I still think that this tone is counterproductive, but that might be personal preference. I hate working in an environment where I know I can end up on the receiving end of some public humiliation if I voice a dissenting opinion or make a mistake. That's how you end up with people censuring themselves and not pointing out when somebody is actually making a mistake because they don't want to suffer the abuse.

This is especially inexcusable coming from Linus because it's not like he needs to resort to these tactics to be heard or make an impression, he's one of the most respected software devs in existence (and for good reasons). You could remove all the abuse from his posts and you'd lose exactly nothing IMO.

But this discussion is hackneyed, I know many people love Linus' style and think it's perfectly acceptable and even a good thing, I'm just definitely not one of them.

Sigh

It’s sad that there are people who think calling garbage code garbage is inappropriate. What goes in their mind? Don’t they smell or call a smell a smell?

On at least one memorable occasion [0], he expressed surprise that the developer(s) responsible for some piece of code had survived to adulthood, considering they "were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on" as a baby. I'm not super aware of the context here, but at first glance it doesn't appear to be a high-profile coder with lots of kernel experience that he's talking about.

[0] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/7/6/495