Today I start reading about the life of Linus Torvalds, the literal creator-god of Linux. The man we’ve all been told we should be like. The firebrand with meme-worthy rants. Which of those sides will we see first? The answer: none of the above. Linus tries to peel away the mystique and tell a real story, and I get to meet two less mythical characters: Kid Linus and Bored Linus.
First off, I like Linus’ reflection on his childhood. While he may have been labeled a nerd, he didn’t fall into the ostracized loner role that most people think comes with the label. While unpopular kids exist in school by definition, I don’t think there are any that fulfill the media stereotype. Everyone has something going for then in primary or secondary school, or at the very least they think they do. But he describes his family history like he’s giving an anecdote on software history (or he wrote it for nerds who read everything like it’s an anecdote about software), highlighting the oddities and big changes. You know you’re a nerd when model trains are too easy of a system for you.
It’s funny that he describes his discovery of computers as a transition away from “regular kid stuff” to spending his time tinkering with his computer and getting angry at anyone who interrupted him. That I can relate to, and I assume anyone who’s ever had a problem that they really loved can relate to it too. There’s that tunnel vision, where nothing matters except completing the problem. The MIT hackers were the same way. Any amount of time was spent. Any tradeoff gets made.
And by the time he starts talking about his investments in computers you know he’s a nerd. He’s learned the architectures, the shortcuts, and exciting features, and he rattles off the good stuff quite efficiently.
Hearing Linus rant about the excitement in recreating games and enhancing his system in high school reminded me of my first years in college. I didn’t make the connection, however, until I heard about the slump his first year of college. Which is about how I end my undergraduate career: unmotivated, hoping for something to come to rekindle the fire, to give purpose for all the skill and training. I really hope that there’s always a mid-career crisis, in between the excitement of the first discoveries and finding the projects of a lifetime (cough cough Linux cough). I’d love to get into something with the same running-start excitement that Linus charged at Unix.
I believe it was Paul Graham who complained that you could never know the metal of a hacker unless you’ve worked with them. I don’t know if that’s true, but I know I have no clue how to evaluate Linus as a hacker. I don’t think that’s the point of this book anyways. What I can tell is that he seems passionate. He genuinely loves computers, he genuinely cares about making them better, and there’s nothing that would stop him from hacking. And that is enough to make him role-model for computing.
Decryptic 