
The End of Coder Influence - zorpner
https://zedshaw.com/2016/11/24/the-end-of-coder-influence/
======
lkrubner
I think Zed Shaw is immensely entertaining. I really enjoyed "Rails is a
ghetto". I think he did good work on Mongrel/Mongrel2. I first discovered
ZeroMQ because Zed Shaw spoke highly of it. He clearly knows some things.

But this essay is like something from the alternate timeline where Donald
Trump became a computer programmer.

He pretends to be unconcerned with the issue, despite writing multiple posts
this week, each the size of a short book:

"I was tired and not into defending myself so I just deleted Twitter off my
phone and go sleep some more. Enjoy the sun. Did some painting. Hung out with
friends."

He insults his perceived critics:

"Who gives a fuck about what a bunch of angry lonely coders think about my
thoughts?"

He invents weird agglomerations:

"These groups of programmers used to have large sway over what was successful
and chosen, but at the same time were horribly uninformed about basic computer
science. They ran to Node.js because of “events are better than threads” and
had no idea Hoare or coroutines existed. "

So, it is the older and experienced programmers who ran to NodeJS? Does anyone
believe that to be true?

I suppose this is at least a refreshing reversal of stereotypes?

"For all their claims of superiority for having once bought a copy of The Art
of Computer Programming the previous generation of programmers are sadly
uninformed about basic shit."

He validates himself by how much money he is making:

"my sales were up and my traffic was about the same."

Seriously, this is the Donald Trump version of computer programming.

And I say this as someone who has learned a lot from Shaw.

~~~
tomc1985
I think that kind of nitpicking is exactly the thing he is trying to avoid.

It may not look like it from the inside but the HN crowd _is_ a very distinct,
and very opinionated, bubble in the wider world of CompSci and Engineering. It
looks like a lot of this crowd seems to enthusiastically cheer things that are
not worthy of cheering (like overly-complicated solutions to problems,
innovations that are really just repackaged ideas from 20/30/40 years ago,
blind faith in the cloud, etc).

Now the HN crowd has its reasons -- things are the way they are because of
team constrains and ever-present Business Decisions -- but I think a lot of
the crowd has become very disconnected from the wider world of computers and
engineering in their quest to churn out cloud businesses ad nauseam. There are
entirely different communities rocking entirely different paradigms, and
frankly they don't usually inflate the pace of change for innovations' sake.

~~~
lkrubner
If you have something you'd like to criticize, you should do so with
specifics. Criticism this vague does not add anything to the conversation:

"It looks like a lot of this crowd seems to enthusiastically cheer things that
are not worthy of cheering (like overly-complicated solutions to problems,
innovations that are really just repackaged ideas from 20/30/40 years ago,
blind faith in the cloud, etc)."

I don't feel like getting into a debate with you, but "overly-complicated
solutions" was a criticism that was often aimed at Enterprise solutions coming
from Oracle, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and others. Remember Struts?
Even Zope was guilty of this, at least until Zope 3. When HackerNews was
getting going circa 2005, it was very much part of the rebellion against all
that.

The only specific that you offered was "blind faith in the cloud" and yet
there have been several articles this month, critical of the cloud, that made
it to the front page of HackerNews. So it seems you are either vague or wrong.

I offer this simply as general advice which you might want to consider for the
future.

~~~
sp527
There's an almost Onion-esque level of irony in your reply having no sources
for anything you said.

------
scrollaway
This is getting comical. He's writing like he's prophesying the coming end of
Python 3 and he _must_ be right because his book sales aren't down.

There's plenty of mediocre in Python 3 along with the good. A lot of things
that can be done better. If he were spending his time actually trying to fix
the problems that'd be great and everybody would be applauding him (and I'm
sure more people would keep buying his god damn book). This attitude however,
dismissing the criticism he's getting as "whatever, it's because of the
Previous Generation", is fucking pathetic.

But hey, he stopped reading HN and proggit. Good for him, avoiding the big bad
filter bubble. I'm sure only surrounding yourself with people who think Py3 is
the work of the devil, and dismissing any and all criticism of your Word of
God as "angry lonely coders" is a healthy, balanced approached to information
ingestion.

