$ whoami▌
born 28 Dec 1969 — Helsinki, Finland
kernel v0.01 17 Sep 1991 — "just a hobby, won't be big"
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish-American software engineer and the most influential grumpy person in computing history. In 1991 he started the Linux kernel as a hobby project — it now runs on over 97% of all supercomputers, the entire Android ecosystem, every cloud data center, and billions of devices worldwide. His hobby got slightly out of hand.
In 2005 he rewrote the world's version control system in two weeks because he was dissatisfied with the existing tools. He named it Git, which is British slang for an unpleasant person. He has stated this was intentional.
He is famous for his zero-tolerance policy on bad code, his legendary rants on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, and the firm belief that good code speaks for itself. "Talk is cheap. Show me the code."
"Talk is cheap. Show me the code."
"Software is like sex: it's better when it's free."
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done."
"If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won."
"Bad programmers worry about the code.
Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships."
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
"Linux is evolution, not intelligent design."
"Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid, but because it is fun to program."
"I am not a visionary. I'm an engineer. I want to fix the pothole that is right in front of me before I fall in."
"Nobody actually creates perfect code the first time around, except me."