From: Linus Torvalds Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue

And I will go further and claim that no major software project that has been successful in a general marketplace (as opposed to niches) has ever gone through those nice lifecycles they tell you about in CompSci classes.

That’s classic:

  A) "trust me"
  B) now here's a monster bit of misdirection for you to choke on.

Does anyone believe in those stupid software lifcycles? No. So does it follow that this has anything to do with design? No.

Hey, the whole notion of “design” is that you know what you’re going to write, and you design for it.

Or do you have some other meaning of the word “design” that I haven’t heard about.

            Linus