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My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

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Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#181

Post by danparsonson »

nmaio wrote: post #166
khafra wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-infectious ignorance can be left alone. A state senator with a PR platform, using it to spread ignorance of a sort that ruins millions of lives, cannot be left alone in good conscience. You have a moral obligation to be less wrong: http://www.wrongbot.com/2011/02/27/stop-being-wrong-a-moral-...

Regardless of reach, I still don't believe attacking or embarrassing someone is the answer. My conscience is better off letting someone have a right to their own opinion (albeit a poor one), rather than attacking them for it. In other words, I'd rather choose to understand where their point of view is coming from and accept it, than to try and change it.

I agree with you in the sense of allowing people the space to disagree, but in this particular case, someone's bad opinion, if left unchallenged, could result in other people going to jail. It's the principle of reciprocity.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#182

Post by spc476 »

ZeroMinx wrote: post #27
agentultra wrote: post #11

It's true. I don't know how many times I've watched eager hackers get lambasted for "reinventing the wheel," or "don't bother doing it yourself, you'll just screw it up -- someone has probably done it already and did it better than you could." This happens most often at the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship. The business advice is that it's cheaper to buy it than build it. The engineer's perspective is…

> I don't know how many times I've watched eager hackers get lambasted for "reinventing the wheel," Depends on context.. If it's someone learning, or hacking on some personal project, go ahead! It's a great way to learn. However, if we're talking about a programmer in a commercial company, it's a different story. Your purpose is not to produce the most amount of your own code, your task is to produce a service of som…

Well, at work, we were using C-Ares (a C-based DNS resolving library) for two different projects and both were mired in problems involving said library; race conditions, having to add support for NAPTR records (I checked about half a dozen different DNS resolving libraries and none supported decoding that record).

Even though it wasn't part of my job description, I wrote my own DNS resolving library over a weekend that better matched what our needs were. It was just as fast, easier to integrate (since it made fewer assumptions about network usage), and the runtime memory footprint of at lease one project dropped from 15M to less than 400k, due to my "reinvented" wheel. Had I not done that (back in November) we still would probably be fighting with C-Ares today in both projects.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#183

Post by huertanix »

Tycho wrote: post #45

The worst part is the practice of deliberately trying to make someone feel bad about themselves over a discussion about iPods or something. What sort of person does that? Thankfully I hardly ever see it on HN, but elsewhere it's rife.

You see it a lot between iOS and Android camps. I get flak from Android fanboys constantly and I don't even use an iPhone. If each system was so perfect, there wouldn't be a need for anyone to prove anything. We're pitted into camps of imperfect systems in which each side is perfectly aware of their side's flaws but avoid the geek-sin of admitting they use something less than perfect by only pointing out everything wrong with the "other side" rather than admitting that everything is broken and telling Google and Apple about it instead.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#184

Post by swix »

jokermatt999 wrote: post #160
swix wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably have one of the most poisonous perspectives one can have in this type of thing, this is exactly why the world sucks. There _NEVER_ is a reason to give "harsh" feedback, go read some kevin pollak or study psychology, humans are not "dogs" giving harsh or stupid feedback wont change the broken product. Offer your help, "Holy shit dude you have a XSS/SQLI in there, lets fix that up before you get in trouble…

That last line is completely unnecessary, and rather ironic considering you were chastising someone for harsh feedback.

It was by design, what do you expect if you are "One of those people", that you can be harsh to everyone and everyone is supposed to be polite and delightful towards you?

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#186

Post by derleth »

dexen wrote: post #116
ScottBurson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What the heck is a 4/2 split? OT, but in case you're actually wondering, it refers to the number of cards of a given suit held by each of the defenders. In bridge, there are four players, conventionally called North, East, South, and West; after the auction, one player becomes declarer; let's say that's South. In this case, North, across the table, is dummy, and East and West, on either side, are defenders. Dummy's…

Thanks, now I understand why I should stick to Texas hold 'em for now ;-)

Reminds me of this Discworld quote:

    "DID YOU SAY HUMANS PLAY IT FOR FUN?"
    "Some of them get to be very good at it, yes. I'm only an amateur, I'm afraid"
    "BUT THEY ONLY LIVE EIGHTY OR NINETY YEARS!"
            - Death discusses the difficulties of bridge
http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Quotes/Popular/SciFi/Ter...

