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I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

ergoemacs.org

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Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#81

Post by e40 »

_19qg wrote: post #69
wfjackson wrote: post #11

Edit: He seems to have a lot of interest and worked a lot on good documentation, which is the bane of the typical OSS project. Why doesn't Red Hat/Google etc. throw some money at him to write docs for underdocumented OSS stuff? Sounds like win win for all. It's hard to find really smart developers that are interested in writing documentation.[End edit] If you don't really know him, his LinkedIn profile shows more det…

Xah Lee is open source contributor to the LISP communities? Really? Where? He acted as a troll for years in the LISP communities. There is no other contribution I'm aware of. He was more helpful with Emacs.

In the 90's, he was the biggest troll on comp.lang.lisp. I actually found some of his stuff funny. It wasn't like it was hard to tell he was trolling. It was performance art, IMO. I often wonder, though, what strange person was behind it. Now I know, sadly.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#82

Post by louhike »

At the bottom of the page:

"if you can help, paypal to xah@xahlee.org

buy my tutorial:

Buy Xah Emacs Tutorial (http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/buy_xah_emacs_tutorial.html)

Xah's JavaScript Tutorial (http://xahlee.info/js/js.html)

Xah's {Python, Perl, Ruby} Tutorial or buy my entire xahlee.info site content for $50. see ∑ Xah Code (http://xahlee.info/perl-python/index.html)

〔☛ Xah Lee's Resume〕

or, send paypal to this my previous effort to something similar to a kickstart. https://pledgie.com/campaigns/19973

i won't actually be able to draw money from paypal, due to bank/IRS problem. So

better, send your check to:

Huynh Kang at huynh.kang facebook (https://www.facebook.com/huynh.kang) or huynh-kang linkedin (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/huynh-kang/24/8b/535) professor Richard Palais, home page at University of California Irvine http://vmm.math.uci.edu/, Wikipedia Richard Palais, richard-palais on linkedin"

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#83

Post by jgrahamc »

throwaway283719 wrote: post #26

He could start by rewriting his resume. This in particular stands out - Accomplishment highlights: * Autodidact. High school dropout. No degree. To almost any employer, that is not an accomplishment, much less a highlight! If you're a high school dropout who is very accomplished since then, just silently drop any mention of your education from your resume. Everyone will assume that you left it off because it's irrele…

Sad.

A couple of months ago at the Go London User Group a young guy came up to me and told me he didn't have a degree, was totally self taught, and wanted to know if it was even worth him applying to CloudFlare.

I told him to apply.

He started last Monday.

I can only speak for CloudFlare, but educational background is _a component_ of a candidate. But it's only _a component_, it's not everything. We're interested in what people know and what they can do. I honestly look more at people's personalities, employment history and Github than what college degree they have.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#84

Post by nabla9 »

nkozyra wrote: post #17
wfjackson wrote: post #11

Edit: He seems to have a lot of interest and worked a lot on good documentation, which is the bane of the typical OSS project. Why doesn't Red Hat/Google etc. throw some money at him to write docs for underdocumented OSS stuff? Sounds like win win for all. It's hard to find really smart developers that are interested in writing documentation.[End edit] If you don't really know him, his LinkedIn profile shows more det…

Is he a particularly noted person? Maybe just in the emacs community? I don't know who he is and that resume is pretty skimpy. It seems that his biggest need right now is self-presentation and that's a pretty tough thing to acquire on short notice. I'd also say there would likely be way more opportunities for someone of his skillset outside of the valley, where the skimpy resume probably looks even skimpier by compar…

He is known as annoying Usenet troll by many. I don't classify him as pure troll, however. He don't troll for the sake of trolling and he can be helpful. He is very opinionated and argumentative and don't adjust his thinking very well.

He might have mood disorder. http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah.html

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#85

Post by raverbashing »

bluefinity wrote: post #50
akuchling wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lee is a noted Internet crank, very sure he's completely brilliant and everyone else is a moron. I remember his flaming about the quality of the Python documentation, e.g. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-April/310...

