In defence of Douglas Crockford • Hacker News Board

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#311

Post by Anthony-G » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 3:17 PM UTC

lake99 wrote: post #196

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #160

The Nodevember folk(s) posted a statement regarding this whole kerfuffle [1]. It's pretty hollow IMO. > While we have a tremendous respect for Mr. Crockford's abilities as a speaker and his contributions to our craft, we became aware that based on private feedback - not simply the dialogue on Twitter - that his presence would make some speakers uncomfortable to the point where they refused to attend or speak. Okay so…

> You apologized for lacking nuance on Twitter with your "announcement" and yet continue to do so. I saw parallels of this earlier this year against Richard Dawkins, when the NECSS uninvited him over twitter, followed it with a longer post on their blog[0]. After their actions caused a blowback, they apologized for their lack of professionalism. NECSS backtracked on their position[1] because the blowback was from pro…

That situation seemed to be handled a lot better than this one; the first blog post actually detailed the offence as opposed to oblique insinuations. I thought Dawkins' response was professional and gracious: https://richarddawkins.net/2016/02/necss-executive-committee...

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

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Post by ufmace » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 3:23 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #215

gnarbarian wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to bet that he didn't pose any danger to these people other than having the gall to publicly harbor opinions they are uncomfortable with. In other words, diversity does not extend to diversity of opinion.

So what? The talk organizers were faced with a dilemma: either keep Crawford and lose a bunch of other speakers or lose Crawford but keep others I do think clarification is needed, but I could see "being a jerk " as a legit reason to not want to associate with someone. People do the same with people like Torvalds Being unliked is also a reason that people won't want to associate with you.

So tolerance and diversity are apparently only good things if they're applied to the Right People with the Right Opinions.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#313

Post by GirlsCanCode » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 3:25 PM UTC

labrador wrote: post #209

jacalata wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you using "quotes" around women? It also sounds like you are unfamiliar with the job of developer evangelist (which Richards held) - it is actually a pretty common position in the programming industry, perhaps not so much around electrical engineering. Here's an explanation - https://sendgrid.com/blog/explained-developer-evangelism-par...

I suspect the quotes around "woman" are about trans men who start speaking for all women after they transition. I imagine some women are bothered by this. I have no evidence of this, just trying to explain the quotes.

See github's community evangelist

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

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Post by RonanTheGrey » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 3:29 PM UTC

guitarbill wrote: post #293

brakmic wrote: post #183

Such things could have a very negative effect on people whose native language isn't English. I mean, if even native speakers get into troubles so easily what should I, as a non-native speaker, expect? I maintain a tiny blog and because of possible language barriers I decided to write all of my texts in English. It could've been much easier for me to write in German, of course, but this would exclude so many people. A…

Similar story. I worked really hard on my English accent, something I regret now. If you have a German accent you can speak more directly. Because many know about this cultural difference, people are expecting you to be more direct, and can cope with it. If you have a British accent and you're direct, this doesn't work. Brits think you're rude, but here's the kicker, won't tell you this - they'll just ignore you. For…

Interesting story, if you had fostered an American accent you'd have avoided the issue as well. They expect Americans to be abrasive.

Behind you 100% on the Brits ignoring you thing. They're very responsible for the perception of what "polite" means and I blame them for so much passive aggression in what is considered "politically correct" speech. If you've ever watched their politics it's a damn joke. They fall all over each other attempting to "out-polite" each other while stabbing each other in the backs. Direct response is unheard of. Then they export this behavior to the rest of the English speaking world as a standard of acceptable behavior because so much of the world irrationally looks up to the UK for the "right" thing to do.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#315

Post by mcguire » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 3:33 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #264

justaaron wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which begs the questions: 1) whom 2) why and it's rather "put-up or shut-up" time, I'd say. I've never heard of this conference. I've read Crockfords books, and while any given person on earth may be a total bear to deal with, I'm not buying this greasy smarmy "he'd been uninvited for undisclosed reasons but we'll imply lot's of socially-disapproved-of reasons without confirming nor denying any of them" what a kafka-…

They're free to invite and disinvite whoever they please. You're free to not attend. I don't think airing private grievances will help anyone.

