I can spend good, fulfilling and interesting times with a 'pleasant' idiot friend. Intelligent assholes, on the other hand, besides some intellectual discussion in their field of expertise, I would pass on their company. But, since this is about people within the workspace, I guess the intelligent asshole would, sometimes, be preferable to some polite but less intelligent person. The other one would still be an asshole, though. Plus, I don't think Linus would get away with this crap outside of electronic mailing lists and kernel stuff.

Whether if "profanity" is involved in the speech or not, if someone is prone to blowing up in a rage of anger, I do not enjoy being around such a person. Depending on the details, it might be worth understanding what makes them upset and trying to avoid it, but it seems to me that a lot of the time some people are just overly angry.

I recently witnessed some programmer going to town, blasting out a supply cabinet. Hurling rage and profane insults at a supply cabinet just seems... uncalled for, to me. My personal evaluation is that the guy needs to learn to not let little things bother him so much. Though I doubt the supply cabinet was offended.

I tend to prefer pleasant and intelligent personally.

I much prefer to hang out with my very kind-hearted and pleasant (yet slightly less intelligent[1]) fraternity brothers over some of my extremely bright computer science classmates who don't have as much social tact. That's because most conversations with the latter group turn into pissing matches over intellectualism, programming skill, and the like. That's not to say that I don't get along with these kids; they're great to study with, and I learn a lot from them. However, it just gets grating when we're in algorithms class discussing selection sort versus merge sort and some smart aleck asks why we can't just use radix sort because it's asymptotically linear and blah blah blah we get that you're smart, stop gloating in lecture.[2]

[1] Of course, that's not to say that my brothers are unintelligent (they're very bright). However, one of the most important life skills I learned in public school was learning how to get along with those "pleasant idiots," as you put it.

[2] And I'm not disagreeing that kernel dev requires a more authoritative leadership style than most pursuits, but it seemed that this conversation had dropped into speaking in generalities about life.

No-one is irreplacable. Assholes should be fired.

[edited the obvious typo]

There is a happy medium :) But in general, I'd always choose (true, sincerely meant) pleasantness and kindness over intelligence. Though, if a kernel developer is required, then maybe intelligence is the more useful, giving rise to this current situation...

and that happy medium varies from person to person you dense jackass, that was the entire fucking point of the rant

The hurt caused by such aggression varies too. Should this not be taken into account, or should we never consider the affects our behaviour has on others? Some people are more sensitive. Some people think calling someone a "dense jackass" as a reproach is OK.

Fortunately for me, I'm in a position to choose exactly who I work with. (Unlike perhaps this Sarah is.)