
Argh There’s an asshole on my internet - DjangoReinhardt
https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/66e8721ff869
======
huhtenberg
You need to have a thick skin when presenting your work for critique
regardless of whether you are a programmer or a cook.

Moreover, I would personally take abrasive factual criticism over superficial
pats on the back and fake smiles in a heartbeat.

In fact, this -

    
    
      Bookmark hell? What about click through stuff hell?
      Needless to say, 5 clicks through, I gave up.
    

is a _very_ useful feedback. It's raw, but it is the actual uncoated
impression of a real user. Live with it, learn from it.

~~~
ringmaster
Useful, maybe. Constructive, no. Especially to someone who didn't understand
enough not to do this in the first place.

Just because you should expect the internet to be full of douchebags does not
mean you need to contribute to their number. It doesn't hurt to be nice.

~~~
Karunamon
I don't see anything particularly nasty about the comments called out by the
author. One even seemed somewhat humorous in nature (first one).

Look.. if you are unable in this day and age, and this environment, to
differentiate between honest criticism directed at your product, in this case
"you wrecked my back history", "too much clicking", "too much animation" and
insults directed at you (or your child.. what a shameful appeal to emotion),
you are in the wrong line of work.

I honestly and truly mean that. If your criterion for "nasty" is a short
message containing no insults, no foul language, simply a lack of social
niceties book-ending the actual content, you're going to be very unpleasantly
surprised when actual end users get ahold of your product and start voicing
their annoyance with language that would make Linus Torvalds blush.

Being a labor of love certainly doesn't exempt you from criticism, even less
so when you make a "Show HN" post about it!

 _If you don’t like my work because it is bad, tell me about it._

Here were three very concrete issues presented by random people. I don't know
about you, but were I on the receiving end of those pretty reasonable
comments, I'd have taken their advice to heart and made changes, not written
what amounts to a tone argument in blog post form.

This post is made not in insult of the author or his work - it is made in
honest critique of the blog post. Whatever tone is chosen to be read into this
post is the reader's choice.

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
I am the author and I'd like to answer your comments, please:

I agree with you that the jump from the quoted comments to my passionate
statement ("If you don't like my work...") was extremely abrupt. It seems to
indicate that I believed the criticisms to be ad hominems directed at me.

Refuting the ad hominem ad-hoc, without an example was childish behavior on my
part and I would like to apologise for that bit unreservedly. I also realise
that it is VERY ironic considering the nature and topic of my post but I hope
the rest of the post still makes good points.

Nope, I am not ashamed about the 'appeal to emotion' because it wasn't an
appeal to emotion. It is something I personally believe and I'd like to stand
by it, please. I think that anyone who's created something deserves a bit of
admiration/praise along with the criticism and in that regard the example fits
perfectly, IMHO. Let us agree to disagree here?

I beg to differ about the 'honesty of the criticism' and the 'concreteness' of
the three issues you mention - IMHO, they were disguised as insults. The same
points have also been brought up by others in the same thread in ways that are
far better at promoting a conversation and a learning experience, in general.

It'll please you to know that the original creator of the Show HN
(TuringMachine) was a far better man than I and I was thoroughly impressed by
his responses. I, OTOH, was quick to express my anguish in a public forum and
I have received some very interesting criticism myself. Yours is definitely
one of them, thank you.

~~~
ekidd
_I think that anyone who 's created something deserves a bit of
admiration/praise along with the criticism and in that regard the example fits
perfectly, IMHO._

As a programmer, it's worth keeping in mind that your work—with any luck—will
touch the lives of tens of thousands of people. If your work is poor, you will
make those lives worse. If your work is excellent, you will make those lives
better. Everything you do, for good or ill, may be multiplied by a huge
number. This is how programmers can change the world, and how they can make
piles of money.

But with this power comes a responsibility: We have to listen to those users,
and we have to give them the best we can. If we're unlucky, the users will say
_nice_ things while suffering in silence. If we're lucky, some of those users
will gripe and moan about something specific. Many programmers spend a huge
amount of effort trying to get users to vent their frustrations in detail. One
of the most brutally effective things a programmer can do is watch a user
through one-way glass from a sound-proof room. You will sit there cursing
yourself, mutter, "How could I have been so stupid? I have to fix that
immediately."

Now, if a novice programmer shows me their Rails app in person, I'm going to
compliment some stuff, rip some other stuff apart (with instructions on how to
fix it), and point them towards useful tools. But if a programmer releases
software to a wide audience, and that software sucks, I'll gripe as much as
any other user. (Of course, if the software is open source, I know the answer
will be "Patches, please!", so I skip the griping and send patches along with
enthusiastic thank yous for the code.)

If you don't think your work is ready to touch the lives of ten thousand
people, and you don't want that responsibility, then I actually recommend
against doing a "Show HN". Find a smaller, more personal group, where people
will interact with you, and not just your code.

And I say all of this as somebody who has _zero_ patience for nasty personal
remarks. The feedback you quoted was brutal, but as a working professional,
I've invested both time and money to elicit similar feedback.

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
I wish I could meet more people like you and I wish that you meet better
people than me. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. You are
truly awesome.

------
RHSeeger
I agree with his thoughts pertaining to, effectively, the fact that people
should put some time into being polite even in their negative criticism.
Specifically, things like the following could be said in a better way while
still conveying the message that the user has issues with the site:

> What is this? Sorry, but I’m not going to watch shapes flying around my
> screen to find out.

However, then he goes on to imply that the things being said are personal
attacks, not critiques of the work itself.

> If you don’t like my work because it is bad, tell me about it. If you don’t
> like my work because you don’t like me, talk to the fucking hand.

The messages he quoted, while they could have been phrased better, were not
personal attacks. They were comments on things that people found wrong with
the product, not the person.