The problem is that they stopped being private grievances when they were used to remove a speaker from a public conference.

Way back in the good ol' days, this was exactly the sort of thing used to oppress the minorities: an unknown group of well-connected men would get together to black-ball someone for being the wrong sort of person, with no explanation, recourse, or accountability.

Like I have said before: choose your enemies carefully; you become them. The faces may have changed, but the behavior hasn't.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#316

Post by ufmace » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 3:48 PM UTC

shruubi wrote: post #147

I'm of two minds here. 1) I personally don't like Douglas Crockford at all, I find him all together arrogant and overly concerned with presenting himself as an infallible single source of truth. I respect the work the man has done, but I personally think the conference is better off without him. 2) It seems that the conference organisers are all too concerned with coming out and proudly parading there actions without…

> using the drama to boost their attendance numbers

If they are, then I have to wonder who is actually deciding to come to these conferences based on this? I would think that people with actual coding skills who want to discuss technical ideas are running away. If anybody is deciding to come, it's the type of people whose main skill seems to be finding things to get offended by.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#317

Post by apgwoz » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 3:52 PM UTC

dimfox11 wrote: post #141

apgwoz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've made this argument before, and not surprisingly, it didn't go over well.

For PC, Norm need to be changed often, it's like changing passwords often. http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-726-how-and-why-progressives-...

There is thought that changing your password often might make passwords worse... Don't have a citation at the moment (phone) but, the tl;dr is that often changing means you're more likely to pick smaller passwords that are easier to construct, and to remember, making them weaker than something you'll commit to for a longer time.

So... maybe not the best analogy, but understood.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#318

Post by stuaxo » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 3:56 PM UTC

erpellan wrote: post #197

rdtsc wrote: post #34

> We will also be removing Douglas Crockford from our keynote speakers list to help make the conference a comfortable environment for all. If they are going to insinuate things about what he said, they should mention exactly what he said or did. The fact that they don't somehow tells me there is not much there to go on. To put it another way, if they have the guts to remove Crockford that should have enough guts to c…

I certainly wouldn't feel 'comfortable' speaking at a conference with a reputation for publicly character-assassinating their invited speakers. Especially as the worst accusation I could find on twitter was that he used the word 'stupid'. Several times! Throw away the key...

It would be insane to go into such a humourless environment where every conversation feels like treading on eggshells.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#319

Post by Anthony-G » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 3:58 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #299

Unlike the controversies about Strangeloop (which uninvited Curtis Yarvin) and Lambdaconf (which lost the overwhelming majority of its sponsors due to accepting Yarvin), this --- based on the evidence at hand --- seems entirely stupid. Unfortunately, there's no rulebook conference organizers (or their Greek choruses on message boards) can consult to say when rejecting a speaker is a good idea or not. It's a judgement…

I find it a real stretch to construe Crockford's use of the word “promiscuous” as a pejorative. Given the context, his usage of the word was apt and descriptive (promiscuous does not necessarily refer to sexuality) without negative connotations; he actually made the opposite case: “that's good because that allows us to get introduced to things”.

Re: In defence of Douglas Crockford

#320

Post by stuaxo » Sun, Sep 04, 2016, 4:04 PM UTC

nhaehnle wrote: post #202

scrollaway wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really tired of shit like this being bucketed as "the liberal left" when it has just about nothing to do with liberalism or leftism. I suspect I'm just as tired of that, as actual conservatives are of their views being mixed in with Trump's. It's censorship and bullshitocracy.

It's not related to liberal or left logically , but it is related to the liberal left socially , because these SJW movements mostly arose from the liberal left (specifically, IMHO, from the part that somehow lost track of the scope of real problems - kind of ironic, since it means they're generally a pretty "privileged" bunch themselves!). As someone who considers himself to be liberal left, I'm annoyed by that but I…

It's annoying as they are obscuring the real issues that they purport to be for, with all this froth and nonsense.