
Is Aaron Swartz the Paris Hilton of Web 2.0? - qwertyy
Is he "famous" for no reason?  He speaks at web 2.0 conferences, there are stories about him on news.yc all the time... (Yes, I'm using the word "famous" liberally.)  Why?  What has he done exactly?<p>Here's what I've got.  Feel free to add more.  He:<p>a)  worked on rss 1.0 when he was 13.  woopty-doo<p>b)  there was the Infogami - Reddit merger, which made the AOL - Time Warner merger look like a genius move for Time Warner in comparison.   it is often said that aaron added no value after the merger, while taking a huge chunk of reddit's stock in the process.    There's a lot more to this story, but I won't go into the details.  <p>c) started a half-dozen half-baked startups.  (I'm using the word "startup" liberally here).<p>d) has a blog<p>What am I missing?    Can we stop up-voting every story that even mentions the guy now?
======
dfranke
Guys, I'll tell you the same thing that I tell to people who attack Paris
Hilton: lay off. If I see Steve or Alexis make a post like this, which I
haven't, then I'll pay attention. For everyone else, what the hell did he ever
do to you? He's contributed an impressive portfolio to the open-source
community before even turning 18 -- bested, off the top of my head, only by
Blake Ross and Marcello Tossatti -- and if he's created six half-baked
startups, then he's done three times as much baking as the vast majority of
the people reading this thread.

~~~
axod
But the 'startups' that get posted here from him are lame IMHO An on line book
library catalogue thing? A text based wiki thing? I mean come on. Credit where
credit's due, and it's certainly not due IMHO.

~~~
pg
You can't tell yet. A lot of good startups sound that lame when they first
launch.

~~~
aswanson
If I had heard the idea for reddit I would have shrugged and said "done
already". In 94 or 95 I would have told Sergey, Larry, or Jerry Yang they
could have great jobs at Lockheed Martin or Motorola with their resumes, quit
that hobby web crap and get serious. And that was when I was in my 20's! So I
would agree here.

------
pg
I think if you're going to say something like this, you should sign it with
your real name. Whatever his flaws, Swartz wouldn't sink to what you've done:
if he was going to criticize someone he wouldn't do it anonymously.

~~~
dcurtis
I'm not sure which is worse-- criticizing Swartz anonymously as qwertyy has
done, or criticizing everyone else in a public, self-centered, and conceited
way as Swartz has done.

I don't think his projects are bad or anything, but his writing just drips of
egotism that makes him a great target for attack.

~~~
pg
I can't remember him attacking a lot of people by name.

As for the dripping with egotism bit, that is an interesting problem. I
probably would have sounded like that too at his age, but back in the pre-Web
era there was no way for anyone to read what most 20 year olds wrote. Now that
people can start publishing so much younger, we'll have to learn to be more
tolerant of various flaws of youth.

~~~
jotto
why do people call him egotistical? is it because they are offended by his
intelligent and well-rehearsed writings?

this is like the movie idiocracy where luke wilson gets called "faggy" because
he has a command of the english language.

i think pg defends him so (puts him into yc, puts him in reddit etc..) because
aaron has a good balance of intelligence and doing things well. he's a good
weapon for anything intellectual.

~~~
mxh
"With this amount of noise in the signal, it's hard to tell good hackers when
you meet them. I can't tell, even now. You also can't tell from their resumes.
It seems like the only way to judge a hacker is to work with him on
something."

(From <http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>)

I wonder what the reddit guys think of aaronsw.

~~~
zach
Good question. Come to LA in a couple weeks, let them get sauced and we'll
find out!

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

------
staunch
At least he continually puts himself out there to be judged. He's managed to
get noticed and people actually care what he's up to. That's a heck of a lot
more than most people. I think it's totally fair to critique his public work,
but there's no reason to get mean about it. Let he who is without personal
faults cast the first stone.

~~~
asdflkj
Do you realize that all of what you said applies to Paris Hilton, too?

~~~
alaskamiller
In 50 years, she'll be bigger than Mother Theresa

------
ajju
Have you read the book he is writing? It's much better than most of the crap I
read on blogs these days (most of which constitute things like your comparison
here: is X like Y? here's why blah blah)

Most of the books he recommends are really good (I just bought "Punished by
rewards" after finding it through his site. It's a great book.)

So he doesn't finish his projects and does some drama. So what? His projects
are almost always decent (I enjoyed reddit, have played around with web.py,
have used books.theinfo.org several times and liked the first few chapters of
his novel), sometimes noble (the site giving advice to school kids) and quite
often useful.

Get a life and lay off him. The real reason you are doing this is because he
got rich of Reddit while still a teenager and you think he didn't deserve it.
So what? That's life for you and he's still an o.k. guy.

~~~
Alex3917
If you like Punished by Rewards, then I'd recommend No Contest. I loved
Punished by Rewards, but I think No Contest is actually more insightful. And
certainly better written.