~~~
speeder
This post is the epitome of irony. The guy attack HNers as people for
attacking people instead of their work, but post as example critiques of work.

It is like the bible phrase about judging while still having a post on your
eyes.

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
That guy is me, the OP.

The post was written as a single-draft rant and published in a hurry. In
retrospect, I should have taken care to draft it better. Should I edit the
post and structure it better? Is it right to edit your post once it has been
published and commented upon? In any case, thanks for the criticism.

As for the irony, I would like to politely disagree with you on that one: I am
not attacking people of HN in the post at all!

In fact attacking is the wrong word, IMHO. I am ranting against/criticizing
HN-ers criticizing skills. I personally believe that, in the context of HN,
your posts, comments & critiques are defined as "your work". So essentially, I
am criticizing "your work", don't you think?

Also, I apologised for the rant going slightly off-topic in my last paragraph.
I would like to believe that I did not stray too far off-topic but do tell me
if I did: I'll take care to construct my future posts better.

Thanks for reading!

~~~
pdonis
_The post was written as a single-draft rant and published in a hurry._

If you want constructive criticism, here is some: don't do that. Particularly
not if you are basically complaining about other people doing that. And even
more particularly not if it isn't just a quick comment on HN, but a separate
post on your own blog; blog posts are expected to have more thought and care
behind them than comments.

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
Yup, duly noted. :)

However, now that it is out there in the wild, I am taking notes for what to
do (and what NOT to do) the next time I post something. The 'published in a
hurry' bit happened because I accidentally clicked the publish button instead
of the save draft button. I am not entirely sure how to unpublish on Medium -
or if such a thing was even possible. So I went ahead and posted it to HN
expecting - very literally - nothing.

One way or the other, I'm getting to learn quite a few things now! :)

~~~
pdonis
One other item that I think is worth repeating, about the original
presentation: the "click-through hell" commenter didn't choose the most
tactful way to put it, but he had a point. :-) I know slideshows and videos
are all the rage now, but a simple article or blog post has one big advantage
over them: it's much higher bandwidth, at least for me, and I suspect for a
large percentage of your target audience. I can read a _lot_ faster than your
video can run, or than your slideshow can go from slide to slide. If you don't
give me a quick, high-bandwidth way to find out what you're doing, I'm not
going to invest the time.

[Edit: I see from comments elsewhere in this thread that you were not the
author of the original presentation; but I still think the above is a good
general rule to follow.]

------
stormcrowsx
Not all criticism is wrapped in a pretty package, but most of it is still
useful. You are not your code, if someone attacks your code/product try to get
to the useful part of that criticism and don't get bent out of shape about the
insults.

I agree people should be more polite but there are some that are just
incapable of wrapping their criticism up to be nice.

Speaking on the mentor portion of the article as a Junior Dev I worked under
an older Senior Programmer who would flat out say the code I just finished and
was proud of sucked, after asking a few questions I'd get to the root of it
and learn something. Under the crude insults he was a smart guy who knew his
stuff. The way he reviewed code was just part of his personality, he actively
tried to be nice but it never came out to others as nice as he thought it was.
In the end I'm glad he gave me criticism even if it wasn't pretty, it really
helped me to hone my skills.

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
So what you are saying is some people are like Sheldon from the Big Bang
Theory - they just can't be bothered to be polite about something they know is
inherently wrong?

Welp, I'd not considered that at all! Thank you so much for that perspective.
I'll keep that in mind the next time I meet someone like that! :)

~~~
mysticllama
considering you just made a big bang theory reference, i'm inclined to say you
had it coming, son

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
I am not much of a TV-person but I like some of the characters and some
parts/episodes/scenes of the show. And yeah, while it was a fitting reference,
I should have known that I had it coming. :(

------
4hthth4
> What is this? Sorry, but I’m not going to watch shapes flying around my
> screen to find out.

Oh no, that's such a terrible criticism.

------
jdhendrickson
I have also been disappointed in the change of HN over the last few years but
he picked some really poor examples to try to show case those issues, this is
more jumping on that band wagon while not understanding what the banner on the
side says. I will admit I was quickly lost while trying to read this chest
beating bravado manifesto mixed (strangely enough) with a lack of self
confidence oozing from every other sentence. You know what impresses hackers?
Code, quality code that does something non trivial. In academia either no one
pays attention to your work and you can think it's great without anyone
arguing with you, or they try to tear something truly novel apart like a pack
of rabid hyena. When you get on the front page of hacker news some people are
going to do the same thing. Think of it as publishing a ground breaking paper.
Programmers can be rather laconic, and if this means using a short sentence to
let you know you aren't explaining your product/project succinctly enough, or
you are requiring to many clicks just to get to the meat of what you want to
tell people perhaps it's good advice and you should take it (along with a
grain of salt because SOME people are just assholes but assholes rarely give
actionable valuable feedback) especially if it's multiple people.

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
I am OP and the author of the post.

Yup, you are right. I picked some poor examples to showcase my experiences and
I should have drafted/edited my post better. I have nobody to blame but
myself. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll keep this in mind for the future.

As for the lack of self-confidence, I am working my way through that. I kept
thinking it was merely a manifestation of the impostor syndrome. Reading your
comment, it seems I have over-estimated myself and I am actually suffering
from a lack of self-confidence more than anything else.

To tell you the truth, as an utter newbie, I am never entirely sure if I am
doing the right thing so I am cautious with almost everything. Unfortunately
for me, the same does not seem to apply with my rants. I really should edit my
posts better. My escapist brain tells me to excuse myself by saying, I never
expected to get on to the front-page of HN. It is definitely a slow news day,
I guess.

Also, the project that I chose as an example in the post isn't mine. I should
have made that clear in the beginning itself. It just caused my anguish to
bubble over.

~~~
Digit-Al
Not a criticism, but I believe you have misinterpreted the meaning of
"imposter syndrome". Imposter syndrome is when someone experienced and who
gets credit for their accomplishments does not believe they deserve the credit
or praise they receive. If you are a newbie, as you say, then by definition
you cannot suffer from imposter syndrome.

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
The impostor syndrome is not for my experiences as a developer. It's for a
different part of my life. :)

Also, I thought it had nothing to do with experience and was strictly about
'internalizing accomplishments' \- at least that's what Wikipedia said.

Maybe I am over-assuming. Maybe you are right and I just suffer from low self-
esteem. :(

------
debacle
These kinds of posts are tiring - the Internet White Knight is a tired meme,
and has been tired for almost twenty years. Unless you can provide a solution
to the problem, you're just creating noise - something, like assholes, that
the Internet certainly does not need more of.

Social networking on a grand scale has been around for almost 30 years, and in
that time the Internet has remained skeptical, critical, and slightly
negative.

Lets think about why that is for a second. The Internet is built on ads. Not
content, not content creators, and not Google. Advertising drives the
machinations of the Internet and there are very few large sites out there that
aren't advertizing driven.

When the underlying pulse of the Internet is marketing, it's no wonder that
people take a reserved and slightly negative approach - they don't know
whether they're experiencing something genuine or being fed bullshit, and
sometimes the answer is both.

So please, be a bit less of an anti-asshole and a bit more understanding about
why people take this tack in their online personas - it isn't about an
inherent negativity of their personality, but rather a defensive mechanism
that they've subconsciously developed due to the reality of what the Internet
is - a marketing platform.

~~~
DanBC
Usenet was famously full of assholes and vigorous flaming. Usenet was (for
some time) free of advertising.

Very many other online fora with no advertising have had similar problems with
vigorous discussion. See, eg, Wikipedia, where people often have personality
clashes.

