
The Wisdom of Erik Naggum - fogus
http://www.loper-os.org/?p=165
======
whyenot
Some more of Erik Naggum's "wisdom." He was brilliant, but he could also be
astonishingly cruel.

 _I'm overjoyed that I actually hurt your feelings. I wish I could hurt your
feelings so much you would commit suicide. sadly, this has failed, and now the
world has to live with an amoral creep who considers himself above ethics and
reproach. you are clearly a psychotic monster, beset with hatred and malice
towards everything that hurts you, and you're so out of touch with reality to
begin with that your fantasy world is taking over, and hence it is in fact
impossible to hurt you, any more than you constantly hurt yourself. this is
also why you have to imagine what my day is like, and post your literally
insane imagination. any remnant of sanity would have held you back from such
levels of psychotic behavior.

you should consult a psychiatric ward and have yourself committed before you
actually kill someone in your deranged, psychotic state, filled as you are
with hatred and malice towards people who didn't stop hurting you when you
screamed "please don't hurt me" to yourself, only.

the only thing I regret is that I didn't see your fantastic stupidity as a
result of your shattered psychology -- it's fairly uncommon to be so fucking
retarded because of a psychological problem, but clearly, you have been
immensely stupid all your life, and now that I come and hurt your stupid
feelings, so you turn on me like a vicious and mad dog -- and that's exactly
what you are to me: a mad dog in need of a bullet through his sick brain
before he actually manages to hurt someone or himself.

do the world a huge favor and commit suicide tonight._

on the surface, it was an attack on someone who disagreed with him, but in
hindsight, I think it was actually a self critique.

~~~
neuro
You're missing something - context. They relished in trash talk, as can be
seen in the tireless and pointless arguments. Janos Blazi enjoyed playing the
part of Smurfet and Eric was equally passionate about his role - Gargamel.
Watch the rest of the cast @
[http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/...](http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/thread/7fb89deda6fe2799/6ae747dd9d936da1?q=%09+Janos+Blazi+&lnk=nl&);

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dman
Btw if the quotes got you interested in the wisdom Erik Naggum has to offer,
then the ever resourceful Xach Beane has a page for you -
<http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/> . The page contains Erik Naggums
postings on comp.lang.lisp which have a very high signal to noise ratio. Bonus
points - the listings can be browsed chronologically and can be searched.

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cageface
It's hard to take people like Naggum very seriously when the languages they so
self-righteously dismiss (C, C++, perl, Java) are used every day to build
software at all scales of complexity and Lisp remains an essentially
irrelevant niche.

He also completely misunderstands free software. It's not about giving things
away for free. It's about sharing the grunt work so we can focus on doing new
things.

Naggum is an extreme example of the somewhat common example of the grumpy old
man that refuses to understand or accept change. You can find much better
gurus if you want a guru.

~~~
dman
Math remains an essentially irrelevant niche according to your definition of
relevance - no of exponents. Lisp remains a great vehicle for exploring ideas
and writing algorithmic code. Also in response to your other post, comparing
Naggum to Xah is doing Erik a disservice in my opinion.

~~~
cageface
I like Lisp but ridiculous statements like this: _Using such inferior
languages is like asking a chef who could have done wonders with any kind of
raw materials, to use a dirty kitchen, a broken refrigerator with food that is
about to die a second time, broken tools, and brownish tap water that tasted
of swamp land._

just fly in the face of all the available evidence. When I was new to Lisp I
took bullshit like this at face value. This is a poisonous line of thinking
I'd encourage all new programmers to avoid. Naggum was _worse_ than Xah. As
another poster in this thread pointed out, his shockingly intolerant
vindictiveness and cruelty were disgusting. If you're looking for "wisdom"
then keep walking.

Lisp has had the misfortune of attracting bright but nutty people like Naggum
all along. It's held the language back quite a bit.

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malkia
Erik Naggum and Kurt Vonnegut are the two people that I respect most for their
free thinking.

------
bad_user

      At least one really huge software 
      company has made the bulk of its earnings on its ability to demonstrate 
      to other people that the real users what they could do. 
    
      From the Latin word "imponere", base of the obsolete English "impone" and 
      translated as "impress" in modern English, Nordic hackers have coined the 
      terms "imponator" (a device that does nothing but impress bystanders, 
      referred to as the "imponator effect") and "imponade" (that "goo" that 
      fills you as you get impressed with something -- from "marmelade", often 
      referred as "full of imponade", always ironic). 
    

Erik Naggum ... the best troll ever :)

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astrange
I feel uncertain about how much wisdom there is in a post about "Microshit".

