That's important information.
From Torvalds:
The fact is, people need to know what my position on things are. And I can't just say "please don't do that", because people won't listen. I say "On the internet, nobody can hear you being subtle," and I mean it.
And I definitely am not willing to string people along, either. I've had that happen too—not telling people clearly enough that I don't like their approach, they go on to re-architect something, and get really upset when I am then not willing to take their work.
- this looks bad
- this looks extremely bad
- this is dangerous, I imagine you can exploit this
- You can easily exploit this code with attached example
A free scale if you need to convey degree of good/badness for attached code. CC0 license.
This is a bit snarky, but I do think that a bit of effort can be made to describe code as being bad without declaring that the author's mother should have aborted them.
So, I'd argue that while the premise that some direct and blunt statements can be rude, that doesn't mean that any rudeness (esp. insults) is a better argument.
I see this sort of thought come up a lot, but what situation requires rudeness to be more concise? For example, you could take Torvald's emails, cut out the rudeness, and they'd be much shorter and to the point.
The idea that rude == direct doesn't really hold up in my experience.