Occurences of swearing in the Linux kernel source code over time

Most uses of 'retard' are in variable names like B43legacy_OFDMTAB_ADVRETARD but we also have

The switch is so retarded that it makes our command/entry abstraction crumble apart.

and

we shouldn't need asm for this, but gcc is being retarded

If I am reading this correctly the Linux kernel needs to give more fucks…

I added banana (for scale) and it's on the up and up: https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/wordcount/#fuck*,shit*,crap*,bastard,penguin,banana

Either they have paragraphs of oddly specific insults or banana pi is becoming popular.
- yep, it's almost all banana pi, and at least 4 different 'models' of it it seems. But the word is also used in some string processing tests and as an example comment of how suffix arrays work..

That sharp drop of fucks is when Torvalds took some time off to work on his anger issues

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/linus-torvalds-apologizes-for-years-of-being-a-jerk-takes-time-off-to-learn-empathy/

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-4.18-Released

Never understood why 'damn' is a swear word. Is it a religious thing?

it relates to damnation and is basically short for 'i sentence you to eternal damnation/hell'

It lost all of its flare when being condemned to hell became a casual thing (eg. 'go to hell')
It'll never stop being funny to me how in the US it'a apparently considered pretty bad and even gets censored while here in germany it's one of those child friendly swears that you expect kindergarten kids to say.
- In Norway "shit" is considered the child friendly way of swearing since it's not religious. I still have no idea why it's considered swearing in English/USA

For comparison, "amazing" occurs six times.

And most of those cases are of course using the word sarcastically

collapsed list of them

The next function to implement is called, amazingly, next(); its job is to
move the iterator forward to the next position in the sequence.

if (lc->sync == NOSYNC)
	for (i = lc->header.nr_regions; i < lc->region_count; i++)
		/* FIXME: amazingly inefficient */
		log_set_bit(lc, lc->clean_bits, i);
else
	for (i = lc->header.nr_regions; i < lc->region_count; i++)
		/* FIXME: amazingly inefficient */
		log_clear_bit(lc, lc->clean_bits, i);

/*
 * Amazingly, if ehv_bc_tty_open() returns an error code, the tty layer will
 * still call this function to close the tty device.  So we can't assume that
 * the tty port has been initialized.
 */

 *   this header was blatantly ripped from netfilter_ipv4.h
 *   it's amazing what adding a bunch of 6s can do =8^)

/*
 * I studied different documents and many live PROMs both from 2.30
 * family and 3.xx versions. I came to the amazing conclusion: there is
 * absolutely no way to route interrupts in IIep systems relying on
 * information which PROM presents. We must hardcode interrupt routing
 * schematics. And this actually sucks.   -- zaitcev 1999/05/12

 * corresponding ABS_X and ABS_Y events. This turns the Twiddler into a game
 * controller with amazing 18 buttons :-)

 * In an amazing feat of design, the Enhanced Features Register (EFR)
 * shares the address of the Interrupt Identification Register (IIR).
 * Access to EFR is switched on by writing a magic value (0xbf) to the
 * Line Control Register (LCR). Any interrupt firing during this time will
 * see the EFR where it expects the IIR to be, leading to
 * "Unexpected interrupt" messages.

 * Thanks BUGabundo and Malmostoso for your amazing help!

I didn't add a star at the end for the word search, so at least for that example, the sarcastic ones were all 'amazingly' and consequently not counted, and the 'amazing' at the end seems literal. I haven't looked at any other cases, though.

Critical Raster Angle Protrusion

Did you just enter your password on here?
- Oh CRAP
- smh. That's supposed to go in cell A1.

Now do in GTA V source code

Would that be more or less, do you think?

TIL “damn” is an insult.

I thought it was just an intensifier.

When there's an organic-looking decline that seems like a good sign, but the sudden sharp drops seem likely a sign of "corporate oversight" and not an actual improvement.

I don't see a sharp drop as a sign of corporate oversight at all.

Stuff may be tackled en-batch. Or individuals can care. Or it can be an organic team decision or effort.

Coding is a very... emotional activity. We get a bit salty sometimes.

I remember commenting a particularly bad routine with "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate".

There are also phrases such as "by the process of offending god, this somehow outputs..." and "This block was written by someone whose sanity was not so much questionable as it was entirely reprehensible - but it works".

I also remember doing a search and replace of every instance of the word "fuck" with "[fornicate]" when bringing someone new onto a project.

Only one of them barely reaching 200. For the size of the Linux kernel I find these numbers surprisingly low.

I would have expected the comments to be pretty dry and to the point. Thos eare some interesting stats. 🤣