~~~
debacle
Parts of usenet were full of assholes. But parts of any ecosystem will be full
of assholes.

Also, Wikipedia does not exist in a void. I would posit that more than half of
Wikipedia's traffic comes from Google, the poster child for ad driven business
in the Internet age.

------
spongle
End users and reviewers are not going to be all fluffy bunny rabbits on the
Internet. Suck it up and fix it. You will gain respect for actually responding
constructively rather than ranting about how unfair it is.

In real life it's even harder. To be blatantly honest I nearly cried once when
a client ripped the shit out of two weeks of backbreaking work I did for them.
Instead of crawling off and whinging I fixed it and the client was happy. This
was in 1998 and they're still a client now.

Now try again :)

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
To quote a song from my childhood.

"I get knocked down But I get up again You're never gonna keep me down."

Right? ;)

~~~
philbarr
Although I would be tempted to refrain from taking life lessons from
Chumbawumba. :)

~~~
spongle
I can think of worse bands. Chumbawumba have a great reputation for stirring
things up in a comedy fashion.

Oh and no twirking or whatever it is.

------
linuxlizard
I've been programming for years & years. I juuuust missed the punch card era.
Whenever I'm approached by a new learner, I remember a story my mother told
me.

My mother was studying to be a nurses assistant. She was learning to draw
blood. Her first real human patient was a frail, elderly lady. My mom was
apologetically poking this woman's arm. "Don't worry, dear," the lady told my
mother. "We all have to learn somehow."

Whenever I get poked by a newcomer to the field, I try to help as best I can.
We all have to learn somehow.

------
DanBC
Asking people to give better feedback is pointless. The arseholes on HN enjoy
being arseholes and will condemn you for suggesting they give the same
feedback in a less arseholey way.

> What is this? Sorry, but I’m not going to watch shapes flying around my
> screen to find out.

It's tempting to reply to this with a "well, fuck off then." but it's valid
critique - some people don't want a presentation, they just want text. Look at
man pages - it's possible to improve the typography and the presentation, and
include some graphics and CSS, but the information is what people want.

([http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-
bin/man.cgi?query=afterboot&sekti...](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-
bin/man.cgi?query=afterboot&sektion=&apropos=0&manpath=OpenBSD+Current&title=New%20System%20afterboot))

As a contrast, look at the mostly positive comments on the 180 days of
whatever it was posts - some of the more negative posts got downvotes, and
most of the comments seemed positive.

So, maybe it's useful to (avoiding age[1]) say "I'm learning $X and this is
what I made? Any useful critique?" You'll still get arseholes but I think
you'll have not as many.

[1] Because no matter what you've achieved as a 15 year old there'll be
someone on HN to say "Yeah? SO WHAT? That's nothing special."

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
Good thoughts, thanks! :)

I didn't expect this post to polarise people so much but, in a way, I am glad
it did. I have found some interesting conversation behaviors and patterns that
will surely stand me in good stead when I post my very own "Show HN" in the
(hopefully) near future.

As a quick thought, I'd like to leave you with this:

> What is this? Sorry, but I’m not going to watch shapes flying around my
> screen to find out.

OR

> [...]some people don't want a presentation, they just want text. Look at man
> pages - it's possible to improve the typography and the presentation, and
> include some graphics and CSS, but the information is what people want.

I'll stretch my neck out here and claim that both posts are offering the same
criticism (somewhat). However, different people react differently to the two
statements quoted above. For me, it is the second one.