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#187

Post by jrwoodruff »

DanI-S wrote: post #67
MrJagil wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone please explain the logic behind "condescending feedback = insecurity"? And I mean that sincerely. I have been thinking about this for a long time now, and I just cannot come up with any supporting evidence to explain the corelation. It might sound like a stupid request, but I think it is a hard argument to make totally water proof.

I see it this way: The only reason to give condescending feedback is to demonstrate your superiority over the person you're criticizing. If you truly wanted to be helpful, you'd be giving helpful feedback. If you were truly confident in your own abilities, you wouldn't feel the need to demonstrate your superiority.

I've heard stories that Steve Jobs can often be a condescending asshole. I'm certain the same is true for other highly accomplished folks as well; if condescension were linked to confidence, wouldn't highly accomlished individuals such as this be amazingly generous and helpful?

I think the bit about superiority may be true: it is a way to demonstrate superiority, but I don't believe that immediately indicates low confidence.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#188

Post by gnaritas »

joliss wrote: post #81
gnaritas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have experienced much better anger reduction when actually chatting amiably Great for you, but not everyone is you; some people need to vent to feel better.

I seem to recall that there are studies showing that venting isn't an effective tool to make you feel better, despite the popular "catharsis" meme. I can't find them right now, but here's a quote: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/a-few-more-things-pop-psychology-h... In any case, if somebody feels the need to vent, I hope they don't do it where I end up reading them. ^^

It doesn't matter if it's effective or not (I agree that's it's not), people vent because they feel it helps them. Feelings are generally stronger than logic, even when they lead you down the wrong path. Most people are ruled by their emotions, not by their rational mind. Showing someone a study that says their feelings are wrong, will rarely, if ever, convince them to change how they feel.

BTW, I'm not a venter, and I wasn't talking about me when I said some people.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#189

Post by redthrowaway »

DanI-S wrote: post #67
MrJagil wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone please explain the logic behind "condescending feedback = insecurity"? And I mean that sincerely. I have been thinking about this for a long time now, and I just cannot come up with any supporting evidence to explain the corelation. It might sound like a stupid request, but I think it is a hard argument to make totally water proof.

I see it this way: The only reason to give condescending feedback is to demonstrate your superiority over the person you're criticizing. If you truly wanted to be helpful, you'd be giving helpful feedback. If you were truly confident in your own abilities, you wouldn't feel the need to demonstrate your superiority.

I think this is more a matter of tact than anything. People with good social skills know that constructive feedback demonstrates authority and skill better than condescending feedback. Those who are prone to condescending feedback especially know this, but lack the grace and tact to act on it. That makes them more anxious and more insecure, which in turn increases the lashing-out behaviour.

I think the sad fact of the matter is that many geeks just have poor social skills. While some are content to just be quiet, others feel the need to overcompensate. Luckily, I haven't met too many of the latter in real life, but you see it everywhere on the Internet. The dehumanizing nature of interacting with a computer screen seems to absolve people of their need to act socially, so they act like fuckwits. On 4chan it takes the form of blatant aggression, although anyone familiar with the place knows it's all part of the joke. On reddit people make snarky replies that make up for their lack of content with the sharpness of their barbs. Here on HN it's more muted. While no one is a blatant asshole, there's a lot more "downvote and ignore" that goes on. This contributes hugely to the hivemind effect, because there aren't arguments given as to why someone is wrong, you just have comments that don't jive with the rest of the community getting hidden. This, in turn, causes people to self-moderate, so that they only post opinions they think the rest of the community will agree with. Obviously these are oversimplifications, and the issues I mention aren't particularly common, they're just how the same issue manifests itself in the different communities.

Re: My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

#190

Post by hardy263 »

dexen wrote: post #22
agentultra wrote: post #11

It's true. I don't know how many times I've watched eager hackers get lambasted for "reinventing the wheel," or "don't bother doing it yourself, you'll just screw it up -- someone has probably done it already and did it better than you could." This happens most often at the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship. The business advice is that it's cheaper to buy it than build it. The engineer's perspective is…

There is reinventing the wheel and reinventing the wheel. It's cute when a person, learning as she goes, comes up with something that's been already invented. Only goes to show she understands the field. [1] It's unbelievably irritating when something that was widely implemented 10 or 20 or 30 years ago (and then even improved significantly) is now asserted as the next big thing. C'mon, be serious -_-' [2] [1] a nice…

[2]http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract Well, not really 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. More like 400 years ago.
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