Linus Torvalds: What You Should Do As A Developer

I did the interview with Linus Torvalds back in 2007 when he said there may not be a kernel version 3.0, and back then I asked him about the whole NVIDIA deal. That was the interview which kicked off the meme about Linus being a "psychopath" for expressing his frustrations in a very forward way, and it was even quoted in Encyclopedia Dramatica years later. What fun times. I think it was one of the first more technical interviews that got into details about the core kernel like memory management and how it works, but written in a more friendly way for a general audience that might enjoy the details, like programmers and enthusiasts writing their own homebrew OSs. Back then we thought there wasn't much left to do, which is one reason he said there probably wasn't going to be a kernel 3.0. It would be just updates and patches to the 2.6 series kernel. How things have changed, and how they have also remained the same. Edit: Primeagen, you are absolutely correct about picking something to work on and it doesn't necessarily have to be different, because you want to, and it's exciting and interesting, and it can be HTTP 1.0 because you've never done sockets, and write a mini web server. Those projects are great, and it's these projects that make coding great, it's what keeps you interested and passionate, and absolutely can develop your skills to the next level.

7:20 absolutely nailed it. Reinventing the wheel for the sole purpose of understanding something puts you in a different level.

That line note thing is actually genius. Also great advice Prime. Having yours and Linus's perspective combined definitely gave a better perspective on things.

I agree with Prime a bit more here. I have personally felt disdain and doom when my brain fails to arrive at what others want but I always felt good when I did what I wanted to do. I also feel that finding what others need comes with a lot of experience. So, yes, maybe creating for others is a good idea when one has years of experience under their sleeves

Doing it! I am a bowler, so I created a stats app for myself, a PWA in 100% javascript, because I thought it would be challenging. I opened it up to the rest of the world a few weeks ago and it's doing great already. The project itself has been very fun. One thing I will say, once you open it up to the world, it becomes a different beast, just don't lose sight of why you created it in the first place.

Linus is one of the most important people in world history. But no one outside of tech knows who he is.

5:34 The advice from Linus. Linus is attempting to help new devs to not get overwhelmed by all of the things out there. Instead of reading posts on X and seeing something new every day, go ahead and find something interesting and start building on it / with it. Build a thing you want and get absorbed by it.

as someone who was hired by tech and let go, now works in another industry but still codes... open source has a bright future. I see alot of passionate devs who are capable and out of work, we gotta do something :p

"Meaning" is a runtime assigned instance variable.

You inspire me man. 9yoe and starting to feel that boredom at work. This made me want to build something. Anything. Thank you