Regardless of whether Zed's tone in the first post was too harsh or not, I think everything from "Guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby" onwards was just fanning the flames unnecessarily.
"Please take this down and write your own book."
21–30 of 178 posts
Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."
#22At some level, you have to love zed. He gives and gives to the world, and the world just craps on him. Of course, I have a feeling that his personal brand isn't going to be helped by this exchange.
I've been disappointed with the tone of some of Zed's comments here on HN, but this one struck me as perfectly polite and reasonable. His brand quality just got a big boost for me. I appreciate principles. Not everyone has to like every brand, and appealing to the least common denominator isn't always the best strategy.
Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."
#23At some level, you have to love zed. He gives and gives to the world, and the world just craps on him. Of course, I have a feeling that his personal brand isn't going to be helped by this exchange.
I would disagree about his personal brand, actually. I think that this is an example of Zed -- part and parcel. (And let me say right from the start, I love this guy's work and all that he brings to the table.) Zed has given immense amounts of code and work to the web community as a whole. It would be characteristically unlike Zed to not defend his work from what he views (and many others, I assume, including myself)…
* I, for one, appreciate someone who is so passionate about their work that they go to such lengths to defend it.*
The ironic thing is that Zed's letter is similar to Bill Gates's letter to hobbyists 30 years, yet Bill has been historically flamed by the hacker community (requiring me to pay for software, is a larger crime than me stealing it). I wonder if identity politics play a larger role than ethical admiration.
Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."
#24This was originally posted by martinemde looking for support and then flagged down here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1873881
Perhaps because of the provocative title. I actually think that it shows even less class from martinemde, that he posted that himself.
Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."
#25This is a good illustration of how tone doesn't come across well in writing. Reading the comment by the original author, it sounded like a friendly request to please take the content down. The guy whose site it was clearly didn't see it that way and responded as though he'd been viscously attacked. He ends up coming across as quite angry, when more likely he was just rattled and feeling defensive. I guess the takeawa…
The problem with Zed's response, IMO, is the end. Where he says to the guy to have some class and use his own words. While I completely get what Zed is saying about asking permission. I don't think that "porting" a book is lacking class. It may turn out to be a futile effort, but in many ways I saw it as a tribute and maybe learning exercise. It would be a blast to do SICP in Java. For Java programmers the process of…
A learning exercise, maybe, but "porting" this book to Ruby is a bad idea. Ruby isn't Python, and it's "Learn Python the Hard Way", not "Learn Programming the Hard Way". It's a book tailored to a specific language, and created to teach that language... which is the point Zed makes.
Had Python simply been the language used to teach basic programming concepts, then yeah, I could understand. While I haven't read LPTHW, if it had a section on, say, threading and the GIL - then simply porting the demo code to Ruby would at best be confusing, and at worst thoroughly put a programmer off Ruby.
Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."
#26This is Zeeed Shaaaaw!!!
I have never met the guy, but I surely hope that I get the privilege some day, even if he just picks on me and tells me that my work is worthless piece of junk and that if it implodes in a second it would be a service to the world - because that might be single most insightful and sincere analysis one might receive.
Kudos to anyone with a pair, that is capable of speaking their mind in today's "politically correct" world ridden with hypocrisy.
Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."
#27This was originally posted by martinemde looking for support and then flagged down here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1873881
"I messaged you on Twitter and contacted you by email to try to give you knowledge of it. I was quite public about doing it as a _why day project. I made a good faith effort to let you know what I was working on. I even knew you were working on having a learn code the hard way thing and I wanted to contribute but there's no clear outline of your goals or how you expect people to contribute. This is my understanding of what you'd expect for contribution."
I tend to support the martinemde here. It seems he tried contact and was ignored. As much as Zed's coding skills are respected (I never looked into his code myself, but I trust my peers) I have to wonder if they are worth his toxicity.
"have some class", "guys like you are the reason I stopped doing Ruby", "Ruby hippie"... Come on...
Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."
#28This is a good illustration of how tone doesn't come across well in writing. Reading the comment by the original author, it sounded like a friendly request to please take the content down. The guy whose site it was clearly didn't see it that way and responded as though he'd been viscously attacked. He ends up coming across as quite angry, when more likely he was just rattled and feeling defensive. I guess the takeawa…
I think the bigger takeaway is that martinemde should've realized he was in the wrong.
Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with Zed's response, IMO, is the end. Where he says to the guy to have some class and use his own words. While I completely get what Zed is saying about asking permission. I don't think that "porting" a book is lacking class. It may turn out to be a futile effort, but in many ways I saw it as a tribute and maybe learning exercise. It would be a blast to do SICP in Java. For Java programmers the process of…
I doubt that would have helped. Being caught infringing on someone's copyright is embarrassing to say the least. Embarrassment and being given advice, no matter how well-meaning, will often not go down well. In fact, many people get extra annoyed when you're nice about this sort of thing. I think Zed's initial approach was a close approximation of the best way to handle this. Although I probably would have left it at…
> In fact, many people get extra annoyed when you're nice about this sort of thing.
My guilty pleasure at work is reading support emails. There are a few gems like that in the system.
Re: "Please take this down and write your own book."
#30But honestly Zed, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy I just didn't "lift" your whole book and put my name on it!
I hope sarcasm is intended here, if so- that's funny.
Certainly it is intended to be sarcasm, but it's a meme that we should try to resist. Rather than regurgitating a reference to show cool insider status, we should look at the situation and reflect on how it is the same and how it is different. Flag it and move on.