Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”
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Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”
#2Hard to deny he has a good way with words!
I can't speak for the author Rich is replying to, but I have seen many in the community comment on the opaqueness of Cognitect, even comparing it to Apple. That's not necessarily bad, but it does have the unfortunate effect of letting some people's imaginations run with negativity in their assumptions about a company's motivations.
Even if Cognitect did make money on Clojure, not sure why that should be a source of frustration. It's quite an amazing language, people should have some reward for their contributions to the industry, right?
Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”
#3This kind of drama is not healthy for technology. Do yourself a favor and don't waste time reading this, nor the original article it's responding to.
Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”
#4This kind of drama is not healthy for technology. Do yourself a favor and don't waste time reading this, nor the original article it's responding to.
I can't tell if you were suggesting we should read the original article only, but not this response?
Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”
#5This kind of drama is not healthy for technology. Do yourself a favor and don't waste time reading this, nor the original article it's responding to.
I think Rich Hickey has an excellent point about the hurt that these kind of rants cause to people in the open source community. I can't imagine this guy would ever go up to Rich Hickey and yell "Fuck You" at him in person, but somehow he feels okay about doing it from behind a screen. To quote from the linked post:
> And, if you are talking about Clojure, you are talking to me. The indirection doesn't mask the attack on people, their work and their choices.
> I have to say now to those for whom such expressions are cathartic - they hurt people, a lot. I don't believe the sentiments in the post are widely held - most people who are happily using Clojure aren't as vocal. But it doesn't take many arrows to bring someone down.
> Every time I have to process such a diatribe and its aftermath, and its effects on myself, my family, and my co-workers, I have to struggle back from "Why should I bother?", and every time it gets harder to justify to myself and my family that it's worth the time, energy and emotional burden. Every time a community engages with such a diatribe without calling it out, and decrying its tone, the civility of our discourse and treatment of others heads further down the drain.
These are the people who're building the technology we're using, and if something is hurting them and making them not want to go on with their work then that IS bad for technology. You might not care either way for the debate, but no-one should tolerate the tone that the original author used.
Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”
#6"Entitlement" really captures the post Rich is responding to. Objections to the existence of Arachne and spec? Who is Chris Zheng to tell people what to spend their time and money on? And he wants Datomic open sourced. Waaah.
Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”
#7I've read the original article and, to be quite honest, couldn't actually determine what point it was trying to make. The action items seemed to have very little to do with the rest of the rant.
I actually read the response first and the weird thing is: I couldn't really tell you what exactly the response is replying to. I feel like the whole thing is a huge amount of verbiage expressing frustration and broken motives but any actual solid facts mentioned are peripheral at best to what's being said.
I could write multiple pages on how I fell out of love with Clojure but I doubt it would benefit anyone and it'd be a huge pain to do.
Clojure is the product of a singular aesthetic, for better or worse.
Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”
#8I've read the original article and, to be quite honest, couldn't actually determine what point it was trying to make. The action items seemed to have very little to do with the rest of the rant. I actually read the response first and the weird thing is: I couldn't really tell you what exactly the response is replying to. I feel like the whole thing is a huge amount of verbiage expressing frustration and broken motive…
To me the original article read as an expression of frustration - the sort of feelings that are easy to understand but hurtful and frankly stupid to put out in public.
Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”
#9 By the way, Clojurescript is one of the greatest tools I've ever experienced in the software industry. And it is maintained by a real smart guy that gets paid by Cognitect to work on it. Isn't this a case of Cognitect spending money to improve free tools for the world? Which is the opposite of the original article's accusations?
Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”
#10This kind of drama is not healthy for technology. Do yourself a favor and don't waste time reading this, nor the original article it's responding to.
I think Rich Hickey has an excellent point about the hurt that these kind of rants cause to people in the open source community. I can't imagine this guy would ever go up to Rich Hickey and yell "Fuck You" at him in person, but somehow he feels okay about doing it from behind a screen. To quote from the linked post: > And, if you are talking about Clojure, you are talking to me. The indirection doesn't mask the attac…
I actually disagree massively with this point. I love Rich Hickey's work, love Clojure but it's kind of an important principle that you have to be able to separate attacks on ideas or systems from attacks on people. If you identify yourself with an idea and I attack it, it's your responsibility to not take it personally and not a reason for me not to make a statement.
If you can't do that, you can't have debate, or science. You can only have tribalism and identity politics.