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

Dear Paul

zedshaw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 184 posts

Re: Dear Paul

#41

Post by [deleted] »

_RPM wrote: post #16
aikah wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be surprised if that news doesn't get flagged and killed(not by me I have no stakes in this). This an old a complicated story about people with ego being a jerks to one another especially in the Rails world. Rails used to be the new shiny stuff everybody wanted a piece of it because loads of $$$ so everybody started to be mean and tried to kill other's consultancy for greed. But the internet doesn't forget so…

> I’ll add one more thing to the people reading this: I mean business when I say I’ll take anyone on who wants to fight me. You think you can take me, I’ll pay to rent a boxing ring and beat your fucking ass legally. Remember that I’ve studied enough martial arts to be deadly

[deleted]

Re: Dear Paul

#42

Post by cookiecide »

ghshephard wrote: post #12

I've read HN almost every day for the last 7 years. In that seven years, I don't recall ever reading a post that said something particularly slanderous about Zed. I have seen post after post about his Learning XXX the hard way, and, in fact, I've even purchased at least one as a result. The one thing different about HN is that if you even slightly start to get overly negative on a post, you are downvoted into oblivio…

I thought his point was mostly about the credibility and influence carried by negative comments on HN - probably thanks to both its link to YC and the presence of highly regarded industry figures in the comments. So a negative comment on HN might have a more tangible effect on the man's professional life compared to a negative comment on, say, reddit.

Disclaimer: I honestly don't know how bad things used to be. By the time I started visiting HN in earnest, dang et al. were in charge, so I'm assuming a fair bit of moderation takes place now.

Re: Dear Paul

#43

Post by rtpg »

scrollaway wrote: post #21
rtpg wrote: post #18

The core point of this (people are jerks, especially on HN) has been a recurring theme ever since the new mods have showed up on HN, trying to clean up our act. Things seem a lot better than a year ago, and I try extremely hard to assume good faith from people on the other side of the screen when replying to comments (helps my mood a lot). But this suffers from the same thing everything I read from Shaw: such strong…

It's very inconsistent. Replace "Paul Graham" by "John Doe", "Hacker News" by "Kernel driver" and "Zed Shaw" by "Linus Torvalds" and the commentary becomes "hihi oh my, that is some funnily crass imagery". Language is just language. Crass language exaggerates a point, an emotion. If the underlying point is poor in the first place, the only thing swearing does is amplify how stupid the whole thing is.

For the record, I think Linus' usage of crass language is just as pointless. It's totally possible to show that you're pissed without demanding that someone be shot or aborted.

Language is not "just" language, there's underlying nuance, history in usage of an expression, and overall context. There are degrees, of course, but when you start offending a large portion of your potential audience _solely_ because of the words you choose, it might be important to consider how you say things.

Though that language usage might be part of one' objective, I think Linus' objectives is furthering the development of Linux, not the advancement of cutting-edge English language insults.

Re: Dear Paul

#44

Post by thaumaturgy »

Disappointing to see this at 139 points in under an hour (and still going...). It's just a lot of bile.

I like Zed when he's talking about software development. I like tptacek when he's talking about cryptography or money or cooking or any of the other several subjects he's reasonably skilled in. I like pg when he's talking about startups.

All of them are capable of getting their hackles up, getting in fights, saying things they shouldn't, or talking with authority outside their expertise. It happens.

But we shouldn't be feeding this kind of drama. pg isn't going to shut down HN because it hurt zed's feelings, zed has just introduced me and probably a bunch of other people to some video that I'd never heard about before (that I'm not going to bother tracking down), and hopefully whenever whatever's bothering zed now passes, he'll reconsider at least some of what he wrote.

Also, it's sort of odd that it was directed to pg, considering pg has made exactly one comment on HN in the last year. (...which, to me, is pretty much the severest possible indictment of the HN community, though maybe I'm reading more into it than I should.)

I'm flagging this. I know we're not supposed to say when we're flagging things, but I don't want zed getting the impression that it was pg that suppressed this. No, it was little ol' me, and, hopefully, a few other folks here.

Re: Dear Paul

#45

Post by ratfacemcgee »

getsat wrote: post #40
ratfacemcgee wrote: post #31

wait, he's upset cause something got posted to HN? why is he upset with Paul? That's like someone getting the shits with Gutenberg because a newspaper printed something.

It's more like being mad at the owner of a particular newspaper for allowing/turning a blind eye to/actively encouraging certain kinds of content to be printed in said newspaper. Your analogy would fit if Zed was directing his post at the creator of the "online forum" in general.

ahh good point.

Re: Dear Paul

#46

Post by john2x »

aikah wrote: post #9
kainolophobia wrote: post #2

I randomly found this after clicking on that other C link today (Don't learn C the wrong way or something), only to realize that I had no idea what I was reading but to note that it had just been posted. A quick overview made me realize this would reach the top of HN and that I no longer cared about the argument within. As an industry of people at the forefront of technology, why do we try to hurt each other?

I would be surprised if that news doesn't get flagged and killed(not by me I have no stakes in this). This an old a complicated story about people with ego being a jerks to one another especially in the Rails world. Rails used to be the new shiny stuff everybody wanted a piece of it because loads of $$$ so everybody started to be mean and tried to kill other's consultancy for greed. But the internet doesn't forget so…

Man, that ThoughtWorks/big consulting companies stuff sounds horrible. Is there any truth to it? Is this a norm with these types of companies? Or are they outliers/extreme cases?

Re: Dear Paul

#47

Post by scrollaway »

rtpg wrote: post #43
scrollaway wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very inconsistent. Replace "Paul Graham" by "John Doe", "Hacker News" by "Kernel driver" and "Zed Shaw" by "Linus Torvalds" and the commentary becomes "hihi oh my, that is some funnily crass imagery". Language is just language. Crass language exaggerates a point, an emotion. If the underlying point is poor in the first place, the only thing swearing does is amplify how stupid the whole thing is.

For the record, I think Linus' usage of crass language is just as pointless. It's totally possible to show that you're pissed without demanding that someone be shot or aborted. Language is not "just" language, there's underlying nuance, history in usage of an expression, and overall context. There are degrees, of course, but when you start offending a large portion of your potential audience _solely_ because of the w…

I think Linus' swearing is pointless as well, but people don't get turned off from his posts because the underlying point he makes tends to be true, which is what I'm trying to say here.

Re: Dear Paul

#48

Post by ColinWright »

pwoeir wrote: post #23
scrollaway wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... you'll find people being jerks everywhere. Most often, you'll find people being jerks without knowing they're being jerks. But if it happens to you , then the source is "the cesspool of the internet". I hope Zed knows he's being hyperbolic here, otherwise he's got another thing coming.

"..he's got another thing coming." I am curious about what you think this means?

It used to be "he's got another think coming", meaning "he'll have to think again." It's along the lines of "he's had a thought, now there will be another thought coming."

But it's been mutated by people who never heard the original properly and ended up misquoting it. It's like people who say "to all intensive purposes" when the original, meaningful saying is "to all intents and purposes."

It has become an idiom, an atomic phrase, not to be understood by trying to take it apart and examining the components. This is a common occurrence in linguistics.

Annoys the hell outta me.

Re: Dear Paul

#50

Post by jacquesm »

Nothing anybody ever said about Zed did Zed as much damage as anything Zed himself said. I'm flagging this because I don't think that Zed is doing himself a favour with this post.
Post reply on HN