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Linus Torvalds built Git in 10 days - and never imagined it would last 20 years (www.zdnet.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] 142 points 1 year ago (22 children)

The biggest tragedy of modern media is that they chose to cast Elon Musk as the real life Tony Stark instead of torvalds who created 2 pieces of truly revolutionary software (with the help of thousands of other engineers ofc)

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  • [–] 66 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (19 children)

    Four things went for Musk:

    • he was rich
    • he had a passing resemblance to Robert Downey Jr.
    • he made was closely associated with futuristic hardware (we don't seem to value revolutionary software the same way as hardware)
    • he was rich

    In all honesty, a lot of solo developers who are directly responsible for the internet as we know it should be getting far more credit than rich ass holes but here we are.

    Edit: correct

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Don’t forget:

    • he was rich
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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Don’t forget:

    • his dad was rich
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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    I mean, let’s be thorough. He’s

    • the rich scion
    • of a family that made their fortune owning and exploiting emerald mines
    • in South Africa
    • during apartheid

    Kinda tells you all you need to know about him and his family.

    Also his dad fucked and married (edit: correction (side note: fuck me, somehow it was WAY weirder than I had remembered):) fathered not one, but TWO children with his own stepdaughter. No, I’m not kidding.

    Edit 2: nope, they married in the 90s too! You can’t make this shit up.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Wait what‽

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yep.

    And that was my reaction when I discovered that too 🫩

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Fuuuuck.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    he made futuristic hardware

    Did he

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Yeah Teslas were pretty leading edge at the beginning. Then they started doing weird stuff like removing stalks and making triangular trucks.

    Falcon 9 and Starship are obviously futuristic too.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Did he, though?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    No not in the same way Tony Stark did. But Tony Stark is imaginary. Obviously nobody can build an electric car or a rocket in the same way that Tony Stark does.

    Of all the criticisms of Musk this is the weakest. There are many way more valid ones... for instance:

    • He's an arsehole.
    • He straight up called that diver a paedo, and even paid a scammer to investigate him.
    • The scummy lottery thing for votes for Trump. I don't care if it ends up being technically legal, it's clearly immoral.
    • Selling the promise of FSD for hard cash when it clearly is never going to happen as he claimed. I still don't know why there's been no class action suit over that.
    • Backing proper insane far right groups in Europe. These people are worse than Trump. I wouldn't say he is backing neonazis, but he's certainly in the vicinity.

    Despite all that he clearly has a pretty good handle on engineering and is definitely involved. He's not just a figurehead.

    I know right, people are multidimensional. You can downvote if that blows your mind.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Despite all that he clearly has a pretty good handle on engineering and is definitely involved. He’s not just a figurehead.

    as far as I've read he actually doesn't, he just pretends to. You can see this in a lot of his interactions with his employees and the public. but yes, people are multidimensional. musk is a good salesman.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    Along those lines, consider the decision for why the Model S charge port is where it is, according to Tesla's former chief engineer:

    https://electrek.co/2025/01/31/teslas-charge-port-location-is-due-to-elon-musks-garage-layout-says-lucid-ceo/

    tl;dr: you don't want it directly in the front-center (like the Nissan Leaf) because a minor fender bender will ruin it. Front-driver's side is a good choice that a lot of other manufactures are going to. Elon didn't want that, because it didn't line up with his Bel Air garage. So they stuck it in back, but due to the way Tesla Superchargers are laid out, it now means Tesla drivers have to back into the parking space.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    musk was a good salesman.

    ftfy

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I don't think that's even true. He just had enough money that he could fail 99 times before succeeding once, and the return from that one was enough that he could fail 999 times before succeeding, and so on.
    He just threw money around until enough other people succeeded in big enough ways, and then he claims credit.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Look at it. That fuck didn't do fucking shit but fuck. He also bought shit other people designed and made and put his name on shit he told them to be stupid in certain fucking stupid ways. IDRC what ignorant people say. If you look at real history, he fucked and fucked shit. Oh and sure, he paid a bunch of fancy people to look like they move pretty when speaking about his literal fucking shit. It worked and he paid them to lie about which side of fucking anything he was and/or would be on. If you saw shit up until THAT point, you should have fucking known he was lying. Didn't matter that he said both. He was lying about everything because he wasn't anything more than fucking shit, literally.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Made me curious if Torvalds at least got some reward for his work besides gratitude from people who use his stuff. I'm not sure how credible internet estimates of net worth are but looking up "Linus Torvalds net worth" keeps showing me stuff from $50–$150 million so hey, at least he's (probably) comfortable. Not exactly Tony Stark superhero territory but if he wasn't rich enough to sit at home and sleep for the rest of his life if he wanted to I'd probably be upset on his behalf for a bit, before I moved onto the next outrage of the day. Glad to see he's well-off.

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