Linus Torvalds Quotes

I like writing code. I like building product. I like making things that people like.

If you know how to make software, then you can create big things.

I know one business, and that's how to make software.

I designed and developed an unbelievable number of applications early in my life.

It gives you great pleasure to know that millions of developers, day to day, make their living using the software that you created.

Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.

It turns out it's important to build a product and not just a bunch of data models.

Press releases are easier to write than code, and that is still easier than making a great product.

I think a lot of great software has been written by people who are scratching a short-term itch, something which has been niggling them for ages, but in the back of their mind they’ve got a wonderful long-term plan.

If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.

My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education.

It's strategic for us - lots of people will develop applications in .NET.

When I worked at Microsoft, I got to go and visit a bunch of different companies. Probably a hundred different companies a year. You'd see all the different ways they'd work. The guys who did Ventura Publisher one day, and then United Airlines the next. You'd see the 12 guys in Texas doing Doom, and then you'd go see Aetna Life Insurance.

The culmination of all of that was the decision to start a company, which became Lotus, to do a product, which became 1-2-3. By the time I reached that point it had been four years, and it felt like a lifetime, but really it was kind of evolutionary.

I feel lucky because earlier in my career, I found what I liked to do; it's build software that you see your friends using on the street, and they like it.

Software development is technical activity conducted by human beings.

It is a shame that homebrew development can't be officially sanctioned and supported, because it would be a wonderful platform for a modern generation of programmers to be able to get a real feel for low level design work, to be contrasted with the high level web and application work that so many entry level people start with.

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

One of the first major programming projects that I worked on when I was growing up in Ireland, back just coding by myself, was a programming language. Then I spent a bunch of time working on a new web framer. Just back-end things to make it easier to go in and build things on top of, do other development.

I enjoy evangelizing Java. In my heart of hearts, I'm an engineer, and what makes me happy is building something that works and having someone use it. That's cool.

It's something special being able to build a program up.

I think that we have been able to demonstrate that we cannot just consume software, that we can create software that can be used all over the world, that we have that kind of talent in Africa.

I've always had a passion for the tech industry, and I like to help build interesting products.

Growth hackers are typically computer engineers that build great marketing ideas into the product during the development process.

You see people doing Java-based internal applications all over the place, regular desktop applications that are sort of front-ends to the things in the back, or standalone things.