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

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

#651

Post by mturmon »

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…

> "that's called being an asshole"

There's a difference between "being an asshole" and "sometimes acting like an asshole". We all do the second thing sometimes.

A snarky comment and a bad apology may be an instance of the second thing. But they don't imply the first.

Compare another toxic noun, "racist". There's a difference between "being a racist" and "making a racist comment". If people could apologize for the latter when it happens, understanding that it does not imply the former, the world would be a better place.

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

#652

Post by petdance »

donohoe wrote: post #601
petdance wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we not be critical on the internet any more? You can, but why? What good is served?

Start with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism#Purpose_of_criticism

If the original comments about replace were motivated by "Diagnosis and error correction" or "Improvement", I don't see it.

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

#653

Post by jakebellacera »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #586
jcampbell1 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death, prison, and felony convictions are not the same as public ridicule and hurt feelings. Only a nazi would equate such things. What?

HN's collective reading comprehension seems to have dipped lately. Fortunately, pg is usually concise enough that we can use this as an exercise: "Maybe before..." "before" merely implies order. It does not mean "instead of". It means, "this first, then that." "...federal prosecutors are unsympathetic assholes..." The subject here is not jail sentences or felony convictions or legal antics. The subject here is sympat…

jcampbell1 and pg are bringing up a conversation from a another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5110270.

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

#654

Post by Dylan16807 »

nollidge wrote: post #647
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.

That's fine, but saying "this code makes my eyes bleed" is very obviously meant to demean the human being who wrote the code, not the code itself.

I honestly don't see that. It insults their coding ability, or at least their focus when coding that particular thing, but disparaging a single skill that a person has is not being demeaning to that person. At least in my mind.

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

#655

Post by efuquen »

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.

"If the author was named Henry instead of Heather"

I'm going to have to strongly disagree, I honestly didn't know the author was a girl until I saw the name, well after I had read comments and was intrigued overall with the topic. I think the jump to misogyny or gender bias is a bit premature, but I can't really offer up much evidence other then my own perceptions and interpretations of what I've read.

Simply put, the topic is really interesting in itself and hasn't really been discussed much on HN in this specific way, unless I've missed some previous threads. I think add the fact that the negative comments were from some decently well known people, which all responded to it as well, and I think you have all the explanation you need for it being a popular post outside of any sort of need to resort to guys going to to a girls defence explanation.

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

#656

Post by achompas »

papsosouid wrote: post #618
tptacek wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think Paul Graham doesn't know the difference between someone being insulted on Twitter and someone being threatened with federal prison time? You don't think maybe it's you that are missing something, and not him? Because if my response to something he wrote depending on him not noticing the difference between prison and twitter, I would worry that I was missing something. No, wait, I wouldn't; I like…

He can still make a fallacious and ignorant comment while being aware of the difference.

The probability that he, or any other decent, civilized person, would make that comment is very, very low. Let's admit that parent, GP etc. are trying to pick on pg and move on.

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

#657

Post by gknoy »

pc86 wrote: post #559
calinet6 wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bound to be an unpopular opinion, but why exactly does anyone have to apologize? He's absolutely right. Criticism comes from every corner, especially in the software world. Your code stands for itself. Simple as that. And I tell this to almost every programmer I work with at some point or another. If they have an emotional response to a code review, or criticism of any kind—"Code is never personal. Whatever I…

> Code is never personal. Whatever I say about your code has nothing to do with you. I've heard this repeated ad nauseum (not just in this thread) and I think it's total crap. You cannot tell me that if you spend dozens of hours writing something then someone comes along and goes line by line telling you how what you wrote is an abomination that you're not going to have an emotional response. If that's the case it ha…

Of course the code we write is deeply personal. I think that what he means, however, is that the _criticism_ of code he gives is based solely on the code itself, and doesn't contain any inherent bias based on the author. He's saying "this code is crap" because of objective reasons that he (in theory) holds himself and others to as well, not because he thinks the author is a bad programmer.

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

#658

Post by donohoe »

columbo wrote: post #615
donohoe wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a ton of files on github and gist, most of them are absolute crap. Honest question: Is it okay for someone else to say (without swearing or making personal jabs) in public that it is also crap? And again, to emphasize, this is a sincere question.

I don't think it's possible to answer without getting into a debate about community, morality and ethics. There's no way to distill this down to a "unit test". Will it bother me? Maybe, depends on who it is. XxHackerPants420xX's tweet of 'Columbo is teh code suxxor' wouldn't bother me as much as pg choosing to write a personal blog post titled 'ode to Columbo's shitty github account'. Is it okay? Meh. It isn't a comm…

I understand. I didn't mean it as a unit test, more a litmus test.

And I agree - constructive criticism trumps criticism.

  Is it okay? Meh. It isn't a community I'd want to be part of
Also agree. However I'm unease about people flogged in public over generic criticisms. I think its important that people can say things (yeah, even mean things) since sometimes its warranted.

I'd prefer we save the public flogging to those that step over a hard-to-define line. I don't think that line was crossed in his case.

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

#659

Post by jff »

jondot wrote: post #371

I wish the guys involved would submit pull requests to amend what they thought was so bad. It has a better educational and apologetic value. It also shows the kind of respect people should get; if you don't like the code you're seeing on Github, improve it and submit a pull request - why not?

Submitting pull requests is for code you actually consider worthwhile/useful. These guys didn't seem to think it even has a reason to exist, so why would they try to improve it? It'd be like saying, "Well, if you don't like my toothbrush for ducks, why don't you tell me how to improve it?"

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

#660

Post by papsosouid »

achompas wrote: post #656
papsosouid wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can still make a fallacious and ignorant comment while being aware of the difference.

The probability that he, or any other decent, civilized person, would make that comment is very, very low. Let's admit that parent, GP etc. are trying to pick on pg and move on.

He did make it. It is still there, you can read it. I am not sure what you are trying to convey.
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