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Comment by valleyer | Hacker News Reader

It’s not as black and white as you make it out to be. On one end of the spectrum, we have the inane “compliment sandwich”. On the other, we have Linus saying “your code is shit”. In the middle, we have professional yet effective criticism. Something like, “Sorry, we’re not going to take this code — it’s too half-baked and exposes some serious security vulnerabilities.”

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Even "your code is shit" is direct, but directed at the code, not the person. He seems to sometimes take it even farther and call people stupid, which just seems wrong to me. "This code is shit" seems like it'd be even better, as it takes even more of the 'you' out of it.

It's technically different but in practice people react pretty much same way when you tell them they did something stupid and when you tell them they are stupid if it was propmpted by them doing someting stupid.

I disagree - saying "that was a stupid thing to do" is very different to saying "you are stupid for doing that" and most people will notice that.

And yet your halfway comment still contains an insult - 'half-baked'.

I was using the 'compliment sandwich' as a shorthand for reviewing all the commentary to make sure it's pleasant or polite. That stuff does take effort and time, particularly if you aren't intimately familiar with the other party and have to generalise it to the generic person. I've done a hell of a lot of support in my time and this is abundantly clear to me. There are even people who perform better when you swear around them, because they don't feel like they have to control their language.

Couched phrasing takes effort - and Torvalds is one of the few technocrats who still gets his hands dirty in the trenches.

> There are even people who perform better when you swear around them, because they don't feel like they have to control their language.

The closest friend I'm with the more I swear. What I don't get is people awkwardly swearing in presence of people they just met. I see it as attempt to desperately get connection to other people.

Insulting the person probably serves as a filter - at that point that person either shapes up or stops committing, either of which is a better outcome for Linus than that person continuing to commit crap code for Linus to have to look at/approve. Your more reasonable comment doesn't have the same effect, so it's not the strictly better solution, depending on what Linus values.

Why not just ask them not to commit?

are you serious? It's a free software dude.

Note in my comment that I said that some people will reject his insult and try harder next time, which potentially adds another good contributor to the project. Just telling them to go away and never come back doesn't do that, and is probably more hurtful to boot.

@flumbaps - Because it's more impolite and hurtful? People tend to be more hurt by clear rejection then they are by being called stupid for something they did.

> “Sorry, we’re not going to take this code... "

Why are you apologizing?

Perhaps because the person spent their time working on something for no compensation? Just an expression of a little empathy for that person's wasted time? Is the cost of that word really so much?

> no compensation? It's more than a compensation that your commit gets accepted. It's a privilege.

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