449
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 139 points 1 month ago

The biggest tragedy of modern media is that they chose to cast Elon Musk as the real life Tony Stark instead of torvalds who created 2 pieces of truly revolutionary software (with the help of thousands of other engineers ofc)

[-] CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 63 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Four things went for Musk:

  • he was rich
  • he had a passing resemblance to Robert Downey Jr.
  • he ~~made~~ was closely associated with futuristic hardware (we don't seem to value revolutionary software the same way as hardware)
  • he was rich

In all honesty, a lot of solo developers who are directly responsible for the internet as we know it should be getting far more credit than rich ass holes but here we are.

Edit: correct

[-] Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago

Don’t forget:

  • his dad was rich
[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

I mean, let’s be thorough. He’s

  • the rich scion
  • of a family that made their fortune owning and exploiting emerald mines
  • in South Africa
  • during apartheid

Kinda tells you all you need to know about him and his family.

Also his dad fucked and ~~married~~ (edit: correction (side note: fuck me, somehow it was WAY weirder than I had remembered):) fathered not one, but TWO children with his own stepdaughter. No, I’m not kidding.

Edit 2: nope, they married in the 90s too! You can’t make this shit up.

[-] Colloidal@programming.dev 1 points 4 weeks ago

Yep.

And that was my reaction when I discovered that too 🫩

[-] Colloidal@programming.dev 2 points 4 weeks ago
[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Yep.

Also, I want to point out that it was actually worse and weirded than I had remembered: i don’t think they’re married, but they’ve had two kids together, and one of them was intentional.

Yep.

Wow.

Edit: hahahahahaha fucking hell they got married in the 90s too

[-] Skoll@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

A distinction without a difference

[-] darkpanda@lemmy.ca 19 points 1 month ago

Also Subsurface, a scuba diving log program, but that one is not quite as well known.

https://subsurface-divelog.org/

[-] andioop@programming.dev 3 points 1 month ago

Made me curious if Torvalds at least got some reward for his work besides gratitude from people who use his stuff. I'm not sure how credible internet estimates of net worth are but looking up "Linus Torvalds net worth" keeps showing me stuff from $50–$150 million so hey, at least he's (probably) comfortable. Not exactly Tony Stark superhero territory but if he wasn't rich enough to sit at home and sleep for the rest of his life if he wanted to I'd probably be upset on his behalf for a bit, before I moved onto the next outrage of the day. Glad to see he's well-off.

this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
449 points (100.0% liked)

Programming

20172 readers
357 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Rules

  • Follow the programming.dev instance rules
  • Keep content related to programming in some way
  • If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities !webdev@programming.dev



founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS