Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

harthur.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 826 posts

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#621

Post by timinman »

mpyne wrote: post #543
timinman wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly not Twitter's fault. Lately, the open source community's underbelly has been exposed. "But open source is right and we are the good guys?!", or... "But I know those guys and they are usually really cool!" We want to categorize people as being bad or good, and it messes with our brain when we think we may have to re-categorize. It's more useful to realize that we all have a capacity to do both good and…

> Lately, the open source community's There is no "open source hivemind" so please don't disparage the millions of open source coders who will never make the frontpage of HN by lumping the entire conglomerate into one community.

Sorry, I didn't mean to disparage open source or people creating open source software - I love it!. The point I was trying to make was that even people with good ideals are fallible.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#622

Post by papsosouid »

kyro wrote: post #505
paisawalla wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just rudeness that triggers this response -- it's when someone displays a severe doesn't get it moment. The most significant moment on HN I've had of this is when someone tried to argue that sexism can't exist in tech because there's a Wikipedia page that lists 50 women with significant contributions to the field. That sort of thing makes me wonder, if after 20-40 years of being part of our society, that is…

This is exactly it. Time and time again you see large groups of people in this community exhibiting behaviors that show that they are unaware of normal social and societal conventions, and an inability to relate and sympathize/empathize with others.

No, you see that. I see different social groups having different social conventions. The fact that you can't imagine how someone in a different social group could possibly not follow the social standards you deem correct speaks only of you, not of them.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#623

Post by talmand »

citricsquid wrote: post #77
bmmayer1 wrote: post #70

For years I have been terrified about putting my code on Github for fear of rage and retribution from the programmer community. This is a real problem for us amateur coders who enjoy hacking but don't necessarily have the chops to go head-to-head with the serious guys.

Likewise. I finally gathered the courage to start open sourcing code recently, I figure that if the code I'm writing is shit then it's going to be shit whether it's on my hard drive or on github and the advantages of having code out there are worth the potential ridicule... but still I find myself prefacing everything with a disclaimer, "I was tired when I wrote this" or "This isn't the best code" just to give myself…

You shouldn't write those type of things. I mean, you can comment about potential problems in the code and whatnot, but don't disclaimer your code like that before anyone even complains about it.

Most of the "your code sucks" comments is based more around you didn't do things like they would have. Such as:

"You didn't use OO principles the way I interpret them so you suck."

"You used that library/framework/language that I hate so you suck."

"You're not coding in my *nix flavor with my choice of IDE so you suck."

"Your project does something I already do with this other project so you suck."

Rarely do I see actual constructive comments on how the person in question can get better. At this point I'd rather communicate with a bunch of nobodies and learn together than follow somebodies that ridicule someone for trying.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#624

Post by protomyth »

papsosouid wrote: post #608
protomyth wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You might as well just install GNU sed in BSD if that's the problem" Often not possible depending on what authorizations and hosting you have.

What are you talking about? Yes, GNU bloatware is massive and hideous, but it is still far easier to install than javascript + framework + package manager + package. If you don't have the ability to run binaries in ~/bin then you can't use this sed alternative either.

I took it that I already had node.js installed because that's what we were using. Asking for a replacement for an already existing sed is probably not going to happen.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#625

Post by illuminate »

catwell wrote: post #357
quasque wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a strong undercurrent of misogyny involved here, motivating their incivility and rudeness.

Accusing everybody criticizing a woman of sexism is certainly not helping. They almost certainly didn't know she is a woman. Moreover Steve Klabnik at least is a widely known ally ( http://confreaks.com/videos/1089-madisonruby2012-anti-opress... )

"Accusing everybody criticizing a woman of sexism is certainly not helping."

It's not that they're criticizing a woman, it's ~how~ they go about it.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#626

Post by dpark »

chaostheory wrote: post #585
Dylan16807 wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't matter if it's unconstructive. He's not talking to the author of the code. I still don't see how being snarky, or god forbid considering being snarky, makes you an asshole. It's just some code; he's not insulting anybody.

Insulting someone's code is like insulting someone's kid. The guy probably feels he put a lot of thought and hard work into it. It's not that hard to give constructive feedback as opposed to being an asshole.

> "Insulting someone's code is like insulting someone's kid."

You are way too attached to your code.

. . .

What these guys said was still extremely rude.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#627

Post by [deleted] »

brazzy wrote: post #541
moe wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really not see the difference between Linus Torvalds recalibrating a kernel contributor and three nobodies of questionable "conference-fame" picking on a random stranger?

No, I don't see why there should be different standards for civility in the two situations.

[deleted]

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#628

Post by papsosouid »

protomyth wrote: post #624
papsosouid wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Yes, GNU bloatware is massive and hideous, but it is still far easier to install than javascript + framework + package manager + package. If you don't have the ability to run binaries in ~/bin then you can't use this sed alternative either.

I took it that I already had node.js installed because that's what we were using. Asking for a replacement for an already existing sed is probably not going to happen.

You don't need to ask unless /home is mounted noexec. It seems rather absurd to assume a seldom used and rather massive ecosystem of language, libs, framework and package manager are installed, but that it is impossible to upload a copy of gsed to ~/bin. The number of shared hosting environments where you can't run your own code, and you already have node installed is miniscule.

And although its getting a bit off-topic at this point, doing replacements directly in the file isn't even a good idea. The standard "move $file to $file.backup, run sed against $file.backup and pipe it into $file" method is not just recommended because it is portable, it also saves your ass when you messed up your search+replace and broke all your files.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#629

Post by illuminate »

steveplace wrote: post #511
quasque wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a strong undercurrent of misogyny involved here, motivating their incivility and rudeness.

I don't want to be the one to say it, but it hasn't yet been mentioned in this thread. If the author was named Henry instead of Heather, this wouldn't make front page or have a comment thread full of white knights. That doesn't make the critics right in their aggressiveness, and people overall should be nicer.

Using the phrase "white knights" as a gender-based insult for people sticking up to bully-behavior is pretty unnecessary and reflects poorly on you. There's no need to bully the bullied further because you feel some sort of nonexistent imbalance.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#630

Post by MartinCron »

dos1 wrote: post #537
Dylan16807 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry what? If you even consider saying that code is like an existing project but not good, or implying that a piece of code is badly written, you're an asshole!? Don't you think you're taking this a bit far?

He didn't merely say the project "wasn't good", he implied it in a snarky, very unconstructive way. Here's his quote from twitter: > Ever wanted to make sed or grep worse? http://github.com/harthur/replace In the world I live in, that's called being an asshole. Look, I'm not saying these guys should apologize (in fact, if this is how they apologize it's probably best they don't), I'm simply stating that they're dicks…

in fact, if this is how they apologize it's probably best they don't

That's a beautiful bit of writing and thinking, right there :)

Post reply on HN