~~~
ajju
Thanks for the recommendation. Just added it to my wish list.

------
antirez
Most web stars from the codinghorror guy to joel are not actually better than
many others in the field technically, it's more a matter of ability to write
things with a strong style and the ability to analyze facts to express an
original point of view. Many other hackers may just don't have the time or the
inclination to write. About Aaron specifically it is a clear creature of the
"PG effect", a lot like reddit itself.

------
cstejerean
Personally I've never been a big fan of Aaron and wasn't impressed by all the
hype around him 'co-authoring' RSS. But I have to saw my opinion of him
changed after playing around with web.py

Although I dropped web.py for Pylons for new project I really like the idea
behind web.py and applaud him for starting and continuing to oversee this
project (though a bunch of new work is being done by other great hackers like
Anand).

~~~
tocomment
Why did you switch to Pylons? Would you now recommend it over web.py? I'm
still on a quest to find the best Python framework for myself.

~~~
nostrademons
I also switched from web.py to Pylons. Long-term, I think you're better off
with it; it's much more mature and won't choke on things like deployment, or
internationalization, or multiple database servers.

But if you're new to Python web frameworks, I'd start with web.py and write a
few apps with that. It's much simpler to get into, and you'll understand how
things work a bit better.

------
ardit33
web.py -- is good. I am using it, even thou i am replacing it's parts bit by
bit with my own implementation, it is a good start for a very basic python
framework (then you can grown your own out if it).

That it is still pretty good for a young guy. He probably has work/startup
ADD. Starting lots of things, but never finishing anything up. Maybe lack of
discpline, b/c of lack of work ethics guidance when he was a kid?

Other than that boh... Now qweartyy, why so jelous of him?

~~~
apgwoz
I suffer from work ADD, so I can relate.

------
klein_waffle
He can't be -- _Robert Scoble_ is the Paris Hilton of Web 2.0.

~~~
bvttf
Maybe he can be the ESR of Web 2.0 then?

------
ratsbane
Couldn't you say the same sort of things about almost anyone? What have Larry
and Sergei done that's so great? They figured out a way to compare web pages.
Big deal. Well, yes, it is a big deal. What did Richard Feynman ever do that
was so great? He wrote some stuff. What had Donald Knuth done by the time he
was 23?

I like Aaron Schwartz. He's smart and original and he writes well.

I would not, however, pay him $200,000 to show up at my party.

------
pauljonas
Come on, give Aaron his due. He's had an impressive career to date, for such a
young chap. He's a smart kid, hopefully, he has a shell to protect against
such silly demeaning posts like this...

Lots of startups end up going nowhere, it takes more than brains and
ingenuity, a bit of luck and fortunate timing also comes into play...

Still, Aaron has had a heck of career already -- hell, I didn't even graduate
from college until I was 23 (of course at that time, the PC was just a toy,
and most Americans did own one, and programmers mostly worked on 24x80 green
screen terminals in that day...), yet he reached the pinnacle for a
programmer...

------
ivankirigin
Like Paris Hilton, Aaron does seem to spawn lots of useless, uninteresting
discussion in other people. That probably is less his fault and more the fault
of people like qwertyy.

------
shayan
""famous" for no reason?"

just a side note for fun

Paris Hilton is a marketing genius ...

her stake in the Hilton hotels is worth just under 30mil in total

she makes over 20mil annually just by selling her own products, and using her
name

she is not the only rich girl out there, but she def is the most successful
one no matter how much you like her or hate her

and she does have a huge target market and does a great job at satisfying them

also: it won't be hard for you to prove pg is wrong, just sign your name and
leave a link to yourself on your profile... but I wonder if you'll do that?

------
cheponis
I don't think you guys get it: qwertyy IS Aaron Swartz!

------
anaphoric
Who is Aaron Schwartz?

Really I don't know. But now I guess I have to look around and find out.
Thanks for letting me know that I should know something about this celebrity,
lest I come off like a bumpkin.

Actually screw it. I am lazy and not interested in this. So I will just be a
bumpkin who doesn't know. Besides I am 40 and thus will never run with the
celebrity crowd in any case. Yawn...

~~~
ivankirigin
You can read about who he is on his site: aaronsw.com

~~~
anaphoric
What's in it for me? I am interested in technology and opportunity.
Personalities of the digital culture kind of bore me. It sounds like a waste
of time.

------
mangodrunk
And what have you done qwertyy? Aaron has managed to start many companies and
wrote software that others use. He hasn't started the next Google and he
hasn't written the next awesome Python API, but why fault him for that? He is
trying, and by most measures, he is very successful.

