
Reginald Braithwaite is a GitHubber - llambda
https://github.com/blog/1567-reginald-braithwaite-is-a-githubber
======
tptacek
To the surprise of absolutely no-one.

Congratulations, raganwald, and good call, Github. You're on a roll with
hiring these days. :)

~~~
benstein
Agreed. This a you-got-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter moment. Really good
match.

~~~
eieio
This is probably a really dumb question, but can you explain what a
"chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter moment" is? I've never heard a phrase like
that.

OT this is awesome. Congrats to both parties, obviously a great choice.

~~~
cschmidt
Don't feel dumb, you're one of the 10,000...

[http://xkcd.com/1053/](http://xkcd.com/1053/)

~~~
JiPi
Awesome one! :)

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danso
I know raganwald is a top HN user but I know him more through his excellent
technical books, and so am looking forward to his contributions to Github's
documentation:

[https://leanpub.com/u/raganwald](https://leanpub.com/u/raganwald)

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northisup
Why on earth is this interesting enough for the greater HN community to care
about?

~~~
sytelus
I think it's not interesting to vast majority of the HN users. They probably
don't even know who this guy is or care if gets job at X or Y company. What is
happening is here is though there is small number of people who does know him
(may be < 100) and they all upvote this link or write redundant comments of
congratulation in quick succession driving it to the top. This is one of the
scenario that downvote button could have prevented allowing rest of the users
to indicate that they are not interested. Without downvote, their only
recourse is to vote _something else_ which gets pretty thinly spread at least
in some small time window while those 100+ users are upvoting this.

~~~
m0nastic
I feel like you don't understand what a community is...

Hacker News is an online community. It has a pretty open membership policy,
which is that, if you show up here over a period of time, and manage to not
get hell-banned, you're a part of the community. Congrats!

Part of being in a community is that it's pretty common to have a kinship with
other people in that community. This place isn't a real-life place, so
naturally, that kinship might not develop as quickly, or spread as deeply as
one might in person. But you'd be surprised that it can still develop.

So, "the vast majority of HN users" might not actually know who raganwald is,
but I'd bet they've probably seen at least a few of his comments, at least if
they've spent any amount of time here. However, "the vast majority of HN
users" aren't actually the community. There's nothing stopping them from being
part of it, they just aren't. Which is fine (I don't consider myself to be,
for what it's worth).

But when someone who is a part of the community has something good happen to
them that's of interest to the community, people share it.

The fact that this story is popular is a triumph of community, not a shitty
side-effect of this place not operating the way you wish it did. I hope it
continues to feel this way, lest it really turn into a shitty link aggregator
that you so wish it were.

~~~
sytelus
I think you have misunderstood what what I was trying to say. I was explaining
why posts like this with seemingly little information density, redundant
"congratulations" comments and low relevance to probably majority of HN users
pops up at top. Yes, I've found raganwald's articles and comments insightful
more than one occasions. However I've little interest in what color of pajama
he wears in night or what flavor of ice-cream he likes. That's what Facebook
is for. And there is a reason I haven't checked my Facebook "frontpage" in
month. I think of HN as community of like-minded people who likes to share
relevant insightful information. I do not have any judgement on what this
"like-minded" means or what "relevant insightful information" should include.
If some community member in leaderboard started having secret extra marital
affair, should it be on frontpage of HN? I think it should be left to
community to decide. What I was trying to say is that lack of downvote button
disables community to make this decision. When you have only upvote button, a
small group of people can collude (knowingly or unknowingly) to push anything
at the top very easily whether it reflects the general sentiment in community
or not. I'm still not proposing HN should starting having downvote button. As
a machine learning guy, I'm endlessly fascinated with collaborative filtering
and this is interesting case for me how lack of downvote/dislike/negative
ratings impacts relevance.

~~~
icambron
The lack of a downvote button doesn't imply that everyone would downvote the
things you don't don't care about. I don't know him except through Twitter and
HN, but I care about his new job and upvoted the article. "But you're just one
data point!" So are you.

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marcamillion
Congrats raganwald. I <3 Github, and even though I don't know raganwald
personally, his comments were always intriguing and thoughtful.

I also didn't know he lived in Toronto, for some reason I assumed he lived in
San Francisco.

I also didn't know about Homoiconic - and now there is a treasure trove of
lots of wonderful programming (largely Ruby stuff from what I am seeing)
articles that I can go through one by one...little by little.

Like this one -
[https://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2008-10-...](https://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2008-10-28/and_and_or.markdown)

For some reason, I have never used `and` instead of `&&` in Ruby. Perhaps
because I have never seen it used, but now that I have seen that I can't help
but try it out next time.

I am not sure if this is even valid syntax in Ruby 2.0, but I am so glad I
stumbled across this.

For those that were criticizing the purpose of this post on HN - this is
exactly why it deserves a place here. Raganwald is a valued member of HN,
largely because of the stuff he has published over the years (and his
contributions to the community) - which are still valuable today. As a
relatively young Rubyist (started learning in 2009) all of these things are
like gold to me.

So thank you llambda for submitting this, thank you HN for upvoting it, and
thank you raganwald for not deleting this wonderful content.

Edit: Also, I think it's cool when we get a chance to 'big up' (Jamaican speak
for: "send positive/congratulatory words to") someone while they are alive and
can appreciate it. Don't mean to get all morbid, but with so many 'iconic'
tech luminaries dying recently (or it feels like that anyway), we always see
an outpouring of love after the fact - when they can't hear it. I think it's
cool that even though this isn't anything "major" (like a Nobel Prize or
anything like that) it's large (and meaningful) enough, for people to take
time out to 'big up' raganwald.

So....cheers raganwald.

 _raises imaginary wine glass_

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pbreit
Wow, it would be cool (and probably wishful thinking) if Raganwald could help
make a dent in the documentation universe beyond Github.

I'm thinking Sphinx/ReadTheDocs in scope, version controlled docs with pull
requests, output in Jekyl to Github (or other) Pages. Etc.

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ChuckMcM
Grats raganwald! Clearly articulated supporting documentation is highly
correlated with successful efforts. I am certain your efforts will be richly
rewarded.

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purephase
Congrats GH. raganwald is a class act.

I didn't realize that he lived in Toronto though. Awesome to see the streetcar
on the GH blog!

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raganwald
Thanks, everyone! HN has been a very informative, interesting, and motivating
place since its inception. You are the reason why.

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AndyKelley
He's currently ranked #108 on the GitHub Popularity Contest Index:

[http://githubpopularitycontest.com/find?user=raganwald](http://githubpopularitycontest.com/find?user=raganwald)

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TeMPOraL
Congrats, raganwald! Just don't forget to keep posting comments on HN every
now and then ;).

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aaronbrethorst
congrats to raganwald! The link to help in the blog post is broken, btw.

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everettForth
Does he ride a very shaky train to work?

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mladenkovacevic
That's the Toronto streetcar.. one of the few symbols of this wonderful city.

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jt2190
That's not just a streetcar, that's the "red rocket!" ;-)

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jarek
Technically, the "red rocket" was Toronto's first subway train,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-series_%28Toronto_subway_car%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-series_%28Toronto_subway_car%29)

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k-mcgrady
Congrats Raganwald! Funny how seeing that streetcar suddenly made me nostalgic
for Toronto.

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diziet
Hope to see you climbing (in Dogpatch?)

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ryan-allen
Woah, congrats Reg!

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edwardog
Yeah, Reg!

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thisistheend
HN is a cult and this proves it.

