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

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

#681

Post by chc »

papsosouid wrote: post #618
tptacek wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think Paul Graham doesn't know the difference between someone being insulted on Twitter and someone being threatened with federal prison time? You don't think maybe it's you that are missing something, and not him? Because if my response to something he wrote depending on him not noticing the difference between prison and twitter, I would worry that I was missing something. No, wait, I wouldn't; I like…

He can still make a fallacious and ignorant comment while being aware of the difference.

The actual objection here, the reason why pg's comment is "fallacious and ignorant", is a bit fuzzy. People have pointed out a difference between HN users and federal prosecutors, but not why that difference is important. I can only think of one possible line of reasoning, but it's unbelievably hollow. Are you sincerely arguing "It's OK for me to be an unsympathetic asshole because I don't send people to jail"?

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

#682

Post by thaumaturgy »

jakebellacera wrote: post #653
thaumaturgy wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN's collective reading comprehension seems to have dipped lately. Fortunately, pg is usually concise enough that we can use this as an exercise: "Maybe before..." "before" merely implies order. It does not mean "instead of". It means, "this first, then that." "...federal prosecutors are unsympathetic assholes..." The subject here is not jail sentences or felony convictions or legal antics. The subject here is sympat…

jcampbell1 and pg are bringing up a conversation from a another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5110270 .

Hmm. pg and jcampbell1's comments predate that thread by several hours, and I don't see the connection anyway. Did you link the wrong thread, or am I missing something?

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

#684

Post by papsosouid »

mpyne wrote: post #674
papsosouid wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Your post contradicted itself. You literally said "I don't use ack because it is find+grep, I use it because it is find+grep". I am simply pointing this out.

Except by that logic, you could say that any user of a high-level language was really claiming (in the end) to be using assembly. C++ once compiled to C, but even then people wouldn't claim they were using C, they'd claim they were using C++. "I don't use C++ because it's C with 'classes', I use C++ because it sets up my vtables and overloaded functions"

That analogy makes absolutely no sense. You are claiming an intended use. And then contradicting yourself by saying you don't use it for that intended use. The analogy would be "I don't use C++ to write programs, I use C++ to write words that have a particular syntax that a C++ compiler can understand and translate into executable machine code". And that statement is just as contradictory as the one you made.

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

#685

Post by danneu »

nikatwork wrote: post #177
jmillikin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regarding the actual program, I don't write shell > utilities in JavaScript so I can't say whether it's a > good or a bad implementation. It's just not my space. According to some other posts here, the quoted mockers are Ruby programmers. I believe the Twitter posts are about the concept of writing sed in Node-Javascript, not necessarily the implementation. As I understand it there's something of a rivalry between…

So there is some truth to the stereotype of the angry asshole Rubyist? I thought the community had moved on since those days. I've been tossing up whether to learn Ruby or Clojure next, and this kind of crap is a real turn-off for Ruby.

That's what you're taking from this? Really?

As someone remarked elsewhere in these comments:

    > There is no "open source hivemind" so please don't 
    > disparage the millions of open source coders who 
    > will never make the frontpage of HN by lumping the 
    > entire conglomerate into one community.

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

#686

Post by papsosouid »

chc wrote: post #681
papsosouid wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can still make a fallacious and ignorant comment while being aware of the difference.

The actual objection here, the reason why pg's comment is "fallacious and ignorant", is a bit fuzzy. People have pointed out a difference between HN users and federal prosecutors, but not why that difference is important. I can only think of one possible line of reasoning, but it's unbelievably hollow. Are you sincerely arguing "It's OK for me to be an unsympathetic asshole because I don't send people to jail"?

>The actual objection here, the reason why pg's comment is "fallacious and ignorant", is a bit fuzzy

Because he is suggesting that "someone said someone else's code was bad" is a more pressing and concerning issue than "the federal government threatened to destroy the life of a young man and drove him to suicide over a trivial non-offense".

>Are you sincerely arguing "It's OK for me to be an unsympathetic asshole because I don't send people to jail"?

I can't imagine how one could make an honest, good faith attempt at communications and come to that conclusion. It seems more like you are deliberately looking for a strawman. I am arguing that pg can in fact make a fallacious and ignorant statement, even if he is aware of the difference between two cases he is comparing.

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

#687

Post by elliptic »

steveplace wrote: post #511
quasque wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was a strong undercurrent of misogyny involved here, motivating their incivility and rudeness.

I don't want to be the one to say it, but it hasn't yet been mentioned in this thread. If the author was named Henry instead of Heather, this wouldn't make front page or have a comment thread full of white knights. That doesn't make the critics right in their aggressiveness, and people overall should be nicer.

If the author was named Henry, the probability that this post would have been written would be far lower. For better or for worse.

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

#688

Post by _Simon »

anthonyb wrote: post #163
shardling wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yelling at someone you're in an argument with is a world away from picking on a stranger. (It's not necessarily good , but it is categorically different behavior.)

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.

Do you have this opinion when you are doing it?

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

#690

Post by dos1 »

awj wrote: post #641
dos1 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, David Cramer is a total asshole! That Steve Klabnik guy is also an asshole. The only one who doesn't appear to a complete dick is Corey Haines, whose apology was better. Not great, but better. Here's the thing - if you ever even consider saying things like this to someone on the internet, you're an asshole. It's not a one time accidental thing. Nope, it's in your personality. I hope I never meet either of these…

Meanwhile calling people assholes and declaring that the reason is "in [their] personality" based on what they may have considered saying, that's perfectly ok? Have you really never made a comment without fully thinking out the ramifications, without missing some of the consequences, or just simply without really thinking period? People say shitty things sometimes, but labeling them as an asshole for all time based o…

Oh sure, I've made plenty of stupid comments, but that's not what these guys did.

They picked a repo on Github that they thought was duplicating functionality in Unix (oh the horror!) and engaged in classic schoolyard bullying. Publicly shaming the code and the author, apparently to make themselves feel better and show the world how smart they were. And at the end of it, the apologies they issued after the internet turned against them were poor.

So yes, I do occasionally say dumb things, but I'm never a bully. If I say something mean it's because it was provoked. And if I need to apologize for something, I do it with real contrition.

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