Your points:

a - That's pretty impressive, at 13 what were you doing, and the rest of us?

b - I don't know the specifics of the merger, but that happens all the time,
and good for him.

c - He is a good starter and most people go through many startups before they
hit it big.

d - That many people seem to like.

This whole comment has nothing to do with hacker news or startups. I'm
surprised it got past PG and I can't believe how many people actually
commented on something that isn't worth commenting on. Thanks for wasting my
time.

------
soundsop
pg, can we get one down arrow per month?

~~~
Zak
I'm inclined to wonder if 18 real users voted this up, or if qwertyy created a
bunch more sockpuppet accounts.

~~~
plusbryan
I'd be inclined to think that people vote it up not because they agree, but
because they enjoy the drama. Or they made a smashing good comment and want
people to see it.

------
danielha
Somewhere an irony detector explodes from massive overload.

------
dyu
But pg got famous after eating breakfast!

------
intellectronica
That's really unfair. The whole thing about Paris Hilton is that she's famous
for no good reason. Aaron Swartz, on the other hand is an _incredibly_
productive guy - he's been running several great free software projects, is
developing the open library, writes in his blog and lately in print too. I
sometimes wonder whether he sleeps at all.

You're just being nasty, and doing it anonymously ... really.

------
electric
>Can we stop up-voting every story that even mentions the guy now?

Like this one?

------
bootload
_"... Is he "famous" for no reason? ..."_

I wouldn't say famous which is such a _"media cliche"_. More recognised for
his contributions. There's the

\- rss spec <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/start.html?pg=5/>

\- rdf spec - [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-
wg/2001Apr/0...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-
wg/2001Apr/0062.html)

\- webpy python web framework <http://webpy.org/>

\- writing <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/productivity>

Maybe the biggest thing Aaron may have to offer is speaking out - a trait that
seems to be devoid in his generation ~
<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/shifting1> As much as he might an annoying
_"shirt"_ to some, you cannot take credit away from the technical work he's
done at such a young age.

------
Tichy
If you think he is so bad, why not take it as a life lesson: if he can do it,
you can do it, too! Once again, the difference is in the doing or not doing. I
for one liked his writing, but apart from that, it seems many famous people
are not that great. It just goes to show that by putting yourself out there,
you can still win.

------
Kaizyn
Sounds to me like sour grapes at another's success on the web?

------
rams
PG, The more important thing that should worry you is, "Do you have
cabal/clique detection and elimination built into Hacker News" - that's what
basically ruined reddit.

------
russ
If he's Paris Hilton, you're another Star Magazine. You're only contributing
to his fame. I only point this out because you seem to have a problem with
him.

------
karthikv
qwertyy: Did you create a new profile just to post this? Gosh, get a life
dude!

------
falsestprophet
Well I think that he has a lot of interesting things to say and that he can
hack like a man. What else do you want?

------
trekker7
leave the guy alone!

~~~
rms
please do a video about Aaron Swartz in the style of "leave Britney
alone!!!!".

~~~
ajju
After watching said video, I must say I second this demand.

------
aswanson
Some of his writing is good, though. I get something out of some of his
essays.

~~~
rms
Yeah, a lot of his writing is worthwhile and/or interesting. The six chapters
of novel he wrote were worthless, though.

~~~
Tichy
He announced it as an experiment and never claimed to be the new Shakespeare.
Where is the problem? Experimenting with writing is what blogging is about,
among other things.

~~~
rms
Ok, "worthless" is a bit harsh and failed the "would I say it to Aaron's face"
standard. His 6/30ths of a novel was an interesting experiment.

------
plusbryan
You have to admit he's a pretty awesome writer and is quite intelligent. That
combo is enough for people to respect you.

Last time I checked Paris Hilton didn't exactly fit in this category.

------
alaskamiller
sounds like you've got a crush!

------
SwellJoe
This is why I'd want a down-vote on submissions.

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adrianwaj
qwertyy - put your rubbish up on <http://www.iheartrant.com/> \- there you can
write anything you want and get it out of your system.

------
klein_waffle
qwertyy: news.yc is as good as you are. If there's stuff that you want to see,
post it. If you don't, just STFU or get down with Greasemonkey to edit out
whatever you don't want to see.

------
icky
Is quertyy the Paris Hilton of Trolling 2.0?

------
mattmaroon
If so, this thread is the sex tape.

------
adrianwaj
Don't lay into qwertyy for laying into Aaron. For a start Aaron's a public
figure and qwertyy's not.

~~~
icky
> For a start Aaron's a public figure and qwertyy's not.

qwertyy's a throwaway pseudonym with one post to his name. If he gets publicly
humiliated, he can simply create a new account, and nobody's the wiser.

------
rms
I think he's funny.

------
plusbryan
No.

