What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project • Hacker News Board

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

#781

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 9:26 AM UTC

papsosouid wrote: post #620

chris_wot wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't expect you to - you read it, good enough for me to know you did :-) Thanks for letting me know. Your entire blog post is a big "The Internet disagrees with me": http://justcramer.com/2013/01/24/being-wrong-on-the-internet... You said something in 140 characters that was snarky and mean, that's actually not easy to do to be honest. And then you got called on it, and now you are getting criticized. Not nice, huh?

The internet doesn't disagree with him, a vocal minority of hyper sensitive cry babies and desperate white knights disagree with him. Very few people who don't care take the time to say "who cares?".

They care that you care? Why can't they not care that you care? Or is it the fact that they don't care that you care? Yet in that case then how can those who take the time to say "who cares?" say they don't care when they seem to care enough to ask who cares?

This is all very confusing.

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

#782

Post by samvittighed » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 9:31 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #221

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've been coding since 1993 and I have never made room in my brain for stuff like -print0. Moreover, there are times when you'll want to do this stuff from within another program. What are you going to do, shell out to a find(1) pipeline? Then people like me will be giving you shit. There's nothing wrong with rewriting sed in Javascript.

If you use GNU Parallel instead of xargs, then you probably never need to make room in your brain for -print0. GNU Parallel separates on \n and deals correctly with files like: My brother's 12" records.ods

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

#783

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 1:53 PM UTC

ruswick wrote: post #758

dos1 wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A snarky comment and a bad apology may be an instance of the second thing. But they don't imply the first. Sorry chief, I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. The snarky comment can be forgiven. (although I've since read other tweets/posts from David Cramer and it appears as though he really is that abrasive all the time) By contrast, a bad apology is a clear indication of someone's true nature. If…

He did not attempt to apologize, he defended his position. He wasn't being underhanded or antagonistic, he was attempting an objective justification. Nothing in there resembled passive-agression or "dickishness."

He admitted he was nasty in his blog, but he was proud of it. Enough said.

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

#784

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 2:00 PM UTC

hellerbarde wrote: post #777

rektide wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steven and Corey have both more or less begged off from even trying to say what they mean- they have simply apologized for introducing volatility, for hurting feelings. I find it outrageously presumptuous to take such short, pithy tweets, and to claim they were made with malice, intending to antagonize, or were in fact bullying. The fact is Nodeites are renowned for rehashing the entrenched. It also, gasp, has callba…

Okay, okay. This is enough. Both. Thanks for calling for a de-escalation, that sounds like a wonderful idea. First things first, bullying is not always conscious. You seem to imply that and I happen to believe that is not true. Someone can act bullying-ish without being a bully. It happens. It sucks, always. It sucks especially when you're not in fact a bully and you didn't mean to act like one. (someone made a comme…

Best summation of this issue I've read so far. Hear, hear.

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

#785

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 2:07 PM UTC

dos1 wrote: post #726

awj wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...did you link to the right post? The one I'm reading says he is aware that he is capable of this kind of behavior and has taken steps to mitigate it. If anything it hurts your I'm-right-in-declaring-this-guy-an-irredeemable-asshole thesis.

Dude, I don't know what to say to you. You're going to argue for the sake of it, even though you're objectively wrong. Maybe you can shed some light on why people do that? The man HIMSELF admits he is intrinsically an asshole, and that even when he uses his real identity he can't help himself. Yes, he's trying to be better. But an alcoholic trying to fight the bottle is still an alcoholic.

In 2010 he said he had arsehole like tendencies. That's some time ago, I think it's a stretch to say that it makes him one. I've agreed with you right up to this point!

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

#786

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 2:15 PM UTC

columbo wrote: post #615

donohoe wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a ton of files on github and gist, most of them are absolute crap. Honest question: Is it okay for someone else to say (without swearing or making personal jabs) in public that it is also crap? And again, to emphasize, this is a sincere question.

