

Dear Reddit, Hacker News... - twampss
http://www.zedshaw.com/blog/2008-12-25.html

======
mixmax
And thanks for all the laughs Zed. We are looking forward to respectfully
disagreeing with your upcoming intelligent thoughtful essays :-)

~~~
Raphael
Zed is dead. Long live Zed!

~~~
unalone
I found this especially amusing after he got pissed off at proggit for
constantly memeing the "Zed's dead" line from Pulp Fiction.

Whoo for respectful debate over essays!

------
iron_ball
So did he drop the persona at the end of the post or at the beginning? Because
he still sounded pretty damn stern and macho when he mentioned tearing down
entire language communities with a single post; and I've been on the internet
so long I've seen the "ha ha you actually BELIEVED all the outrageous stuff I
said loudly and defended to my last breath? Oh, you poor, pathetic saps. You
poor, poor, pathetic, pathetic, gullible saps" routine a million times.

~~~
gamache
To me, it seemed like he did mostly believe what he said in his rants. He is
only backing away from the ZSFA persona, not the things he said during his
ZSFA tenure. As someone who's done time as a troll, I can verify that the
persona can get pretty constrictive, even if there is a core of truth in
everything you type.

------
davi
"Programmers will listen to people ... not because what they say is all that
intelligent or thoughtful, but because they say it like a Man’s Man™."

Yep. We are primates. Purely logical communication is rare amongst us -- a
speaker's body language, inflection, status, and arousal level all affect how
we hear what they are saying.

People who do not respond in this way are considered weird; those who cannot,
receive a diagnosis.

------
pmarsh
Perhaps I am too far down the ladder of programmers, but was I the only one
who didn't care about the recent teenage prom queen drama to engulf the Ruby
community?

Good hacks continued to come out, the language was still fun to write in, and
Rails and Merb continued to move forward.

Perhaps I don't follow enough on twitter, or something. I get the sense enough
energy was wasted in the past year to power several nations.

Merry Christmas all, glad Zed is doing what he enjoys as always, we should all
strive to live each day that way.

~~~
muitocomplicado
I feel the same way. Being an outsider, who cares about the bickering between
coding groups. It's still a nice programming language to code in and improve
on.

------
KirinDave
I can't bring myself to be uncharitable today, but I have to say I'll be very
surprised if Zed stops writing rants. I am... very skeptical. I've seen this
exact same drama played out on a dozen forums and community sites.

~~~
river_styx
Just out of curiosity... Based on your comments, there seems to be something
going on between you and Zed. Was there some incident?

~~~
thomasmallen
Comment stalking makes Santa sad...

------
trominos
On one hand, I don't like to let myself be flattered, especially when I have
no idea how sincere the flattery is.

On the other: you like us? All right, c'mon, group hug.

------
tptacek
I don't understand why I'm meant to care about a troll promising to stop
trolling.

~~~
nailer
A troll is someone who's just trying to get a reaction, but hasn't actually
contributed anything worthwhile.

Zed has obviously contributed a lot, and was being trolled by the Ruby
community (know what 'fuzed' stands for?) before he started ZSFA.

~~~
tptacek
When you write long-form blog posts that are about little more than the list
of Ruby people that have offended you --- often writing about them for the Nth
time --- I stop caring what your contributions are, and start being annoyed.
Whatever Zed's "contributions" are, there are 100 Ruby developers who have
contributed more, but don't demand that I attend to their neuroses.

~~~
nailer
> Whatever Zed's "contributions" are, there are 100 Ruby developers who have
> contributed more

No, really, there aren't. Go read about Zed.

~~~
tptacek
You're joking, right? Name 2 developers each for the Rubinius, JRuby,
MRI/YARV, and IronRuby projects, 2 developers from Passenger, anyone working
on the Nimble Methods blog, anyone working on EventMachine, any 2 developers
working on Merb, any non-37s developer working on ActiveRecord, anyone working
on Ruby-AST projects, anyone working on GitHub and anyone working on Ruby git
bindings --- there, I'm at 20, and I haven't even gotten to _why yet.

