This post is entirely my personal opinion.

Linus Torvalds wrote a 541 word abusive rant about two lines of code he didn’t like.

J. David Eisenberg rewrote it to show how the same opinion could be expressed in an equally direct, but non-abusive fashion. At 180 words, it’s almost exactly 1/3 the length of Linus’s original, and much clearer.

As a complementary exercise, I extracted the overtly abusive parts of Linus’s text (103 words) and put them here. (Coarse language alert!)

I consider this kind of abuse indefensible. Nonetheless, I’ve seen multiple people defending and even celebrating it. (One outlet called it an “epic rant”.) Of the many things I could say about this, I will say just one: sadly, I am certain the reaction to this text would be entirely different were it written by a woman.

I will moderate the comment thread below this post with enthusiasm. I won’t hesitate to delete comments that are hurtful, abusive, or otherwise objectionable to me. Please think before commenting.