~~~
wmil
> If he were spending his time actually trying to fix the problems

Let's assume he doesn't have the time or energy to dive into the Python 3
source and then learn the rules for contributions.

Then all he can do is list the problems he has with Python 3. Which he has
done.

It seems like the Python 3 community is too defensive. Bad string error
message seem to be a longstanding grip. They should focus on improving that
instead of complaining about Zed's opinions.

~~~
scrollaway
Nonsense. There's plenty he could do other than "list problems". There's in
fact a ton more that hundreds, even thousands have done than him for Python 3
specifically and Python in general. He, of all people, would be able to help a
huge amount if he put his mind to it.

But I'm not here to tell him what to do. My problem is that his attitude is
actively harmful to the python community. It's creating divisiveness where
there isn't any. Take a look at most libraries: they're 2+3 compatible. Very
few are _3-only_ , because the Python community at large understands how
widespread 2 is for existing users, and how useful 3 is for new users.

No shit the community's defensive, he's literally painting a large part of it
as "angry lonely coders" and "abusive previous generation".

 _No shit they complain about Zed 's opinions_, a lot of developers learned
Python _with his book_. I'm a child of Dive Into Python, but I can attest that
you feel emotionally attached to what taught you the language you love.

His attitude is the problem. As for "improving Python 3", I don't know if you
noticed but there's been 5 major releases of 3.x since the initial one, with a
6th one approaching. Each and every one of them has improved backwards
compatibility and the python 3 rough edges.

~~~
patates
There may probably be a lot of things he could do to help Python but why is
listing problems any less useful?

He says he gave it a try many times, too, so it's not just blind criticism.

I don't like how he disregards the opinions of communities and how he
validates his, but that doesn't mean he totally wrong about the problems of
Python 3.

~~~
scrollaway
Because nearly none of the problems he listed are real problems.

Please read through this: [https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-
python-3/](https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-python-3/)

------
kibwen
Required prior reading: [https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-
python-3/](https://eev.ee/blog/2016/11/23/a-rebuttal-for-python-3/)

EDIT: Care to explain the downvotes?

~~~
drtse4
> Required prior reading

I've not used python in years, I've read this post and the original one and
still don't understand why python 3 is so terrible and is inevitably destined
to fail.

I see just a few changes, nothing comparable to what happened for example with
the Swift language.

~~~
mixedCase
The Swift ecosystem has never been half as big as Python's was when version 3
released.

------
ChuckMcM
I have similar emotional responses as Zed (who will never see this because he
doesn't read HN :-) to what might be called programmer "taste." There was, and
to some extent still is, a very 'fashionista'[1] vibe to writing code at
times. And that is very sad indeed because there is so much to learn, and code
is so varied, that there is room for everyone.

I hope today's new coders are moving past that but I worry there may be
something in the emotional makeup of people that evokes these sorts of
responses.

[1] Fashionista is a derogatory term applied to a person who fawns over things
that are considered to be "in fashion" and is derisive of things that were
either formerly fashionable but are no longer, or some influential voice in
the fashion community has declared to be in poor taste.

~~~
MAGZine
Pretty sure i've been attacked by Zed Shaw on HN before. He dismissed me as a
person rather than bother with the argument I was making.

Smart guy, sure, but it is difficult to pay attention to what he's saying at
times.

------
Animats
This is the same "Learn Python the hard way" guy, Zed Shaw, who was ranting
yesterday.[1]

I'm not a Python 3 fan, but this seems excessive. Python 3.0 through 3.3 or so
sucked for porting, but by 3.4 some of the porting headaches from syntax
changes (such as disallowing u"abc") had been undone, the "six" package made
2.7 - 3.4 compatible code practical, and most of the important libraries
actually worked both under 2.7 and 3.4.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13019819](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13019819)

------
nv-vn
>These groups of programmers ... were horribly uninformed about basic computer
science

