How Software Companies Die (1995)

Isn't that arguably a part of the anti-bullying push?

"The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato. Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

--Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)

However this reasoning only applies to certain kinds of bullying, such as bullying of gays (and [1] argues it doesn't even apply in this case). Nerds are bullied because of their actual weakness, not because they are different per se. The sub-culture is a response to bullying, not vice versa.

In order to deal with this kind of bullying, we would need a new narrative in which people have an innate tendency towards picking on other people, and that if not kept in check, this can reach to physical violence and other extremes.

[1] http://owldolatrous.livejournal.com/14079.html

I don't find Zed's views on programming to be terribly insightful either. I have a hunch that one directly leads to the other. I watched a talk he did about Javascript, several times, making sure I understood what he was saying when he was calling it a pile of shit, and walked away with the realization that Zed either didn't understand basic OOP, or did at some point then decided that it wasn't sexy anymore. Because all the problems he found could be easily fixed with basic SOLID techniques.

I have a hunch that his "Learn XXX the hard way" books wouldn't be very helpful either, the tone set in the title indicates to me that instead of translating good principles to code, he's going to beat us over the head with a bottom-up approach to learning a language rather than the saner way.

All of this points to Zed as someone trying to fit the world to his personality, rather than trying to truly understand the world as it is. His first response to some programming thing not fitting in with the way he thinks it should is to lambast it as stupid, this goes with languages, other developers, pretty much anything.

Now, that's not exactly "Zed's cocky, so everything he says sucks," but what it does mean is that unless you have Zed's personality, you're not going to get much out of what he has to say. Because you won't approach problems the same way he does.

Personally I prefer Giles Bowkett, whose tone and personality doesn't get in the way of his ideas. When something gets in his way, he works around it (with a small amount of cursing) rather than call it shit for 30 minutes. His books solve problems rather than creates them.

So while criticizing a person's personality isn't, by itself, the way to enlightenment, you shouldn't completely ignore such things, either. Because if you look closely enough, these traits will point to the deeper problems with their ideas that you do need to come to a fuller understanding.