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Comment by nswanberg | Hacker News Reader

For those curious about the context: https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/23/97

Note that noone replied to Eric and the thread continued on. Also go back and read some of Linus's posts before this. Eric writes using vague generalizations about age and experience; Linus writes with specifics about his experience with the kernel. The former style makes for popularly read posts but the latter seems much more effective.

Also, compare this message from Linus earlier in that thread https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/22/52 with a post of his from yesterday: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/2/10/575, especially regarding abstraction.

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Yes, I came here looking for that. The lack of any specifics about the kernel issue at hand and the general attempt to project Age and Wisdom made me immediately suspicious.

ESR is known for this.

http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/show-them-the-code

(from Everybody loves Eric Raymond)

Even more relevant to this thread: http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/specificator

i had to scroll down this far to find people who actually read the link. everybody above just wants to tell us how much of a curse their high intelligence is.

I wonder if they want to use their experience with the "curse" as proof of their intelligence? I'm sure anyone here could find some example of it. But I can think of way better things to do than talk about being smart on HN.

I modded you up for your accursed intelligence or giftedness :-)

It ought to be called the curse of the lazy until you bring Linus or someone else gifted into it.

I would recommend you try reading hn on a mobile device. Apps allow to tap a comment to hide the whole thread, which make it really easier to cycle top level comments (this one is actually the third)

You can try Hacker News Enhancement Suite if you're using Chrome.

Although noone replied directly Matthias Andree wrote:

"(I have read Eric's folloup to Linus' mail I'm replying to, but not following that one up in AOL style. I second Eric mentioning the "curse of the gifted" from own experience. You start something without design, it succeeds for your talent, experience, whatever, it evolves and grows and eventually disembogues into a rewrite from scratch, that time with a design before the implementation.)"

My guess is that most of them thought Erics Mail too off topic to continue in that direction on the kernel list. I'd like to know what they thought of Erics arguments though. Exspecially Linus opinion at the time would have been interesting ...

Source: https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/23/103

"[ESR's] style makes for popularly read posts but [Linus'] seems much more effective"

That seems to be a recurring theme. While ESR was writing opinionated tomes, LT wrote a successful OS kernel and a widely used source control system.

Haha, that post from yesterday is great. I have trouble disagreeing with Linus even when I know he's being a jerk.

How did your first link give context? It seems to be the same content as the OP.

The menu on the left in the link I posted shows the thread. I saw no way to see that in the original link.

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