
Taking Uncle Bob to school - puredanger
http://bestinclass.dk/index.clj/2010/10/taking-uncle-bob-to-school.html
======
arst
The author talks about how friendly the Clojure community is in the first
paragraph but then goes on to take some silly potshots at other languages in
the very next paragraph:

 _I asked around and learned that he wrote a book called "Clean code" and that
he likes Ruby, which just makes no sense to me at all - How do you unify a
tool as unstable, unpredictable, untamed as Ruby (second only to Perl) with
Clean Code?_

~~~
fogus
Your statement is a non-sequitur. The Clojure community on the whole _is_
extremely friendly -- that he takes a stab at Ruby does not invalidate this
fact. One person blogging one statement does not a community make.

~~~
ihumanable
No but if this author thought this appropriate for the community's
consumption, then it would make someone outside the community think that the
community may be less than friendly.

~~~
fogus
Of course you are correct. Unfortunately I imagine that every programming
community suffers from this.

~~~
binspace
Unfortunately, the blog post author is lots of peoples' first exposure to the
Clojure community. Not a great first impression.

------
plinkplonk
The author is a known troll . See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=892317>
and <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=890697> (EDIT: One more
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=923335>)

After having his various silly mistakes exposed and laughed at on the comments
sections of his various outrageous and more importantly _ignorant_ posts (like
the couple referenced above), he seems to have deleted all comments from those
posts - and there were some stinging rebuttals - and now doesn't even have a
comments section on his blog.

The best thing to do is ignore the troll,not vote this trash up on HN (16
upvotes at the time of writing wtf?).

~~~
gaius
To be fair, "Uncle Bob" is a known snake-oil salesman, always pushing fad
methodologies. Let them snipe at each other and pay them no heed says I.

~~~
plinkplonk
Heh! yeah I was not defending Uncle Bob at all (and it would be hard to defend
him as some kind of heavyweight uber programmer).

Just pointing out that _this guy_ is obviously trolling for attention and that
it is not his first time.

Ironically enough the last few times he tried this, he got "taken to school"
here on HN by people who really knew what they were talking about.

------
sgt
Listen guys.. I do not believe he is a "troll".

I see that many HN readers are claiming that the author is a troll. I believe
the author is genuinely trying to help, although I do see that it's easy to
interpret his quirky sense of humor and writing style, and label it as a tad
arrogant. Having danish friends, I can tell you that danish people are often
like this. Sarcasm and jokes belong in their world and it's perfectly normal
for outsiders to miss the subtle humor. In all fairness, Lau Jensen should
really consider this next time he writes an article targeted at an
international audience.

On the other hand and technically speaking, I think it's great that he offers
constructive criticism. If I was Uncle Bob I'd certainly appreciate it.

------
FraaJad
This is not the first time or programming language he has taken pot shots at.
See [http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.clj/2009/10/python-vs-
clojur...](http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.clj/2009/10/python-vs-clojure-
evolving.html) .

His whole blog post is about showing up the deficiency of Python (which is
fine), and repeatedly telling us how Guido is controlling his programming by
telling him to use white spaces to arrange code. The author comes off as a
muck raker and a troll, which is sad because he is obviously talented enough
to produce a lot of interesting code and experiments.

------
compay
The article has some interesting critiques. But really, anybody's code can be
improved, particular if you're willing to spend more than half your time
nitpicking about style and formatting details. Writing an article taking a
famous programmer to the woodshed just makes it seem like you're whoring for
traffic.

> Usually what people struggle with initially is adapting to the functional
> paradigmes, which Uncle Bob seems to have gotten right in the first try!

Having heard the man speak, I really don't think this is Uncle Bob's first
trip around the block with Lisp - even if he is relatively new to Clojure.

------
francoisdevlin
As a member of the Clojure community I don't approve of all of Lau's articles,
they do tend to be a over the top. However, like someone else that's "So
Fucking Awesome", take a chance to look past the tone and hear the message.

This article has a lot of great Clojure style in it, and I would strongly
recommend learning from it.

------
binspace
Gah, this whole article is really nit-picky. The author sounds like some sort
of perfectionistic, elitist prick. Definitely a Type A and way too focused on
the minutia.