Yeah, I have a feeling he might have burned a few bridges. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-April/355...

After reading his original post (of unnecessary expletives and excessive nitpicking) can't say I feel sorry for him

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#86

Post by DanielStraight »

partisan wrote: post #46

I can empathize and I feel bad for anyone in what feels like a helpless and hopeless situation. I sometimes feel like I am there as well despite having "enough" money for a rainy season or two. Some people need to hit rock bottom to even begin to understand that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Manual labor, however humiliating and seemingly beneath him, may give him the proper motivation he seems to be lacki…

I think this explains the vastly different reactions to the author's post. His mental state, I can easily empathize with. So if I focus on that, my reply will be very positive. But at the same time, he is calling the every day experience of something like 1/3 of Americans "as good as dead", which is frankly insulting to those who do it their whole lives and even support families doing it.

Having to do manual labor for minimum wage is not as good as dead, it is an obstacle. And it is an obstacle that many people have overcome.

I wish the author nothing but the best, but his ability to improve his situation is going to depend on his ability to change his attitude regarding work and what he needs to live. I hope he does. I hope he finds something or someone that will push him in the right direction. But that's what he needs, not a monetary handout. Working as a dish washer isn't going to kill him. It hasn't killed the thousands of other people doing it, some of whom are even happy about their lives and hopeful about the future.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#87

Post by throwaway283719 »

jgrahamc wrote: post #83
throwaway283719 wrote: post #26

He could start by rewriting his resume. This in particular stands out - Accomplishment highlights: * Autodidact. High school dropout. No degree. To almost any employer, that is not an accomplishment, much less a highlight! If you're a high school dropout who is very accomplished since then, just silently drop any mention of your education from your resume. Everyone will assume that you left it off because it's irrele…

Sad. A couple of months ago at the Go London User Group a young guy came up to me and told me he didn't have a degree, was totally self taught, and wanted to know if it was even worth him applying to CloudFlare. I told him to apply. He started last Monday. I can only speak for CloudFlare, but educational background is _a component_ of a candidate. But it's only _a component_, it's not everything. We're interested in…

I'm glad that CloudFlare has a sensible approach to hiring, but sadly I think they will be the exception, rather than the rule.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#88

Post by [deleted] »

phkahler wrote: post #5

So you claim to be a decent programmer, but haven't been working a traditional job in years because why? You claim to be smart but don't know the value of maintaining a basic financial safety net. It won't be hard to bail you out, but this should not be happening in the first place. Let it be a lesson to others. Or is this just a fake?

[deleted]

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#90

Post by mercer »

Cases like this, when the talented person in question is a geek who "doesn't interview well," always frustrate me.

Most of my professional success is a result of social skills and a lot of experience with wildly different social environments and cultures. While I do work hard at being actually good at what I do (because that's just more fun!), I could get pretty far as a cruddy developer.

And that just feels unfair, and frustrating. I do understand that social skills matter when you work for a company, in a team, but it often feels like they're way too important (evidence: incompetent people at top positions in companies who primarily excel at manipulation or are extremely socially skilled).

Of course, there's a difference between a geek who just lacks social skills, and a geek who is just not a nice person and also lacks social skills to hide this (or lacks social skills because of this). I've met my share of those.

But even then, it's hard to (fully) blame the person in question. I've met my fair share of arrogant, abrasive, unsympathetic, or misogynistic geeks who seem to have mostly become that as a reaction to having been bullied or ostracized. Often, it's self-defense or just inability, and quite frankly the main reason I didn't turn out that way was because I was in the right place at the right time, and I had wonderful peers who dragged me out of my isolation.

It just sucks. And I wish I could fix that. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to know that you are competent, or even well above average, and still not get the jobs that downright incompetent people seem to have no trouble getting.

(I don't mean to justify 'bad' behavior, by the way, but to a degree understanding where it comes from allows me to still sympathize with, say, a racist.)

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