Reading his previous post about Python 3, I think this description is more
fitting to him. His last post discusses such topics as "statically typed
strings" which are "not as statically compiled as they could be". You don't
need to be an expert to understand the differences between static/dynamic and
strong/weak typing (plus he uses both of these terms to mean two different
things in the article). Remember that this is written by someone with
apparently enough expertise to write a book about C. He states that Python 3
is not Turing complete because a virtual machine for Python 3 bytecode cannot
run Python 2 bytecode (but makes no such argument when he mentions other
languages that clearly don't run Python 3 bytecode). Yet he constantly
references phrases like "it's all in the math!" or "it's basic computer
science." All this article amounts to is a bunch of name-calling and damage
control for the criticism he got for mistakes in his last article. That he
feels so defensive about mistakes to go and bash the people trying to help him
makes me much less likely to ever recommend his books. Look back at the "Learn
Python the Wrong Way" damage control article, in which he "called out" a
programmer who he had (secretly) offered to pay to help make corrections
because that guy didn't have time to help out. Rather than going with the
corrections from the original article, he attempted to publicly shame the
other guy (repeatedly calling him a "beginner programmer" and claiming he has
no skills, not to mention lying about his motives). If /r/programming was
wrong in unlisting his book because of the contents of it, they were certainly
correct in stopping their support of someone this toxic.

------
fzeroracer
He sounds exactly like the coders he hates, inventing a bunch of strange
notions and attempts to validate the reason why he thinks his opinion is
superior to others.

~~~
languagewars
Looking at the traditional literary world is where everything becomes obvious
to me.

To be a good writer you have to hold stubborn opinions until each work is
finished or you have too many options and create something confusing, bland,
unpalatable and inconsistent. If you hold the same ideas too long and too
publicly then the market raises the volume on the jibes against your style
since you offer no topics for discussion and it wants to recover your share.

To be anyone else in literary market, you have to fawn over every returning
fad as if it were new and great, and be the catalyst for reinforcing the
artificial drama in the differences in stubborn views the authors are holding.
To do less is to hurt overall market sales and eventually be shunned.

I find it all very interesting to follow, but if you want to be a proper lazy
programmer for the long haul then you must learn to stay bellow the radar so
no one knows how boring and automatic your solutions are. Those are the
authors we all know exist who quietly take ghost writing cuts on a book or
more a year, but dont have all the crisises or neurosis to get the role of
author on tv.

------
realworldview
Wow. I must _never_ take what he's taking. So much anger. Yet strangely
entertaining as only Zed, Linus and Andy can be, with only the slightest prod
or provocation. Or anything really. It's unfortunate that it's often difficult
to make one's way past this; I really enjoyed Lamson. But it just comes down
to money and anger, so much anger and so little understanding and restraint.

I'm going to visit and give him SUCH A BIG HUG!!

------
viraptor
What I'd like to understand is: why did he publish the previous post? I mean,
it was an opinion and he knew it's one that many don't agree with. If other
people calling him out and disagreeing is a problem, then what was his
original intention?

You can't publish your writing with things like "I don’t worry about the
vindictive assholes out there who feel any questioning of their tribal beliefs
is an affront to their person." and expect that nobody will point out it looks
like you just took questioning of your beliefs as an affront to your person.
Maybe I'm missing what he tried to achieve...

------
trav4225
_" abusive previous generation of programmers"_

It was interesting for me to read that because I'm from that previous
generation of programmers, and I've always felt that it's the current
generation that's abusive. :)

~~~
donatj
My thoughts as well. The previous generation I have found to have constructive
criticism. The current generation cares very little about actual engineering
quality and just MVP and failing fast. That's of course an over simplification
but the new generation has yet to prove they can build anything reliable or
that will be around for more than a few years (see: emacs, bash, etc)

------
EliRivers
_To put it bluntly, the reddit community responsible for teaching beginners to
code censored my book as a power play to get me to force Python 3 on
unsuspecting beginners._

This book hasn't had offending passages removed or bowdlerised. It's not been
removed from bookshelves and the publisher hasn't been order to pulp all
remaining copies. "Censorship" is not what's happened here.

