"Friendly and welcoming" is not a pre-condition for the "betterment of humanity". If it were, only smooth talkers would thrive(like lawyers) and not assholes like Steve Jobs etc...
I would rather computing be a field where good ideas win, and if the person with the good idea is nice and welcoming, well that's just a nice bonus but shouldn't affect the evaluation of an idea in my ideal world which I know doesn't really exist.
Innovation should be easier and the notion that a good idea requires it be presented within some tolerable/unnecessary social parameters is artificially limiting and only provides an environment where less innovation happens.
http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3250519673662774@naggum....
(And of course meta-discussion about Naggum was fairly common when he was alive and active, so there are many more defenses and attack-backs.)
He's dead, BTW. Although he was smart and sometimes made good points, I do not miss him.
How is that "the worst"? One's feeling of moral superiority and dumping shit on others are not contradictory --except if one's conviction of his moral superiority is wrong. Dumping shit on others does not make you morally inferior (in the same way that they could be), if that's what you suggest. If one is bad-mouthing some rapist, it doesn't mean that he's as morally bad as the rapist because of doing so.
That said, all this "moral" thing is beside the point: what Naggun was utterly convicted of was his _technical_ correctness, which is something completely different.
You're missing the picture. Naggum dumped on practically everyone. And while he would always argue that he had been provoked because everyone else were such idiots, I think a dispassionate observer would reach a different conclusion.
all this "moral" thing is beside the point
Ironically, Naggum would not have agreed with you on this point. He made a big deal of it.
Oh, and it really is "Naggum" with an "m" -- the HN title is wrong.
(That's essentially the argument of the "omit semicolons / pro ASI" people -- since browsers grok it, where's the problem with abusing an error checking mechanism with our syntax?)
That said, what is it to you? I thought that was his name, probably because phonetically it sounds better in my language, so I misspelled it 2-3 times. Only know I found out it is Naggum.
It's not like I did it on purpose, or that I would continue doing it if I knew better, so I find your request absurd.
You act as though he named people and dumped shit on them. He didn't. And data formats are not a "moral" issue.
The people who feel offended by this guy are clearly insecure as hell.
I find this to be one of the best pieces of polemic writing that I have ever seen. It's technically accurate, concentrates the abuse on the technology rather than the submitter, and is hilarious to read. It also perfectly captures my sentiments regarding XML.
I loved it when it was written, and I love it now. I'm sorry that it offends you, but if it gets even one more person to sit up and ask themselves whether they should choose XML for a new project they are writing, I feel it has served its purpose and justified the offense.
> Robbery is not just another way of making a living, rape is not just another way of satisfying basic human needs, torture is not just another way of interrogation. And XML is not just another way of writing S-exps.
>| I use XML on a daily basis and think it is a simple and intelligent way to represent data.
> A comment on this statement is by now entirely superfluous.
>| I would like to hear why you think it is so bad, can you be more specific please?
> If you really need more information, search the Net, please.
And condescension is not just another way of disagreement.
Civility leads to complacency. That was the post of someone with some serious conviction, not a passive participant who was indifferent to standards.
Other people can't tolerate overly-polite, overly-cautious, overly-friendly, overly-political-aware, overly-PC tone.
It makes us droozy and keeps the discussion in a level better suited for enterprise brainstorming meetings and committees. Everybody looses.
Tech and science leaders where very frequently passionate and prone to rant. Just think of Torvalds reactions to (what he thinks are) stupid ideas in the kernel list -- even if he's wrong, it helps keep everybody vigilant and agitated for his contributions.
>If we want computing to be a friendly and welcoming field and contribute to the betterment of humanity, we can't tolerate people who behave like this in public.
The aim is not to make computing a "friendly and welcoming field" (that would be the boy scouts), it's to make it an effective, productive and interesting to work in field.
If you start judging contributions to a field by politeness of "behavior in public" then you're doing the field a disfavor.
The biggest scientist in some field could as well be a huge jerkoff -- for example, Djikstra was known for his passionate rants and snarky tone against everything he considered a bad practice.
Edit: this seems to need clarifying. I understand what the line means. What I don't understand is why people use it so much when it repeats the error it purports to correct. In nearly every case where "reality is either 0 or 1" is wrong, "reality is some coefficient of a single variable between 0 and 1" is just as wrong. That is a poor way to champion the richness of reality. What's interesting is how it corresponds to the emotional crimpedness of a world in which everything is gray.
"color" on the other hand is like a 3-dimensional space, and so points can no longer be compared and sorted. How do you compare green with blue? You cannot.
On the topic, you can compare the rudeness of two messages and you can also establish some threshold over which the rudeness is no longer acceptable. That's why people use the "shades of gray" metaphor, because it's still useful.
And indeed, life has color, but that's why life is complicated, which is why we feel the need to simplify its dynamics.
Adding colors to the metaphor adds words with no increase of understanding.
"Don't see things as either black or white, the world has millions of hues"
conveys the message that situations are nuanced as well as being truer to how things are with respect to color.
So, it's better than some constrained metaphor about a BW gradient (much more since lots of people don't even know what a gradient is).
The word "gradient" isn't even part of the metaphor, so I don't see how that would cause confusion. What comes between black and white? Gray. Not millions of color hues. Shades of gray makes sense and fighting to try and get colors in the mix somewhere is only serving to muddy this up.
Edit: Actually, here's another perspective: millions of color hues come between black and white only if you're thinking about colors to begin with. (Black and white aren't strictly considered colors even.) So while I can see where you're getting this from, I still think it doesn't serve anyone well to try and spice it up from the very well understood meaning of the phrase.
I don't know what you're projecting onto this essay to find it assholey or rude, but it's bunk.
Frankly, I'm disappointed that he failed to condemn namespaces.
Diverting one's personal emotional issues into public technical debates is not courage.
If we want computing to be a friendly and welcoming field and contribute to the betterment of humanity, we can't tolerate people who behave like this in public.