I don't think it's possible to answer without getting into a debate about community, morality and ethics. There's no way to distill this down to a "unit test". Will it bother me? Maybe, depends on who it is. XxHackerPants420xX's tweet of 'Columbo is teh code suxxor' wouldn't bother me as much as pg choosing to write a personal blog post titled 'ode to Columbo's shitty github account'. Is it okay? Meh. It isn't a comm…

For once, reading with showdead on made me laugh!

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

#787

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 2:25 PM UTC

mrb wrote: post #446

doktrin wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you have such a strong objection to someone spending their own free time to simplify and / or mimic [insert unix tool functionality here]. It clearly serves a purpose and it's apparently useful. Most importantly, it exists , so there's no need to argue over how you think it should have been implemented. I'm sure if you were to release your own [script / wrapper], someone would find use for it, in the same mann…

I know it someone's right to do this, of course. I object because I come from an environment (software industry) where I have spent hundreds of hours undoing people's poor jobs where they wasted time and money reimplementing (incorrectly) library functions, system commands, etc. Because of this personal experience, I reacted the same way many reacted when seeing her script. So, I decided to explain to her and attempt…

It's a one off tool, unlikely to be used in any project you are writing software for. She provided the source code freely, and the code isn't bad at all.

I fail to see why you will ever need to rewrite this?

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

#788

Post by kaitai » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 2:29 PM UTC

calinet6 wrote: post #535

nollidge wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's David Cramer's notpology: http://justcramer.com/2013/01/24/being-wrong-on-the-internet...

This is bound to be an unpopular opinion, but why exactly does anyone have to apologize? He's absolutely right. Criticism comes from every corner, especially in the software world. Your code stands for itself. Simple as that. And I tell this to almost every programmer I work with at some point or another. If they have an emotional response to a code review, or criticism of any kind—"Code is never personal. Whatever I…

This may not be the best place to respond, but you say something I've seen a few times in these comments:

"if you go sob in a corner because you receive criticism, then you're not going to improve."

The corner part is up for discussion, but who says crying renders you un-improvable or non-adult? It's what you do after you cry that matters. I did not know harthur's gender until it was brought up, but women cry more easily than men and it isn't really relevant to their coding nor is it calibrated to feelings in the same way it is for guys. It's not the nuclear option guys think it is.

As for evaluations of code quality, I'd be thrilled to read a discussion of the actual "issue" somewhere. That would at least be interesting.

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

#789

Post by chris_wot » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 2:31 PM UTC

lobotryas wrote: post #421

confluence wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can write complex vector math in C from memory - doesn't mean everyone needs to be able to do it. That replace library does what it's supposed to do - it replaces shit easily. Don't like it - don't use it. If people want to do more - then they'll figure it out for themselves. For everyone who already knows more - eat some humble cake.

>Don't like it - don't use it. This is a false dilemma and completely misses the point. The replace library was written by a person who either never heard of or never learned how to use SED. Just because they created their own hack as a workaround doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

Please don't follow up a false dilemma with circular reasoning.

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

#790

Post by TheCapn » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 2:49 PM UTC

And we wonder why the programmer geek/nerd/shut-in stereotype or whatever sticks. We fucking step all over eachother as a chance to look better. "Oh, look, someone wrote a helper function that does something I already know how to do."

What's the benefit of calling that person out?

Seriously. Answer that question before you take to a twitter mob.

People through this thread argue whether its worth the time, but if it took Heather one hour to write it, the function paid for itself once she used it for an hour of work that would otherwise be spent crawing man pages.

Hell, she says it was written a few years ago. Every piece of code I wrote two/three/four years ago can be looked at and often makes me cringe. You learn in time but that doesn't mean you should vanquish your mistakes. Grow from them, show them proudly as a statement of where you were and where you've come from. Whether you've evolved to a better programmer or not if that single function proved useful to you at one point it means that just one single person out there needed it. Does it make you wrong for not knowing/finding the tools it mimics? Maybe, but without someone beside her in the first place how should she have known. Perhaps taking to twitter with a knife for someone's back is a better start?