Don't bullshit me. The fact that Zed talks the talk doesn't automatically mean
he's walking the walk. He wrote a webserver. There are 100 Ruby developers who
have written more --- and more important --- code than Zed, and I haven't
heard about any of the crank calls _they've_ gotten.

~~~
nailer
Let me know when you get to one hundred. In the meantime, writing _the_ Ruby
webserver is a larger contribution than say, git bindings.

~~~
subbu
What's even more of importance about that web server(mongrel) was that there
was no good web server that could reliably run Ruby/Rails apps at that time.

~~~
davidw
mod_fcgid (note the 'd' at the end) actually worked, and works pretty well. I
only just now migrated away from it in favor of Passenger, which is easier to
configure and has most of the same advantages, as well as being more actively
developed.

------
michaelneale
"What you have witnessed is a year long proof that programmers will usually
only listen to the man who seems toughest, not the one who’s most possibly
right."

I have noticed this throughout the years - there is a whole lot of
testosterone around and it only gets worse. I like his mention of the OO book
covers in the early days ;)

------
Herring
Eh, I don't see that reddit is worse. For one, this article isn't at the top
of the programming subreddit. The comments here are better though.

~~~
thomasmallen
I knew as soon as this popped up in my feed reader that it would be the top
link on HN because it's very flattering, not that there's anything wrong with
that.

------
tokenadult
He has the contrast between Reddit and HN right.

~~~
begemot
There are a lot of smart people on reddit, dons, cgibbard, sigpfe and
slava_pestov to name a few.

~~~
silentbicycle
While you're correct, I think the commenting and voting tendencies of the
overall site population tend to drown them out. Intelligent discussions on
Reddit seem to have a higher chance of being derailed by e.g. people posting
4chan cliches for cheap laughs.

Of course, he's flattering us, and he got voted way up...

~~~
unalone
Yeah, we're kinda suckers too.

I still think this site has more signal-to-noise than any other social news
site except Metafilter, which is a good sign. I can still look at the top
stories each day and find perhaps 20-25 that're worth at least a look, and 10
or so that generate discussions that I'm interested in participating in.

~~~
silentbicycle
Metafilter has a $5 upfront signup fee and diligent moderators. I'm convinced
that's ultimately the best way to keep out most trolling and other assorted
malarkey.

------
nonrecursive
I'm really happy about this. I heard about Zed because of one of his first
rants, but after browsing around his site I found gems like
<http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/master_and_expert.html> . I'm really looking
forward to reading more.

~~~
gommm
Yeah, when I first started looking at zed's website (around the time mongrel
became popular), I really enjoyed his essays.. At that time, even his rants
were interesting (<http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/programmer_stats.html>).

So thanks Zed for going back to writing thoughtful essays :-)

------
alex_c
Amusingly enough, a lot of Zed's blog posts never actually seem to be voted up
on Reddit, and this one was posted and voted up here before it was on Reddit.

[http://www.reddit.com/search?q=zedshaw&sort=new](http://www.reddit.com/search?q=zedshaw&sort=new)

------
vaksel
I actually liked the rants

~~~
agotterer
A lot of them make sense actually. He has the balls to say what most wont.

~~~
greml1n
on the internet. (though i agree with your agreement.)

------
petercooper
Stop giving this guy popularity! Merely breathing hot air and having a fiesty
online "persona" _should_ not make you newsworthy (although, sadly, it clearly
does).

He had some good points a year ago. Now, not so much.

~~~
dangrover
That was kind of the point of the post.

------
FraaJad
I, for one, look forward to reading about his exploits in the Python world.

He has done some very interesting work in recent days using Python (vellum,
SoS ...).

Compared to all the drama that goes on in the Ruby (should I say Rails?)
world, reading Python blogs on planetpython.org is a learning experience.

