Linus really does write beautifully. Love his style, concise, easily readable, frank, honest with nice human touches.
Much kinder than past Linus writings. I loved it too. "Double ungood" works at least as good as the swearing.
- is Linus hinting that he is censoring himself, and if he wasn't, what expression would he have used instead?
- for what kind of incident does he reserve the attribute "double plus ungood"? Probably if such a bug would get into the production kernel?
My first guess would be something that includes the word "fuck"... but, on second thought, this isn't Nvidia -- so perhaps not.
Anyway, “double ungood” would not be a valid Newspeak construction. The base is “good” and “ungood” is the negation; intensification would be “plusungood” and further intensification “doubleplusungood”.
Don't need to swear, but he could have written "very bad" or something like that.
++ungood
++!good
--
(+10 Internet points if you get the reference(s))
typedef double winston;
winston smith(int good) { return (double)+!good; }