Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. — Linus Torvalds

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

Author: Linus Torvalds

Insight: There's something almost magical about how problems dissolve the moment they're exposed to real scrutiny. This idea, born from open-source software development, actually describes something we experience constantly: the difference between a problem that feels insurmountable when you're alone with it and one that becomes obvious once you talk it through with someone else. A bug that seems impossibly complex to one person might be a five-minute fix for another. The fresh perspective isn't smarter—it's just different. The deeper insight here is that most of our struggles aren't actually uniquely difficult. They feel that way because we're looking at them from inside, where the obvious context is invisible. A financial mistake, a relationship pattern, a work project going sideways—these often aren't unsolvable riddles. They're just problems that need distance, or alternative viewpoints, or someone who hasn't gotten used to the broken system. The real work isn't usually figuring out something unprecedented. It's having enough humility to let others see what we've stopped noticing. This applies everywhere: parenting, health, creativity, career decisions. The people who make genuine progress tend to be those willing to expose their thinking, their confusion, even their failures to others. They know that transparency isn't weakness—it's how you access the collective intelligence around you.

Source: The Cathedral and the Bazaar, p. 30, 1999