------
gaius
Who is this person and why do I care?

~~~
fallentimes
About section:

<http://www.zedshaw.com/>

I don't know you well enough to answer the second part of the question.

~~~
gaius
Ah, one of those Ruby "ninjas" who think they're God's gift because they made
a website. Say no more.

~~~
tdavis
I pretty much hate Ruby as much as any man can, but Zed has proven himself
quite smart and capable, beyond "making a website".

~~~
unalone
Why, out of curiosity, do you hate it? You usually make pretty well-thought-
out points, and I'm curious to hear the view of an anti-Rubyite. I just
started playing with it and I'm liking it a lot.

~~~
tdavis
Well, I have a tendency to be naturally adverse to anything that is incredibly
hyped, so that should frame it. However, I have many complaints with the
language itself and things surrounding it, so here I go, in no particular
order:

\- I don't like the overall community. That is not to say I do not like Ruby
hackers, period -- a number of my friends fall into the category. However, I
do not like the general holier-than-thou attitude that much of the community
takes and the fact that they seem to spend more time talking about how fucking
awesome Ruby is than they spend actually writing code. In many ways the
community is young and I believe it has a lot of maturing to do. Once again,
this obviously does not apply to _everyone_ , but one of the most important
attributes of a programming language (at least to me) is its community on the
whole.

\- I don't give a damn how "cool" a language is and this seems to be not only
a general argument for it, but also a method by which many tutorials and other
literature explain or introduce the language.

\- I am of the opinion that Ruby is far more ad-hoc than it is elegant, and I
think many are simply confusing the two. Sometimes you need (), sometimes you
don't. Some people think the lack of "unnecessary" parenthesis makes the
language more elegant, I just say it makes it harder to determine if something
is an attribute or a method, for example. I don't believe there should be 50
different ways to do the same thing; there should be a couple different ways
and one of them should almost always be considered "the best".

\- What's intuitive for one person may not be so for another; it's not a
universal thing and as such I do not find the language as intuitive as hyped.
For instance, I find the following completely unintuitive:

    
    
        ['list',...]. each { |food| print( food.capitalize ) }
    

Why? Because it looks nothing like a standard _for_ loop. In Python, I can do
a similar one-line loop over a list, but the syntax is far more intuitive _to
me_ because it _looks_ like a loop:

    
    
        for food in [...]: print food.capitalize()
    

There are class variables and instance variables and constants and globals and
you define one of them using _@@_ and _CapFirst_ for another and... it just
feels like a cluster-fuck to me.

\- Despite all the Ruby community hand-waving about how "Ruby can't scale is a
myth" and so forth, the fact remains that it is a (relatively speaking) young
language which has many significant shortcomings -- shortcomings that even its
own creator acknowledges. Except, many try to ignore these when they
shouldn't.

Do I think Ruby has nothing going for it? No. Do I think it has no hope of
improving and growing? No. I do, however, believe that it has a _lot_ of
growing, improving, and maturing to do before it is even half as godlike as so
many feel it is (or just feel they need to _say_ it is). That being said, I
don't think I will ever use Ruby -- for these and other reasons (this is
already too long). I imagine I will at least be _civil_ towards it...
eventually ;)

~~~
sofal
_However, I do not like the general holier-than-thou attitude that much of the
community takes and the fact that they seem to spend more time talking about
how fucking awesome Ruby is than they spend actually writing code._

This is exactly the position taken on both sides of religious language wars.
Don't consider yourself above the fray unless you can get over these emotions.

 _Because it looks nothing like a standard for loop._

I'm reading: "Because [language feature in A] doesn't look like [language
feature in B]." This argument is frequently made by Blub programmers. I can
say that I find the first way more intuitive simply because it matches all the
other kinds of iterator functions in Ruby. Will you accuse me of immature
fanboyism?

