2y ago

Linus Torvalds Takes On A Performance Patch: "I Relax By Playing With Inline Assembly"

www.phoronix.com

Yes, who haven't had a glass of red wine, relaxing music and some inline assembly....

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2y ago

Linus Torvalds Takes On A Performance Patch: "I Relax By Playing With Inline Assembly"

www.phoronix.com /news/Linus-Torvalds-Relax-Inline-ASM

10 comments

I relax by listening to my HDD spinning. Which technically is a lower level than assembly.
He says this because he kind of ignorantly (his own wordage) wrote in machine code for quite some time before realizing assembly was a thing. So for Linus inline assembly is to machine code as python is to c for a lot of us.
- One of my oldest programming books is all about using machine language to program.
  https://vintageapple.org/apple_ii/pdf/Apple_Machine_Language_1981_(raw-bw).pdf
  At the time, even assemblers cost money. I remember saving up for Merlin which is an assembler for the Apple II.
As usual his code might be a great thing, but his pretentious attitude is still shit.
"Ah yes look at me I have written, oh my dare I say, some ASSEMBLY honhonhonhonhonhon"
That this is a big thing seems wild to me.
Assembly isn't such a big thing, some devs use it daily (Hello to my embedded devs out there) so why is this worthy a news article?
- Yes, he's a genius but I kept thinking "damn, the ego on this guy" while reading that.
  I love Linux, and thus, I love Linus... But he has a very large ego, there's nothing wrong in pointing out reality. That's just who he is. At least his ego matches his skill, which is something rare. He deserves to be cocky, he earned it.
  You'll get downvoted here because most programmers have elevated egos and think this is normal behavior.
- the dude wrote a kernel, I very much doubt he needs to brag about his ability to write assembly.
  
  I know. He's a legend. And I respect his work. He doesn't need to brag.
  And yet he does.
- That's not being pretentious, that's being blunt. I personally as a dev, appreciate that.
  If you think the code can be improved you should say that, and exactly why that's the case. When you're mistaken you should be able to take the criticism.
  Your mission as a dev is to write the ideal code, and being overly polite can stand in the way of that.

10 comments