------
z3t4
I was a bit offended because I think “events are better than threads” but then
I had no idea of coroutines or Hoare. When it comes to parallelism I think it
will always be hard, as you have to micromanage to prevent locks, congestion
and race conditions. The solutions are the same but different, neither is
_much_ better. Where coroutines seems useful I rather use queues though, where
"next" shift the queue. I could probably also name drop and I bet not even Zed
would have heard of her, or the HN community deeming her not relevant (smile).
You can not know everything though, and the point of this comment is that I do
not know shit but neither do you, so please be humble.

------
alanfranzoni
I think that Zed often offers good criticism for many issues... but sometimes
is unable to accept the fact that a lot of people will yell at him. That's
life, don't get angry, man. I've criticized Python many times as a speaker at
Europython, and people looked strangely at me ever after... but in the end,
such things happen. They never kicked me.

------
lj3
The amount of pure salt and hatred in this thread only proves his point, guys.
I thought this was hacker news. Where's the substantive discussion on the
impact of hacker news and reddit on the newest generation of programmers?

~~~
threatofrain
Zed Shaw's article isn't really about the new generation of programmers, or
else I'd have more information on this new generation by the end of his
article, but I really don't.

I used to defend Zed Shaw, but then I realized recently that he just shoots
himself in the face too often. The very public criticism he cannot stomach is
often <self-inflicted>.

Telling beginners that Python 3 maybe isn't a real programming language
because it's not Turing complete is dishonest.

Zed Shaw used Turing completeness as a launching point for talking about how
the Python core devs are incompetent, and how a specific person shouldn't be
trusted to understand threads and processes.

The difference between 2 and 3 is <not> such that while Python 2 is the
darling of introductory languages, Python 3 is unusable and not a real
programming language.

Zed Shaw has accrued reputational currency, the kind that can corral change,
but he continually wastes it, and the blowback is mostly self-inflicted.

------
donatj
Angry Programmer attacks straw man.

------
nv-vn
>This industry sucks, and largely because of the abusive previous generation
of programmers.

Sorry to inform you Zed, but the previous generation of programmers are not
the ones on HackerNews and (especially) Reddit. Considering the average age of
redditors, I doubt most /r/programming readers are <25, with many (maybe even
a majority) <20.

------
orthoganol
The second half reads like this guy believes he is the center of the world. I
don't understand the "Well, he's entertaining", it just reads like narcissism
and anger. But maybe I don't know enough about this person and his particular
situation.

------
joesmo
From an outsider's perspective, the rift between Python 2/3 that's been going
on now for so many years indicates that the language has completely stalled
and stopped as far as progress goes. I don't see any reason to pursue a dead
language that can't resolve its own problems over the course of almost a
decade. Think about what that says about the community! People talk about
community in the abstract, but here is a concrete example of a divided
community that cannot figure out how to move forward. And that's with a
dictator leading it!

I can't think of anything holding people back more from trying and adopting
Python for serious projects. Before you can even begin to play with the
language, you're forced to make a choice that _the most experienced Python
developers cannot agree on_. If that's not user unfriendly, I don't know what
is. Note also that it doesn't matter if my perceptions are right or wrong. You
can't expect a Python beginner to have good perceptions about something he has
not learned. However, I've read enough information to know that making this
decision is not easy, nor is it really doable for a beginner. If I'm going to
consider Python as a language for my next project, I have to be able to
evaluate it properly and the rift basically now forces me to treat Python as
two separate, incompatible languages that have no opportunity to grow, change,
or adapt for the future.

No thanks.

~~~
TheDrizzle43
This is why people got upset about the original post from Zed. One dude
whining in a blog does not equal mass dissent in the community. The choice is
inconsequential for 99% of programmers and hardly a difficult decision - flip
a damn coin if you cannot decide. I make 100x more decisions when it comes to
front-end development than I ever have with python 2 vs 3.

~~~
joesmo
That's exactly why I decided to choose anything BUT Python. If it really was
inconsequential, the community wouldn't be split. I'm also not going to select
my programming language with a coin flip. That's ridiculous.

There are so many alternatives these days that it's simply not worth dealing
with this type of bullshit.

