Torvalds, Linus (2006-06-27), Re: Licensing and the library version of git, retrieved: 2025-06-03

…git actually has a simple design, with stable and reasonably well-documented data structures. In fact, I'm a huge proponent of designing your code around the data, rather than the other way around, and I think it's one of the reasons git has been fairly successful […] I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

— Linus Torvalds

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "…git actually has a simple design, with stable and reasonably well-documented data structures. In fact, I'm a huge proponent of designing your code around the data, rather than the other way around, and I think it's one of the reasons git has been fairly successful […] I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships." in the context of "Torvalds, Linus (2006-06-27), Re: Licensing and the library version of git, retrieved: 2025-06-03" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Linus Torvalds" (Quotes, 2000s, 2006) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Linus Torvalds

About Linus Torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds (born 28 December 1969) is a Finnish-American computer programmer, best known as the creator of the Linux kernel.