Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary (Taschenbuch)

Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary (Taschenbuch)
von Linus Torvalds, David Diamond

Rezensionen:

Most 31-year olds can't boast of being the instigator of a revolution. But then again, the world's leading promoter of open source software and creator of the operating system Linux does humbly call himself an accidental revolutionary--accidental being the operative word here.Just for Funis the quirky story of how Linus Torvalds went from being a penniless, introverted code writer in Helsinki in the early 1990s to being the unwitting (and rather less than penniless) leader of a radical shift in computer programming by the end of the decade.

OK, perhaps "story" in the traditional sense of the term is stretching it a bit. This whole book is more like a series of e-mails, an exercise in textual communication for someone more used to code language than conversation: choppy sentences packed into short paragraphs, and sometimes just one-liners. The pace is fast, but the quippy tone can get somewhat tiring, though it definitely suits the portrayal of a computer-dominated life. And like an e-mail conversation, the tense often changes, the topics jump back and forth, and the narrators occasionally change, mostly alternating between the Linux man himself andRed Herringexecutive editor David Diamond, who convinced the difficult-to-pin-down Torvalds to write his story (or at least allow Diamond to poke, prod, and pull it out of him, all the while giving his own impressions and interpretations). But Torvald's tale contains enough informative and entertaining tidbits--on growing up in dark, strangely silent but communication-gadget-obsessed Finland (which boasts more cell phones per capita than anywhere else), on what makes passionate code writers tick, on making the transition from unknown computer geek to world-famous computer geek, on the convergence of technology and ideology, on his work for Transmeta and involvement (or lack thereof) with all the players worth mentioning in Silicon Valley - to keep more than just computer programmers engrossed in his story. For the latter, of course,Just for Funwill be required reading.

If you pick up this book as a geek's guide to the meaning of life (which, believe it or not, Torvalds does ramble on about at the beginning and the end), then you're in for a bit of a shallow take on the whole thing. But if you're interested in the idea of technological development as a global team sport, and how a nerdy Finnish transplant to California got the whole game going in the first place, check out Linus's story... just for fun, of course. --S. Ketchum-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Linus Torvalds wrote the Linux kernel butJust For Funcould refer to writing the book. It isn't about Linux, it's about Linus. Here he tells us about his childhood, his time at Helsinki University, his marriage to six times karate champion Tove, about his children and about his attitude to life.

He comes across as a nice guy who, until Linux made him a celebrity, interacted with the world only tangentially. This could be in part a response to his frankly weird early home life in Finland.

David Diamond (of Red Herring magazine) acts as editor while Linus tells it like it is. But while Linus appears open, the story he tells is polished. As Liberace used to say when asked why people liked his take on the classics, "I leave out the boring bits". His four years in a darkened room with a computer as a boy may not have made gripping reading for everyone.

Linus is probably brilliant, but it's obsessive hard work, alone behind closed curtains, which enabled him to create Linux. One of the most interesting aspects of his story is how success--in his marriage and the wider world--has changed him. If we're to believe his own words his wife and children together with a Californian lifestyle are now his chief source of fun.

Linus Torvalds will one day rate an academic biography. In the meantime, the message here is that one route to personal fulfilment is doing what you want to do, as well as you can, for your own reasons--even just for fun. --Steve Patient-- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe:Gebundene Ausgabe

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Siehe auch folgende Artikel:

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution von Steven Levy
The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary von Eric S. Raymond
1984 von George Orwell

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