Which one eggs you on more?

~~~
chris_wot
I think it's worthwhile looking at this short statement on the HN guidelines:

 _Be civil. Don 't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face
conversation._

 _When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.
E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to
"1 + 1 is 2, not 3."_

[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
thinkersilver
People have already said it - Grow a thick skin. People will comment not
always having enough time to construct their thoughts, others will post their
immediate unedited impression, there will be some where English is a second
language and then there are the douchebags. It's feedback. The fact that you
make it to the frontpage is feedback. The fact that people are writing means
that you have struck a nerve. That is a good thing.

Remove the noise from the signal and use it to improve your product. I like HN
and I think it is useful and I haven't found a forum that does it better. I
can't comment about Reddit because I have never used or read any articles or
threads on it and I have no plan to.

------
tomjen3
If you think those comments are harsh, try dealing with actual users.

------
yogo
> _No, there’s no harm starting at the lowest rung; you do, after all, start
> at the bottom and make your way to the top. However, it is a bloody outrage
> when the lowest rung is treated exactly the way Shudras were treated in
> early-India._

I sort of see what you are trying to say but I don't think this is an apt
analogy. Yes, when you start you might tend to get a RTFM from more
experienced developers (often rightfully so) but no one is holding you to a
_class_. Asking the right questions and trying to see what the commenter/user
is really trying to say might be more helpful in the long run.

> _You never know, your vitriol might just end up killing the next-big-thing
> on the internet._

Who knows? You just might uncover a really big pain point the same way.

------
_pmf_
> Is it wrong of me to have started learning programming at the age of 30? Do
> my attempts mean squat if I didn’t start the same time as you did?

Maybe it would be worth to consider whether your attempts should be as public
as they are. Why does everything has to be made public immediately? Continuous
delivery does not mean pushing out sub optimal work just because you can and
because nobody has to pay for it.

> I don’t see you guys taking up cudgels with Pascal because he wrote
> treatises in Physics and Philosophy both, do I?

Comparing yourself with a genius is probably not the most humble way of
discussing the issue.

------
niuzeta
I'll bite.

The presentation for the Bookmark was at best horrible. Just by forcing the
reader to repeatedly click on a specific point of the screen just to get a
progressive sentence or two, just isn't a way to do it, especially if you
don't even give an indicative of where you are at. I gave up at 20th click or
so.

Second, let's examine how the link was titled:

    
    
      Show HN: Escape from Bookmark Hell
    

_Escape_ from _Hell_ already gives a connotation that the author believes that
the pre-existing system(the bookmarks), which people have been using for a
long time, is somehow _Hellish_ and that it is so bad that it needs _escaping_
from.

Of course, perhaps the author has found and solved a problem which none of us
knew we had, but if it were a constructive progress, I'm fine with it. But
when you have to click seven to eight times, past the buzzwords, just to see
exactly _what_ the author is claiming to be such inefficient system, and ten
or so clicks furthermore for the proposed _solution_ , it just reeks of
arrogance.

At this point I simply pressed a 'back' button, got annoyed, and simply closed
the tab, not averting my attention to it ever again.

Apart from a personal experience from the example, here are the takeaways:

I didn't like what I saw. I didn't like the presentation. Which is fine, you
can't please everyone. But _I did not leave a feedback_. To the author of the
Bookmark, I didn't exist, or in a way more relevant to a developer, _the
disgruntled user whose opinion is valuable in improving the product_ never
reached the developer.

That's how unconcerned people usually react.

Instead, you have a group of passionate people who took their time to
criticize and comment on the product and the presentation. You should really
take it with a grain of salt.

Of course, there should be some assholes, but it's the internet, or even, a
group of people. If you had thought somehow that _academic developers_ were
all nice and respectful, you would be very sorrily disappointed.

I have no idea if the OP is the author of the Bookmark thing, but normally,
when people don't like what they see, they _leave_ , lest leave a comment.
Some of the examples the OP listed are actually pretty helpful comments, of
this point has already been discussed.

A criticism is better than negligence. Almost always.

~~~
DjangoReinhardt
Hi, I am OP and nope, I am not the author of the bookmark thing nor am I
related to him in anyway.

I am, however, someone who unintentionally empathized with the author of the
bookmark thing and posted my anguish. I am now learning a lot from this
discussion.

I thanks you for your detailed comment and I particularly liked two statements
you made:

1\. To the author of the Bookmark, I didn't exist, or in a way more relevant
to a developer, the disgruntled user whose opinion is valuable in improving
the product never reached the developer.

2\. A criticism is better than negligence. Almost always.

I'll keep these in mind forever when evaluating something for someone else
from now on. No matter how small, a single line of feedback can lead to some
powerful changes, sometimes. Personally, I'll ensure that I'll always craft
this constructively but if I'm on the receiving end I won't take it personally
if someone chooses not to. :)

As for the original author of the bookmark thing, he is a far better man than
I. He has responded very calmly and respectfully to all the jeering/criticism
and I continue to remain in awe of him.

I still have a lot to learn, I guess.

------
al2o3cr
Wow, if the examples in this article are the best examples of "assholes on the
internet", the author should try reading about the experiences of non-male or
non-white coders sometime. "Yer product sux" is positively TAME in
comparison...

------
probablyfiction
This article brings up something I wish was discussed on HN more often. As a
group, we're not very nice. HN comments are typically filled with cynicism and
a jaded worldview that is incredibly off-putting.

------
MaggieL
There are no "participation trophies" in programming.

