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Hacker News is depressing

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Re: Hacker News is depressing

#391

Post by scott_s »

SCdF wrote: post #317
scott_s wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're new here, so you may think people are downvoting you for what you're saying. They're really downvoting you for how you say it. We try to put a premium on being civil.

You're right (and it's one of the reasons I enjoy reading HN) but it's kind of ironic in this context, isn't it? We're all so good at not telling people to STFU and what-not, but we still have enumerable troubles with entire discussions not being derailed into hate-fests, albeit with some uncharacteristically (for an internet discussion) polite language. Something to think about.

I am thinking about it. Not sure what to do about it, though.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#392

Post by davewiner »

danilocampos wrote: post #316
davewiner wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to hear the true story behind why this guy has such a thing for me. As far as I know we've never met. Something is bothering him. It sure as hell isn't this blog post. Not enough there to make such a big deal about.

The true story isn't anything more than I think your writing would be a whole lot more effective if you weren't so impressed by yourself. Your blog reads like an ongoing hagiography of the sort the North Koreans would write. While that vanity gets tiring, it's not a crime. What's maddening is your lack of intellectually honest engagement of critique on that or any other matter. And your position, implied by your comm…

So now we know you don't respond to critics either! :-)

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#393

Post by tygorius »

mindcrime wrote: post #312
danilocampos wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dave's writing was all about him . I generally respect and understand what you're saying, but this is a unique case. He sought to elevate himself above Mayer by painting her in an unflattering light – timed to coincide with a moment of her prominence. That's tedious.

Dave's writing was all about him. So what? I generally respect and understand what you're saying, but this is a unique case. I don't see anything unique about this, that justifies personal attacks on anybody (Dave Winer or otherwise). I mean, I get that you see Dave's post as constituting an attack of sorts on Marissa, and that you think playing the vengeance card here is supported. But not everybody saw what he wrot…

>> Dave's writing was all about him. > So what? > ... not everybody saw what he wrote as particularly negative towards Marissa, and many (most) of us got that the real point he was making was contained at the very end of the original post, and were quite content to argue that point.

I disagree. I worked as a magazine editor for many years and I was a little shocked at the end, because the "real point" seemed like a sudden left turn out of nowhere. In my opinion his piece would have been more compelling if he'd left out the Marissa Mayer grievance bit and simply used the other story, the one of his post-acquisition realization that his contract naming him the Mac Strategy Guy didn't actually mean anyone would listen to him.

As written the "real point" was obscured. And I see the same pattern in his response post: Relating some story about being misunderstood and unappreciated followed by a face-saving rationale about a larger point. The intellectual points aren't about him, but the illustrative examples all scream "Can you believe these fools wouldn't listen to me?"

In the case of Mayer in particular it seemed a case of exhuming the horse skeleton to give it the proper public thrashing it deserved. I mean, he had one phone-conference with her a decade back and he can now see into her soul and know "At the core she cares not one bit what the users of Tumblr think"? Seriously?

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#394

Post by MartinCron »

yebyen wrote: post #330
MartinCron wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I know that linux kernel devs are not meant to introduce breaking changes into userland, because of the power of his words And I also know that Linus isn't a person with whom I'll never interact on purpose.

Sure, if you want, but I can guarantee that without the flame thread, we would not be hearing about this bad patch at all. As a newbie, I'd be seeking out the Rules/FAQ thread, where I'd hopefully have the patience to read all the way down and find that breaking changes are never good. Some things are important enough to flame over. I grew up on IRC, so I have a thick skin to that, and I've been flamed on my fair sha…

You're actually defending an immature and abusive temper tantrum as a legitimate means of getting attention.

We can do better than this.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#395

Post by barrkel »

gaius wrote: post #384
bjhoops1 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could not agree more. One factor that I think contributes to the Asshole Ethos common among programmers is this idea that great men of genius cannot be held to the same moral standards as mere mortals. This idea, combined with an inflated sense of self-worth, makes for a host of Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds wannabes, convinced that their special nature absolves them from social norms and responsibility. The Raskol…

It has been my privilege in my career to work with some truly talented people, and my misfortunute to work with some whose talents were only in bullshit. I am thinking now of the smartest, by a considerable margin, guy I know, a former cow-orker and a cryptographer. He is the nicest, humblest guy you could hope to meet, he always had time to deal with my stupid questions (I was the only non-PhD in that team). And thi…

What he's done lately? Git.

Two out of three isn't that bad.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#396

Post by gaius »

barrkel wrote: post #395
gaius wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been my privilege in my career to work with some truly talented people, and my misfortunute to work with some whose talents were only in bullshit. I am thinking now of the smartest, by a considerable margin, guy I know, a former cow-orker and a cryptographer. He is the nicest, humblest guy you could hope to meet, he always had time to deal with my stupid questions (I was the only non-PhD in that team). And thi…

What he's done lately? Git. Two out of three isn't that bad.

Sure, git's nice, but there are a dozen, as-good, DVCSs out there. I never said Torvalds wasn't a competent programmer - merely that he is wildly insecure about his technical authority. Alan Cox is 10x the programmer, when does he pick fights with anyone?

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#397

Post by yebyen »

MartinCron wrote: post #394
yebyen wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you want, but I can guarantee that without the flame thread, we would not be hearing about this bad patch at all. As a newbie, I'd be seeking out the Rules/FAQ thread, where I'd hopefully have the patience to read all the way down and find that breaking changes are never good. Some things are important enough to flame over. I grew up on IRC, so I have a thick skin to that, and I've been flamed on my fair sha…

You're actually defending an immature and abusive temper tantrum as a legitimate means of getting attention. We can do better than this.

I'm not talking about getting (personal) attention. I'm talking about making the rules known to everyone, even those who haven't broken them yet. This is something you cannot do with a private phone call, and when you insist and they don't get it, you only have so many options available to make your point.

I honestly haven't read the thread, I'm not defending his particular flame, I'm defending the idea of flames in general. I would assume from all the commentary I've seen though that (the target... Mario?) was defending his breaking change, "it's actually the userland software that's broken" and Linus wanted everyone to know that he was wrong, and there's no defense for breaking changes that affect userland stuff that "used to work."

Have you ever joined Exherbo community? I think it's more like what you want.

It's anything but User Hostile, but there's a mountain of documentation to read when you arrive, you're expected to have read every word _before_ you come to start asking questions, and when I say 'anything but user hostile', I'm not sure I am using the term correctly. It's not user friendly for noobs. It's almost hostile. They don't really curse at you like Linus, but you have to read, and you have to read lots.

I haven't used it in a while, but every time I've gone back after some months, I've found breaking changes or a brand new puzzle to get to first boot, that I couldn't work through without somebody's help. My rating, -1 would not ask for help again, better to live with a broken system that doesn't work until you can know what's wrong for yourself.

Anyway enough about Exherbo. Back to Linux, I was compiling kernels when I was 16 years old, I never joined the mailing list, and it was a good experience. Good old, reliable, make menuconfig. I attribute this to Linus, and Alan Cox, whose kernel patches I often tracked.

I haven't done that in a while, and I stopped keeping up. It didn't take long googling Alan Cox's name to find the words "castigate" and "quits linux development" in the same article. That makes me sad. So I'll concede that maybe you're right.

Re: Hacker News is depressing

#398

Post by lwhi »

lwhi wrote: post #339

In my opinion, many people who are gifted academically suffer damage in childhood - quite a lot of the time this damage is manifested in unfortunate ways .. the human ego is a very active protagonist.

On reflection, that was pretty cynical. I apologise.
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