Linus Says No to 'Specs'

auckland map writes to tell us about an interesting debate that is being featured on KernelTrap. Linus Torvalds raised a few eyebrows (and furrowed even more in confusion) by saying "A 'spec' is close to useless. I have _never_ seen a spec that was both big enough to be useful _and_ accurate. And I have seen _lots_ of total crap work that was based on specs. It's _the_ single worst way to write software, because it by definition means that the software was written to match theory, not reality."

Linus Says No to 'Specs'

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard he had good vision. --(o)~(o)--

Linus: It's like real science.

[loqi]

Incase you were wondering if CS was indeed a "real" science or not.

Amen

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus has spoken.

No to Specs...

[Anonymous Coward]

..big _YES_ to underscores.

Specs are for geeks

[sore loser]

contact lenses a better choice.

In other news

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Bill Gates says "Beta testing is for sissies".

What an idiot!

[kevin lyda]

Who is this Linus guy anyway? I bet he's never managed a software project of any complexity.

Personally I've found specs to be incredibly useful. I'm currently developing a middleware project that takes a complex search pattern and applies it to a streams of delimited character objects and while our team of 40 software software engineers has yet to actually start developing we've produced a fantastic spec that will greatly simplify coding it.

I suspect we'll have this general regular expression parser up in running in less than 80 man years of effort thanks to our full and detailed specs.

Re:What an idiot!

[CortoMaltese]

Who is this Linus guy anyway?

You remind me of Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters:

• Where Linus Went Wrong
• Some More of Linus' Greatest Mistakes
• Who is this Linus Person Anyway?

Re:What an idiot!

[dascandy]

I did a public domain one in 3 days. Does that make me 5333 times as productive as any of you?

Note to people impressed, I'm looking for a job actively :). Am willing to move virtually (IE, open a different X forwarding session).

Andrew, is that you?

[hummassa]

Linus is an engineer/tech. He dislikes theory work because it often gives nothing in practice.

Actually, I think he disklikes theory simply because he does not understand it! If Linux development becomes more based on theory than practical hacks, there will be no place for him on the top.
You could at least have posted non-anonymously :-) [fluidsignal.com]

Re:Linus: It's like real science.

[nickco3]

Having said that I don't think CS is a science.

Yes, any subject with 'Science' in the title isn't. I forget where I heard it, but it is a useful rule of thumb.

Computer science ... check. Political science ... check. Domestic science ... check. Social science ... check. Rocket science ... er, damn.

Re:What an idiot!

[The Evil Couch]

Well, that about wraps it up for Linus.

Re:Freudian typing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof-read

Re:Linus Taken to Task

[uncqual]

Specs are rarely useful breasts up-front.

A perfect example of why specs are useful -- without specifications, the Intelligent Designer's developers would end up developing too many models of women with non-standard breast placement. This would then require way too many bra models which would result in way too much confusion about how to remove them quickly -- it could have lead to the end of the human race before it really got a good start.