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

What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

harthur.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 826 posts

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#231

Post by petdance »

mrb wrote: post #200

Heather, I agree that people are unnecessarily rude to you. Don't sob. Your code shows you are already a more capable programmer than most of the ones I interview. No one has given you a clear answer as to why your code is reinventing the wheel, so allow me to do it politely. I took every single example from your README, and show you below how everything can be reimplemented with sed -r (nice extended regex syntax, m…

> There is only one case that justifies reimplementing things

Who are you to decide how she may spend her time? Why in the world do you think that she has to justify to you what projects she creates?

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#232

Post by roguecoder »

mrb wrote: post #200

Heather, I agree that people are unnecessarily rude to you. Don't sob. Your code shows you are already a more capable programmer than most of the ones I interview. No one has given you a clear answer as to why your code is reinventing the wheel, so allow me to do it politely. I took every single example from your README, and show you below how everything can be reimplemented with sed -r (nice extended regex syntax, m…

I'd argue that wrapping crappy syntax is decent syntax is 90% of what tools do.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#234

Post by jongala »

mrb wrote: post #200

Heather, I agree that people are unnecessarily rude to you. Don't sob. Your code shows you are already a more capable programmer than most of the ones I interview. No one has given you a clear answer as to why your code is reinventing the wheel, so allow me to do it politely. I took every single example from your README, and show you below how everything can be reimplemented with sed -r (nice extended regex syntax, m…

To my (naive) eyes, your examples act as a compelling advertisement for her library.

The sed/xargs/etc. examples look increasingly like impossible-to-memorize line noise to me, while the --include, --exclude etc. options in `replace` are comprehensible and seem to follow standard command line argument practices.

Again, this is from a very entry-level unix tools perspective, but there it is.

It also seems to me that reimplementing things with the stated goal to make them easier to use has to be one of the best justifications around, no?

I hope I sound as respectful here as you did in your comment -- I certainly appreciated seeing a clear response to her library, so thanks for that.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#236

Post by madhadron »

More important: why are you listening to what anyone on Twitter says? For that matter, why are you listening to what anyone on Hacker News says (assuming you read this)?

Personally, I have no idea what anyone might have said about any of my code on github on Twitter, blogs, or otherwise. No, scratch that, I remember a terrifying moment when I realized the link in a sentence along the lines of "who says Haskell isn't ready for the real world?" pointing to my serial port library in that language. Anyway, that's beside the point.

You should have a short list of people whose opinion matters. Hint: your family, a set of people whose character and abilities you respect, and anyone who has direct power over you (though if the third isn't a subset of the second, you might want to work on that, too). Random people on the Internet don't count, no matter how famous they may be in their sandbox.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#237

Post by anthonyb »

akkartik wrote: post #182
anthonyb wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dressing down someone like that on a public mailing list is absolutely picking on them. It's not an argument, and is basically no different to the behaviour here.

It is basically worlds opposite to the behavior here. a. Linus uses swear words. Steve Klabnik used none. b. Linus provides substantive criticism. Even if you need flame-retardant underwear to hear it. c. Linus never ever ridicules outsiders. So what do the two have in common, again? I loved the mauro thread because you're seeing Linus talking to an insider of an influential project and tell him that the relative out…

Ridicule is an extremely poor motivational tool, and when someone of Linus' standing does it, other people think that makes it somehow ok.

There are many ways to reinforce meritocracy, or reinforce a culture without telling people to shut the fuck up in all caps.

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#238

Post by tectonic »

wwweston wrote: post #193
overgard wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good test of character is how one treats those that they perceive to be lower status than them. I'd say these guys fail that test.

It might be better to say that they failed last night and leave a more general judgment open. It's a good thing that people are calling this out and giving the participants cause to reflect on the problems with that kind of conversation (along with the rest of us). But I think it's also good if we don't rush to reduce people to some of their meaner moments. A lot of the participants have done a number of good things…

And some of them have:

- http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2013-01-23-node

- http://programmingtour.blogspot.com/2013/01/im-sorry.html

Re: What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project

#239

Post by babs474 »

DanBC wrote: post #199
babs474 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neuro-typical people can be assholes, but they tend to understand that they are being an asshole when they act asshole-ish. I think a big problem in the dev community is a lot of asshole behavior out there from people who don't intend to, or even _understand_ that they are being an asshole. Regardless of intent, this asshole behavior has consequences on neuro-typical and atypical people alike. I think nerdy/geeky/dev…

> Unfortunately the recent asberger pride movement doesn't help. The word is "Asperger's". 'Asperger pride' is an attempt to reduce the hateful ignorant bigotry that the neuro-atypical face every day. The kind of ignorance that leads to early death, reduced job opportunities, reduced educational opportunities etc.

Thanks for the correction, I got lazy there.

I think the problem with 'Asperger pride' is it tends to focus on how neuro-typical people have wronged people on the spectrum. A lot of times the painful truth is that person with aspergers is at least partially culpable for the negative outcome of their social interactions.

This becomes a major problem when you work in a place where almost everyone is on the autistic spectrum. There are no oppressive neuro-typical people, yet stubborn asshole behavior skyrockets because all the nerds are being dicks to each other.

Post reply on HN