Do these fires start on Reddit or Hacker News or Twitter or something? They start with Zed Shaw.

And even this one, when Zed Shaw is talking peace and bridge building, he still echoes the position that Python core developers are of low character. His retelling of history is ungenerous. How do you extend an olive branch like that?

100% agree with this in general and specifically. People tend to get too hung up on issues that are over. Zed has moved on and so should everyone else.

Writing an article that very charitably wildly misrepresents events while leveling accusations at the PSF is not moving on.

I've recommended LPTHW to several new programmers, including one who I think bought the videos and really liked it.

Nonetheless, his strange dislike for python3 and continuing this flame war is not helping anyone, least of all Zed.

One would be wise to remember Zed's melodramatic exit from the Rails community. Once is surprising, twice is a pattern; reading the bitching about the PSF in this piece, I suddenly remembered the nearly identical bitching (including the le Carré style yarns of intrigue and "trusted associates" with chat logs) about certain folks in the Rails community. Read between the lines, and you almost identify a complete unwillingness to accept personal blame for anything: in "Rails is a Ghetto"[0], he claimed Rails and Mongrel ended his career and made him homeless -- which is odd, given the astronomical growth of Rails. In this essay, he claims the PSF is actively trying to suppress him for Reasons. So he responds to that by charging money. Come on. Think about that for two seconds.

I'm amazed that people still don't read Zed Shaw objectively in 2017. Zed is not a friend of any community except his own, including appeals to violence, and he has repeatedly shown that. I think it's extremely important to keep in mind the person being dealt with here and his history, because he absolutely does create toxic drama within communities (including in this thread, right now).

[0]: http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/ruby/rails/is-a-ghetto

Replying to a comment that says to leave the past to the past by pointing out a time in the past someone did a thing.

Maybe Zed burns himself over Python3. Maybe not. It doesn't really matter because he's gonna keep doing what he does, both good and bad. He's as human as the rest of us.

If there is a pattern here, I think it's definitely useful to describe it. The goal is not to fan the flames of this particular controversy, but to detect and neutralise this kind destructive behaviour when it occurs in the future (whether it's Zed doing it or someone else).

Yeah, I can see the validity in that. This industry is ripe for "loud" personalities with a contentious point of view. Zed is just an extreme example with that. I have a soft spot for him because I started with LPTHW, and I dont really care about the Python community either way.

If that was your introduction to Zed, I can certainly understand your perspective. Just know that these are deep, deep waters with a lot of unnecessary grief across more than a decade, and a lot of different perspectives who will disagree with you based on additional experience.

> Maybe Zed burns himself over Python3. Maybe not.

Definitely not. https://zedshaw.com/2016/11/24/the-end-of-coder-influence/