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

Apology

felleisen.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 282 posts

Re: Apology

#151

Post by 123123as1asd12 »

jolux wrote: post #143
chevill wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Training them to play nice may not be possible. I'm autistic. It is possible for the socially inept to learn to be less of an asshole and to have better interactions with other people. I did it and we should expect everyone to make an effort to be kinder.

I’m autistic too, and I think what happens is that autistic people who also happen to be brilliant are not expected to learn how to interact well with others to the same extent that autistic folk of average intelligence are, so it ends up being on them whether they care enough about being kind and gentle to others to learn how to interact congenially. I know a lot of autistic people and most of them are nice but some…

The other side of this is that some of us do end up trying to fit in, hiding it but not well enough... Just come off as assholes or socially inept and hurting peoples feelings a lot more than if you were obviously on the spectrum,

Re: Apology

#152

Post by snotrockets »

Santosh83 wrote: post #150
throw3456548 wrote: post #129

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked…

Anyone can throw dirt on identified people who will suffer real world consequences from anonymous internet throwaway handles and unsubstantiated claims. Why should anyone take anything you say as credible. You and your friends should either raise formal charges of harassment or at least come out with your real identities. Otherwise this smells like opportunistic attempt at cancelling someone.

And then someone wonders vocally why people don't make complaints of harassment.

Re: Apology

#153

Post by fenomas »

fighterpilot wrote: post #130
DJBunnies wrote: post #13

Took a hard cs course with fellisen at NU. Dude is ignorant to his toxic behavior, preaching egoless programming while being needlessly cruel during graded presentations. I know many cs folks at NU refused to take his classes.

I worked for one of these types many labelled an asshole and grew to love it, and he had the most loyal group of people around him you could imagine. There's a super important distinction between the person with extremely high standards that skewers anything mediocre and that can legitimately be won over by doing exceptional work (my old boss), and the narcissist who is critical for the mere purposes of bullying (or…

Question of intent, surely? If someone is "skewering mediocrity" because it's an effective way to help the person they're trying to help, then great. But if they keep doing it even when it's having the opposite effect, then clearly they're just stroking their own ego and being toxic.

It reminds me, I've often read accounts that Steve Jobs used to yell at his employees because drove them to excellence. But if you think about it, it's more parsimonious to assume that he yelled at people because he was short-tempered, and the yelling sometimes coincidentally drove people to excellence.

Re: Apology

#154

Post by asimeqi »

Felleisen is incredibly passionate about programming. He has strong opinions and will tell you about them. I graduated from NEU many years ago. He was not my professor and I doubt he ever knew my name. I happened to listen to a general talk he was once giving when he suddenly launched into a tangent about how much better Scheme's call/cc was than C's setjmp()/longjmp(). I completely agreed but thought that he was beating a dead horse and I might have smirked a little bit. 3 days later he accosted me in a different building and berated me for thinking setjmp()/longjmp() was better! I never got the chance to explain myself but I really think it doesn't matter. There are many people who don't like his style but I personally think it's fine. He is pretty direct and obviously gets results. I wish I would have been able to take his courses and maybe even work with him on his projects.

Re: Apology

#156

Post by teddyh »

howolduis wrote: post #8

apology? nothing of what I read sounds like an apology. You basically said that your friends told you that what you did looked bad, and based on that, you feel sorry that he "felt" hurt. Then go on saying how good and gracious you were to him? c'mon... edit: typo

See, this is why many powerful people have a policy of never apologizing for anything. To critics, no apology is enough, and any attempt at an apology only serves to prove (to critics) how insincere the person is. There is no way to win. The mere fact that the person here is trying to apologize indicates that the person is probably honestly trying to make amends. This is not a behavior you should discourage, if what you want is a functioning community. However, if what you want is instead more drama, by all means, flame away!

Re: Apology

#157

Post by fatbird »

slibhb wrote: post #139
throw3456548 wrote: post #129

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked…

This is a really thoughtful comment, especially considering your personal experience. There's a hard problem here: what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven? I don't know, but exiling them seems like a shame. Training them to play nice may not be possible. A reasonable option may be recognizing that some talented people are "difficult" and providing students with a pa…

It's not actually a hard problem. We're not short of brilliant people who are also nice or at least not generally toxic. We don't need to exile the brilliant monsters; we just need to not make allowances for them. If they can learn to meet norms of civility, we can welcome them; if not, we can ignore them.

How many brilliant people have we lost access to because they were driven out of the field by someone like Felleisen? All we have to do is not tolerate their bad behaviour.

Everyone who met Felleisen and walked away is to be celebrated for not coddling his terrible behaviour; everyone who makes excuses for him should be shamed for enabling him.

Re: Apology

#158

Post by underwater »

slibhb wrote: post #139
throw3456548 wrote: post #129

Huh. It's interesting to see this come out now. Years ago I was planning on entering a PL PhD program until I met Felleisen. He yelled at me, insulted me, and I left nearly crying. That was the last straw that led to me leave academia, and I never came back. A young woman I know switched out of her computer science major after taking his class and said she still had nightmares about him. Another person I know worked…

This is a really thoughtful comment, especially considering your personal experience. There's a hard problem here: what should be done with people who interact poorly with others but are talented and driven? I don't know, but exiling them seems like a shame. Training them to play nice may not be possible. A reasonable option may be recognizing that some talented people are "difficult" and providing students with a pa…

Someone doesn't immediately become a brilliant asshole. Both skillsets take time to evolve and solidify.

If we stop making excuses for people – "that's just they way they are, you know coders, they just don't have social skills, he's an asshole but the company would be in trouble without him" – then may be these people would get the feedback that they need before it becomes a problem of this magnitude.

Re: Apology

#159

Post by itronitron »

throwaway9980 wrote: post #127
boredtofears wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> first steps of the self realization process Every time I see a well written apology letter, I cringe at all the self-actualization rhetoric people respond to it with. As if they must do more and become some kind of Buddhist monk before true retribution is to be awarded to them.

Yes, I agree that we can all do better, be better, strive for good things for all, etc, but this language borders on religious. And it’s everywhere these days. It’s as if not always living up to a set of ideals is the modern original sin that requires constant atonement.

Many people have been conditioned to believe that people in positions of power are virtuous, and that they reached that position by doing good things well. It's not that everyone expects people in power to live a set of ideals, it's that they have been marketed as such.

Re: Apology

#160

Post by fatbird »

bobthechef wrote: post #122
mvid wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matthew made it pretty clear he had talked to a number of people, and waited months before going public

But did he speak with Matthias directly first? There is an adult way to escalate problems which is to first speak privately with the person in question to address the problem or correct the misunderstanding. If that fails, you could speak with people in the relevant social circle shared with Matthias. Dragging your problem into the public square is only something you do if those fail AND there are sufficiently good r…

This is one way to handle the problem, but certainly not the only way, and not a way that is blessed as "the mature solution". There are a variety of legtimate reasons not try to speak first privately to Matthias. Butterick gets at one of them in his essay, namely that allowing bullies to keep their bullying private has the effect of isolating other victims and preventing more coherent responses to it by a group.
Post reply on HN