousands of developers, he has to be effective.

Benevolent dictator

i happen to think that's the ideal government. it requires a dictator with the right qualities, and they are rare. Thus, what is possibly the 2nd best government type: democracy.

The problem, of course, is that what is considered "benevolent" is entirely up to the dictator to decide. That alone makes it a non-ideal government type.

No, it is up to the coherent extrapolated volition[1] of the dictator's people. (At least, it seems like a good guess.) What makes a government less than ideal is its failure to apply that volition. The question then is how hard a given type of governance is likely to fail.

Now I agree that for a host of reasons (like taking one's own volition for the country's CEV), dictatorships do not rank high.

[1]: http://singinst.org/upload/CEV.html

The point of a dictatorship is that the people don't have a say. The dictator does what he wants and portrays himself as benevolent through state-run media.

Like at Futarchy for an alterative model. (Though you could classify it as democracy.)

Nuances are lost on the internet? Because I've seen videos of him giving talks, and he acts pretty much the same way. What nuances are being lost?

Why do we excuse bad behavior from people?

Absolutely, and it works well for him. In this case the yelling is being held up as an example of why not to use C++ which does NOT work as a valid argument.

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