Synopsis: he redacts the sentiment of his earlier rant but says nothing about whether or not his opinion of the ruby/rails community has changed or why.
Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)
21–30 of 43 posts
Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)
#22I really didn't care much for the original post, and I could care less about this one too. I DO care about any engineering accomplishments Zed has to offer (almost all are great) - but that's about it.
That's awfully short-sighted - no science is just about the accomplishments of an individual, but rather the health the community, and I see this problem everywhere. Even technical meetings are dominated by the most influential person, not by the most intelligent argument. People have no idea how to disagree - both on reddit, and in architecture meetings, ad hominem attacks are far more common than logical arguments, and mistakes are made because of it.
So although I didn't care much for Zed's original rant, this one, if it makes an impact, might do more good to programming than all of his technical accomplishments combined.
Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
The blog was called "Zed's So Fucking AWESOME", and he had his name in flaming letters and silhouettes of strippers on the blog, as I recall. Did you really think it was a sincere effort? There may be a part of Zed Shaw that is Fucking Awesome and that is highly opinionated (the audacity to even have an online persona, and to start software projects, points to a large amount of ego). But it was clearly always a self-…
Did you ever know a kid who would say something mean and then quickly follow it up with "JK!"? That kid was annoying. I don't think it was a sincere effort. That's my point. Zed just wanted to be able to say mean things about people and not experience any consequences for it. And that's silly. This fumbling around now is annoying. If he wants to be a mean person he should be a mean person. If he wants to be nice he s…
You have a point. On the other hand, people are contradictory. I think it is quite possible to think to yourself "heh, heh, I'm going to create the most ridiculously aggro coding blog ever" but in doing so also express the worst aspects of your own personality.
Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)
#24Wow, Zed can't win with this crowd, can he?
I've never been a fan (mostly for the reasons he points to in this post-- his works often read like "jock speech"), but I have to give him props for trying to move in a different direction now, and own up to the negative consequences of his earlier post. He doesn't want to be mean anymore (or pretend to be mean, either), and I don't think that's a bad thing.
One small step toward civility, one giant leap for Zed. Good for him.
Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)
#25At first I thought he was serious about the "so fucking awesome" bit. After observing people like Linus Torvalds(and his "masturbating monkeys" rant) I didn't feel at all that it might be a fake persona, it was over the top, but i didn't think it was that much, when compared with all the other colourful personalities in the software world. I want to thank Zed for reminding me that although some ego in not bad, its not the thing to look for in a hacker, you have to look beyond his "persona".
The "neon strippers" Zed Shaw was fucking awesome because he said "fuck" all the time.
The "real" Zed Shaw is fucking awesome because he plays guitar, writes code, does electronics, and is a nice person(sort of).
I knew this since I was a child, but I needed Zed to show me that "masturbating monkeys" is not that cool, Kernel hacking is.
Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)
#26Synopsis: he redacts the sentiment of his earlier rant but says nothing about whether or not his opinion of the ruby/rails community has changed or why.
It hasn't. He's said that before, and that he's leaving the Rails community behind rather than dwell on it.
Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The blog was called "Zed's So Fucking AWESOME", and he had his name in flaming letters and silhouettes of strippers on the blog, as I recall. Did you really think it was a sincere effort? There may be a part of Zed Shaw that is Fucking Awesome and that is highly opinionated (the audacity to even have an online persona, and to start software projects, points to a large amount of ego). But it was clearly always a self-…
Did you ever know a kid who would say something mean and then quickly follow it up with "JK!"? That kid was annoying. I don't think it was a sincere effort. That's my point. Zed just wanted to be able to say mean things about people and not experience any consequences for it. And that's silly. This fumbling around now is annoying. If he wants to be a mean person he should be a mean person. If he wants to be nice he s…
I'm not saying it's not annoying, but whether or not it was sincere, I don't see where you're getting that Zed doesn't think he should experience consequences. If you give him the benefit of the doubt, you'll realize that you didn't read what he wrote before ZSSFA, and therefore he pretty much proved his point that people listen to assholes and blowhards, however mind-numbingly obvious that may have already been.
Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)
#28Wow, Zed can't win with this crowd, can he? I've never been a fan (mostly for the reasons he points to in this post-- his works often read like "jock speech"), but I have to give him props for trying to move in a different direction now, and own up to the negative consequences of his earlier post. He doesn't want to be mean anymore (or pretend to be mean, either), and I don't think that's a bad thing. One small step…
You know, if he'd actually done that, that would be fine. But in the past month he's flamed the music industry after doing a piss poor job of researching his claims then retaliated with a giant rant and personal attacks when folk disagreed with him.
WTF are we still paying attention to him, and why is he still getting to the top of the HN front page when he's done nothing of any real worth for the past year, apart from the opinionated rants he himself has decried?
Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)
#29At the risk of sounding vindictive, I don't think I've ever been more happy to see someone getting PSAs on their Adsense.
Re: Rails is a Ghetto (retracted)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I just noticed at the bottom of the archived page: 'Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.' The new Zed's blog doesn't have a CC reference, BTW
You really shouldn't CC-license things blindly. They are useful, but not appropriate in all circumstances. I see no reason to CC-license your blog posts. (Copyright gives you no control over ideas and fair use means people can quote you in most circumstances quotes are useful, so you're not really giving anything useful away anyhow.)
I think CC licensing on blogs (or email) is a form of conspicuous production, a way of signaling that you're part of the CC movement.