Linus Torvalds Rejects RISC-V Changes For Linux 6.17: "Garbage"

Man, I swear to god, the comment section under an article always seems to drive just the shittiest, lowest quality, most "microwaved thinking" takes on any given subject, regardless of the side they take in the discussion

Reading just a few of those comments makes me frankly sad.

Phoronix has notoriously dumb commenters. I don't know why exactly but it's really notable.
Hackaday too. Again, not sure why. They're both significantly worse than Reddit, HN, Ars or here. Maybe even worse than YouTube comments...
- Phoronix is a drama mongering site so of course the comments will be dumb, just like the articles.
- Hackaday's comments are bad mostly when the article is about Linux. Electronics stuff gets better comments.
Pro-tip: Avoid reading comment sections in general.
- Yet here we are.
@CrisColor
I like Phoronix because it soaks up all the faux-techno nutters and I can get on with my life
@Sunshine
- If you don't mind my asking, is your instance a piefed or Mastodon instance? Or something else?
  I only occasionally see people using @, and it's always cool seeing people interacting across different server software 😊

I mean, he explained what and why is garbage and he's not wrong, so it's a valuable lesson at least.

Sort of. He's definitely right that make_u32_from_two_u16 is a terrible function name that obscures the meaning but I don't think he's right that the best solution is to inline it. C bit shifting is notoriously error prone - I've seen this bug multiple times:

uint32_t a = ...; uint32_t b = ...; uint64_t c = (a << 32) | b;
The real problem is the name isn't very good. E.g. it could be u32_high_low_to_u64 or something. Might clearer. Certainly easily at kernel code levels of clarity.
(Really the naming issue comes from C not having keyword arguments but you can't do anything about that.)
- I am not a C developer, but I found the "helper has a terrible name" and "it's not clear what the helper is doing" arguments a bit weak.
  Who in they right mind does not think the helper creates a 32 bytes word by putting the 16 bytes of the first argument followed by the 16 bytes of the second one ?

Read the article. Can't imagine anyone who has ever worked with software development not agreeing with Linus here.

I think the one who wrote this title should be blamed. It may not be intentional, but it sounds like Linus is an evil villain who beat RISC-V superhero.
Look at this function that gets submitted to the pull request.

make_u32_from_two_u16()
These "helper" functions never help for the reasons Linus addressed in the article. As a JavaScript developer, which often results in a messy codebase because of management issues, I hate these functions with a passion. It's usually only the person who wrote it finds it helpful, and only at the week he wrote it. After six months he will just be confused as everyone else.
Garbage, in other word.
Even if it's not garbage, why submit it alongside the RISC-V change? If it's a dependency, submit this one first and postpone your RISC-V change.
RISC-V may not be garbage. It's the industry not getting quality and experienced developers for it.
- Its because junior devs get DRY hammered into them by idiot teachers/trainers who dont know much else. So they try ti DRY absolutely every little function. Its the one thing I have fought the most dealing with juniors and even seniors. The other thing is making utility functions into DRY utility functions AND THEN overloading their purpose by adding a bunch of features to it just to justify it being DRY.
- The biggest issue I have with Risc-V is the lack of a clear standard. It incredibly fragmented which means that lots and lots of code is needed to try and account for every type of hardware.
I don't code and even I know you don't do this

Linus moment. He isn't wrong though

Yeah, but a better person could be not-wrong without turning a single sentence criticism into a multi-paragraph rant only serving to stroke their ego. Turns out people can be "garbage" despite being skilled at something.
- Linus doesn't have to be a dick all the time. However, as I get older, I begin to understand the wisdom behind a monologue in Team America: World Police more and more:
  We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from assholes. I don't know much about this crazy crazy world, but I do know this: if you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!
  In this case, Linus is a dick who fucks when it's not appropriate a lot (i.e., is harsh in his critique about bad code in pull requests). Assholes push bad code, and sometimes it's so bad that it'll fuck up the whole kernel. Pussies in tech magazines criticize his style of critique. Other pussies get "butt-hurt" because they code like shit too and they can't or won't admit it, and they're so full of shit, they're pussies who've become assholes themselves.
  The code in question is, in fact, garbage.