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

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

ergoemacs.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 315 posts

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

#201

Post by Beanis »

I interviewed/phone screened Xah Lee about 2 years ago.

I'd never heard of him, so I skimmed over his resume and checked out his site an hour or two before the call. I remember when I was looking at his site I was seeing various articles around math and programming, and then articles about things like "2 girls 1 cup". The breadth of articles completely threw me off. He seemed to have this unfocused interest in EVERYTHING. After looking over everything I could I had no idea how we'd be able to use him, but I was really interested in talking with him.

I went into the call expecting a lot of tangents about various topics he was passionate about and thinking I'd constantly have to refocus the conversation. Instead the conversation was pretty boring and not really going anywhere. He had breadth, but the depth was not there. At least not for the things I brought up. I couldn't understand how someone who seemed to be interested in everything could have no real interest in anything.

For the last couple of minutes we talked about his site, and how he maintains/updates it. He finally seemed to light up, and we hit on something he was really interested in talking about. The basics of the site looked like it was just a couple of scripts, a lot of static text files and some emacs. The setup might have been impressive in the mid-to-early 90's, but it wasn't relevant to anything we would have wanted/needed.

The call lasted maybe 20 minutes, and then we wrapped it up. Every topic, other than talking about his site, was a dead-end. My internal feedback at the end was: "No! Maybe... if we were trying to hire encyclopedia writers".

I think his main problem with interviews is that his real-life personality doesn't even come close to his online personality. If I would have gone in expecting the standard slightly-awkward developer interview, things might have gone better. I still would have said no, but it would have been a weaker no.

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

#202

Post by tenfingers »

sanxiyn wrote: post #160
swah wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Erik Naggum, which is considered a troll by many, and also a great writer w/ deep knowledge of programming languagess if can get past the troll part.

Also Jon Harrop. There is no doubt he is trolling, but also no doubt he is a very accomplished programmer. (He may disagree he is trolling, but if audience thinks you are trolling, you are.)

Hah, indeed. I actually brought a copy of OCaml for Scientists and I was surprised when I received basically what looks like a a hand-bound copy. But the book is actually good, and I could recommend it.

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

#203

Post by brudgers »

Writing is thinking and one person's philosophical pondering can be another's trolling, e.g. this post.

Sure trolling is sometimes just being an asshat. But it's also a way of creating diversity. An attempt to deprogram members of a cargo cult. It can be fighting group think and ideological tribalism. I've come to think about trolling as often being an expression of a desire to write - it's very essence is writing something that didn't need to be written and doing so in a way that's tailored to one's audience. Just as sarcasm can be a low form of wit, trolling can be a low form of literature.

If everyone who trolled the Usenet or a mailing list or an online forum was condemned for it, who would be left and would anyone want to read what they had to say.

Xah Lee is a person whose particular genius doesn't fit well into a prefabricated category. But his website expresses a genuine desire to help others by sharing what he knows - and what he knows, he knows really well. There but for the grace of god, go I.

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

#204

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#205

Post by muyuu »

What in the f*.

I've been following this guy since a bit before Orkut/Tribe days when he had full hair (~2003?). He's been very inspirational. At first I thought he was a bit of a jerk and a troll (not the right place or time to elaborate on this, but well this was long ago so it doesn't matter) but when I saw him take on his education in his 30s I was quite impressed with what he achieved.

I think this guy is top drawer and seems hard working. I have no idea what happened to him, although I do guess his peculiar character has a lot to do with it.

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

#206

Post by IanKelling »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #191
nabla9 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yup. I suspect this is the core of his incompatibility with nominal employment in the tech space. I agree with others that perhaps a documentation role on an open source project would be something that would be in demand, but having the tech writer telling the developers they are doing it wrong is not a good recipe for success (and that seems to be a real possibility here).

He was unemployed by choice, not incompatibility. I know he has written quite a bit of good emacs documentation and elisp code, and just that is worth donating for to me.

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

#207

Post by rafekett »

chaired wrote: post #199
rafekett wrote: post #176

Xah needs to seek help for his mental illness. Look at his posts on comp.lang.emacs for evidence. He's been spending all these years on $3 a day trying to figure out a more "ergonomic" keyboard for emacs, but many of his suggestions are really just based on what he wants and are less ergonomic than standard emacs. EDIT: comp.lang.emacs doesn't exist, it's been many years. gnu.emacs.BLAH

Some find this type of labeling helpful. Some find it unhelpful. At any rate, we should probably tread carefully. People with mental illness need jobs as much as, if not more than, those who pass for normal. I know. I have suffered from serious mental issues for 18 years. In that same time, I have enjoyed a long, exciting, and storied career; and I know that my employers have been grateful.

My intention wasn't to label anyone. Xah has been a disruptive and counterproductive presence in the emacs community, but I think it's because he needs help he's not getting. He spent his time in poverty fighting flame wars on usenet -- he needs to get his priorities straight. I buy he's a smart guy who can get a lot done, but he's not employable in his current state, and I don't think the right solution is to give him money so he can continue to live like he does.

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

#208

Post by laurent123456 »

overgard wrote: post #110
mercer wrote: post #90

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,…

I get what you're saying, but I also tend to think: if they're so smart, why not learn some social skills? It's not like being socially awkward has to be an innate thing; they're called social skills for a reason, you can learn them. Many people were once socially awkward, and then fixed it. It's not particularly fair, but social awkwardness does tend to send a signal about what people value. And what a socially awkw…

Perhaps look at it a different way. We all know people who are not good at math. Sure they could spend days, even years, trying to improve their math skills. But even with such a huge time investment, they might be only, say, 10% better at math than when they started.

Was it worth all this effort? Maybe. However most people will think that they should probably have spent their time on something else.

It's pretty much the same situation for socially unfit types - why spend so much time on something they'll never be good at no matter how hard they try. In the end they would just end up being both socially and technically mediocre.

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

#209

Post by mercer »

pekk wrote: post #135
jgrahamc wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you so much for what you did. And for saying this publicly. When your own situation is comfortable it's easy to lose sight of how being unable to get work makes you feel totally worthless and life hardly worth living. It is not right to throw people away and deny them the chance to contribute because they are imperfect in some irrelevant way.

Agreed! I've recently made the decision to try and move beyond my comfortable freelance existence, and instead try and enable 1) those who have trouble functioning in a 'normal' work environment, and 2) those who are starting with no portfolio or degree.

It would make me happier (because what's fun about just living comfortably!), and it might help others. Win-win.

But doing this from within an existing company is perhaps even better

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

#210

Post by chaired »

bestest wrote: post #6

I simply can't resist it, but alas, see what will happen to you if you code in emacs! On the serious note though, he did admit he enjoys procrastinating. Why would I help someone who never had and still does not have any motivation?

One reason you might donate would be if you have compassion. Compassion doesn't need to be deserved in a Puritanical sense.
Post reply on HN