“Any decent software engineer should be able to write a spec that explains how something works” is what you say.

Are the two of you talking about the same thing? Linus is talking about specs written before the implementation, whereas you’re talking about specs written after the implementation.

Between the two cases, there’s quite a difference in certainty that the specs are “correct” for the problem.

I prefer not to write a spec until I’ve at least made a first pass at an implementation for the general problem, but I have no objections to writing a spec for the interfaces that haven’t changed in awhile (i.e. maturity gives me the confidence that I can commit to them).

On second thoughts, I take that back. If you’re the sort of person who would forego technical information that you admit might be useful, because the author does not cater to your political biases, then I very much want you not to be here, or on any other site where you might learn something that would enable you to compete in the marketplace. I want you to fail in that marketplace, to be poor in the kind of unfeeling world that you would create, to feel the full weight of where your anti-philosophy would take all of us, so that maybe you’ll rethink that position and consider the alternative of becoming civilized.

Your “demonstration” that government is inefficient would be meaningless, because so is any other organization and so are markets . . . if you measure “efficiency” in the wrong terms (most often only monetary). What you’re missing is that profit is not the goal of government, nor should it be. If you’re having trouble with that idea, here’s a longer explanation.

This guarantees I’m not going to subscribe to this blog… which is too bad, because stuff like “I know a lot of people whoâ??ve been doing kernel programming longer than Linus (Iâ??m one)” made it sound interesting. Unfortunately, it’s easily demonstrable (in about five minutes, I would think) that government is NECESSARILY inefficient… which kinda puts everything else in a bad light.

I’m not someone who spent that much (as in “any”) time in kernel programming… so my opinion is probably not that relevant to you.