There are stupid fanboys and uninformed wannabes in the young Ruby community.
Try not to let them influence you as much as they are now. If you want to
divide programmers up like that, then try to imagine someone similarly minded
on the Ruby side. What they might see in you is a Python guy on a mission
against Rubyists. There is plenty of room to interpret your comments as a
manifestation of a "holier-than-thou" attitude.

I can come up with just as many silly reasons to hate Python with all of my
heart and soul. There have been plenty of times when I have programmed in
Python and have stumbled across something I can rant about. So what? I can go
rant about it, and then someone will rant back at me, and pretty soon we're
having an idiot contest.

Ruby and Python are both stupid, over-hyped, and totally awesome. Their
communities are both full of morons, trolls, anti-{Ruby|Python}ists, and
really smart and nice people.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't argue about languages. I like to argue about
languages. I'm saying that "that doesn't look like a for-loop!" and "I hate
Perlisms!" are vacuous, and I'm also saying that being anti-fanboy is no
better than being a fanboy.

Think independently and make your own conclusions that are uninfluenced by all
the people on the Internet that are wrong.

~~~
tdavis
_"Because [language feature in A] doesn't look like [language feature in B]."_

Well, obviously. It's not like I'm arguing that Ruby's syntax is for The Gays
because it differs from Python's. I find nothing fundamentally _wrong_ with
it, other than the fact that it is not intuitive to me, having seen hundreds
of incantations of the _for_ loop. An oft-touted "feature" of Ruby is that it
is intuitive; I find it to not be intuitive. This is entirely my opinion.

In the end, a large portion of one's opinion of a language is based off of
personal preference. There are undeniable, factual problems with Ruby in terms
of performance, community maturity, complexity, language features, etc. There
are even more opinion-based, subjective reasons why _I feel it is a poor
language choice_. I make no attempts to justify these reasons beyond making it
clear that they are merely my opinions. And I was quite clear on that.

If you can come up with as many silly reasons (some of my reasons aren't silly
by any definition, but I digress) to hate Python, then go right ahead. I
certainly don't care. I wasn't ranting about it to try to convince anybody of
anything; why I like a language isn't important enough to make a soap box out
of it. I was asked a question, I answered that question. That's all.

------
pavelludiq
Zed, i wish you the best of luck, and hope you find new and creative ways to
wreak havoc on the internet!

------
jdp
At least he had enough sense to give up the gimmick before it got old

------
joe
I truly hope that Zed has some "just fucking do it" left in him after the
slaps in the face he's taken from some of the Ruby/Rails community. If he
makes good on his plans, stops talking about himself, and lets his actions and
intelligence speak for themselves, I'll gain a world of respect for him.

Oh, and Zed: "Any more" is written "any more" when referring to additional
items. "I will not write rants anymore" would be grammatically correct,
however. Just a bit of constructive criticism. :)

------
d0mine
Base flattery works.

Troll and Man’s Man™ are different beasts. But trolling works too.

I doubt that C++ or Lisp's success has anything to do with stern looks.

~~~
nailer
Are C++ and Lisp successful?

C++ doesn't seem so popular in the last decade. Lisp was That Language That
Abuse Was Written In to a lot of people.

~~~
jbjohns
C++ certainly _was_ popular, in fact the most popular by every measurement I
saw back in the day. And he's talking about how it got there _when it did_ ,
not today. I don't necessarily agree, but what he was saying should have been
pretty obvious. :)

------
jcapote
I will miss the maddox of the tech community

~~~
0_o
Maddox is much funnier than this dork

~~~
wfarr
The last time I found Maddox funny was back in middle school.

------
mhb
Does this mean his site will change to something less contrary than white on
black?

------
SingAlong
And the letter to Reddit, _Dear Reddit_ is his last blog rant :)

------
maurycy
Best luck, Zed.

------
theBobMcCormick
Zed is such a douche.

------
amix
"Zed's dead baby, Zed's dead."

