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Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”

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Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”

#11

Post by hellofunk »

zimablue wrote: post #10
vosper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

If you read the additional comments in the original article, comments by the same author, you can see that Rich is directly addressing those when he identifies himself with the system.

Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”

#12

Post by WillPostForFood »

zimablue wrote: post #10
vosper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I agree but only when the "attack" is within civil bounds, which the original blog post crossed(). Otherwise you create a situation where people can attack people while hiding behind the claim they are attacking idea. It doesn't help conversation to support saying Fuck Feminism, but I have no beef with Feminists.

I believe the original post that Rich Hickey is responding to was more a misguided attempt at humor and being provocative than an actual serious attack.

Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”

#13

Post by bpicolo »

hellofunk wrote: post #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?

Agreed - Clojurescript is a ton of fun on the frontend!

Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”

#15

Post by sneak »

falsedan wrote: post #14

I get that this is important to the Lisp crew, but is this at all relevant to the general audience of HN? What's the takeaway: avoid Closure because of one drama? Rich is right about everything? Copmuters are terrible?

The first version of HN was written in a dialect of Lisp. I can think of no messageboard on the ‘net for which Lisp-related stuff is more topical.

Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”

#16

Post by grzm »

falsedan wrote: post #14

I get that this is important to the Lisp crew, but is this at all relevant to the general audience of HN? What's the takeaway: avoid Closure because of one drama? Rich is right about everything? Copmuters are terrible?

My takeaway is treat people well, appreciate the community you choose to participate in, spend reflecting on your role within it and whether it's a good fit for you any longer, and recognize that if it isn't, that it's okay to move on. But again, treat people well.

Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”

#17

Post by eropple »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #12
zimablue wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I agree but only when the "attack" is within civil bounds, which the original blog post crossed( ). Otherwise you create a situation where people can attack people while hiding behind the claim they are attacking idea. It doesn't help conversation to support saying Fuck Feminism, but I have no beef with Feminists. I believe the original post that Rich Hickey is responding to was more a misguided attempt at humor and…

> I believe the original post that Rich Hickey is responding to was more a misguided attempt at humor and being provocative than an actual serious attack.

Really? It seemed very earnest--jerkish, but earnest--to me.

Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”

#18

Post by abiox »

zimablue wrote: post #10
vosper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> it's your responsibility

is it? solely? so-called "debate" is a two way street, right?

sometimes "attacks" are sloppy and vicious, and it's a bit entitled to expect other people to pick apart your messaging to glean the signal in the noise.

as humans, communication is a physiological process. pretending it's cold machinery rarely ends well.

Re: Rich Hickey's response to “On whose authority?”

#19

Post by saosebastiao »

hellofunk wrote: post #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?

Maybe it has gotten better in the last year or so, but I’ve been extremely disappointed in a) the scope of semantics divergence between Clojure and clojurescript, and b) the performance of clojurescript for anything larger than toy examples. After reading a blog post about scalajs[0], I came away pretty convinced that battle would be uphill. It’s just too hard to replicate one dynamic language’s semantics in another dynamic language without embedding huge and slow runtimes along with it.

[0] http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/FromfirstprinciplesWhyIbetonScal...

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