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What If It Worked?

zedshaw.com

46 pointsjessaustin23 comments

Open articleView on HN

Telling people to kill themselves is bad, especially if there's any chance they might do so.

But the excerpt from the IRC log at the start is a horse of a very different colour.

The IRC user comes across as maybe a bit abrasive and certainly a bit exasperated, but at the end of the day he/she

- told the questioner exactly what they asked for

- established what they really needed

- told them that too

- (hopefully) taught them a lesson in how to express their needs

If <feline> was really "just sooooooo tired of beginners coming and asking stupid questions", presumably they wouldn't have bothered to: (a) answer a question (twice); (b) make sure they were answering the right question; (c) help the questioner phrase their questions better in future.

Yeah, I feel like <feline> was less "ASCII BLASTING" and more emphasizing an important point (I don't think IRC lets you use italics or underlines so caps would be the only way to go). I've been that noob before (and still am) and I would have been totally satisfied with that answer. I felt no ill intent reading that IRC log and I feel like Mr. Shaw was just projecting his own anger on <feline>.

That said, I thought the rest of the essay was just as bad. To me, it was saying "hey, anon, you can't get under my skin! That's why I'm writing a full blog post about how you can't get under my skin, you skinny nerd." Also note that he closed off comments and (presumably) deleted all of them except for the two that were literally kissing his ass.

He definitely needs to check his ego.

You see this a lot in IRC channels, but you also see a lot of people just helping everyone. The secret is that most of these people have a pretty basic level of knowledge themselves, and that's one of the reasons they're in those IRC channels. They do it so they can find out gotchas and solve small problems to become better at something. I've done problem solving for strangers on IRC, and I must say: it works, in that it seriously improves your own knowledge.

And the thing is: this is one of the greatest things about open source ! You can actually easily get someone to help you with basic problems. You can just join one of these IRC channels and go from "mediocre C programmer" to "slightly-above-mediocre C programmer that knows 5000 gotchas most don't" in a month or two. You will get invitations to projects and you will find yourself far more motivated by helping out people than by, say, an online course.

But yes, IRC requires a bit of a thick skin. And whilst there are plenty of women and even teenage girls there, you quickly learn that on a topical channel you should not tell anyone who you are.

> (I don't think IRC lets you use italics or underlines so caps would be the only way to go).

Well, /actually/ it _is_ possibly to use other tricks than ASCII to emphasize words you think are important in IRC. Or _any_other_text_medium_.

(Note that ASCII is printed as italic by HN, since I typed <asterisk>ASCII<asterisk>)

Most IRC clients supports basic text formatting:

https://modern.ircdocs.horse/formatting.html

Yeah, as a noob I'd find this a lot less offensive then being told to type some mind-numbing text.

It looks like Zed just doesn't get it...

> If they give a valid email address I usually rip them a new one.

In an article all about hostile online communication, he has to realise by now that replying to a troll is exactly what they want. If you're getting all frothy with righteous fury, they've done their job well.

But I suspect Zed does understand all of this and that this article is just him trying to breathe new life into his little Python controversy.

Snuff it out. Nobody cares, Zed.

Given that the python controversy was basically a guerrila marketing ploy to sell his revised book, I wonder what his angle on this will be.

I have a lot of respect for Zed.

Having said that, if we could dedicate the effort we spend on protecting adults from other adults towards protecting minors from the abuse of other minors, it would be so much better.

Because compared to minors, adults are like supermen already. They have so many powers. And I didn't even see one plan on fighting what is now widely called bullying and therefore considered to be solved by naming.

"go fucking kill your self pls" is an awful thing to say, but it's not a death threat.

If there's a valuable insight here, I couldn't get to it. The childish name-calling put me off.

There might be an insight, but it's not particularly valuable.

Zed Shaw in a nutshell.

We shouldn't promote his materials. His book on python (Learn Python The Hard Way) is widely regarded in python circles as being one of the worst tomes of knowledge. Mostly due to his "I'm the expert don't question me" attitude.

The "Hard Way" books are not for everyone, but they are exactly what some people need. Not everyone learns the same way.

I like having Shaw around because his absolutism inspires other absolutists to step out of cover. It's good to know where all the absolutists are hiding...

Are those people going to be good and happy programmers?

Shaw is himself a good programmer, although I wouldn't hazard a guess about his happiness... I would expect long term programming prospects to be orthogonal to learning style. Certainly anyone claiming otherwise would have the burden of proof.

Just for that, I gave the post an upvote. It's like you've never heard of the streisand effect.

The Streisand effect talks about hiding, removing or censoring a piece of information. To me, that is quite different than not promoting.

It's a distinction without a difference. The end result is the same, along with the resulting Streisand effect.

Great article. Online harrasement and hate are tough subjects. Setting a simple standard that telling people to kill themselves is unacceptable -- and trying to do something about it -- is great to see.

Such hate could devestate a very depressed person and we shouldn't treat it as if the issue is that people don't understand the internet; this isn't an issue of culture or communication.

If I had to guess, this guy clearly loves cocaine, power, and money. Like all absolutists he fails to understand what has been known since ancient Greek philosophy, "Just because you think you are the best in the world at something, doesn't mean other people think the same." His art is terrible, so I'm guessing with the programming experience of starting Mongrel he is disillusioned into thinking he actually makes a difference in the world.

If you know about Ghost writing, then you know how he managed to "write" 10 books in six years. On the topic of programming, to learn it takes nothing special but dedication, and lots of sample programming projects.

The world is filled with things beyond our understanding and just because you know programming doesn't mean you know shit about other topics, ie. his art, or writing. I imagine this guy sees himself the opposite of what others see in him. Who really knows if we will ever have String Theory, a theory of what makes good music, and how the lower levels of the human brain work.

Another thing is, is this site a humor site, or is it about the latest in technology and startups. Where is the coverage of anything that resembles a coherent piece of technology, a business plan that is not a paragraph, or an understanding that maybe we don't know everything about Science at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

I see on the front page almost every time I'm here papers about Physics and in the comments is always the people explaining how a Black Hole holds all its information on its Event Horizon, or how the Holographic principle makes String Theory less complicated to understand. Where is the Science, the testable hypothesis, the ability to understand Science's limitations, it is all magic. Magic in that it is as made up over the last fifty years by people that have never taken a Philosophy of Science course.

Anyways, I'm nothing special, just a normal guy who wanted to write an angry rebuttal because really, if you think you are an expert on everything then you are just plain wrong. I think Zed could use more ego, what do you guys think? Also, I'm sorry if this angers anyone. I really do care. Not.

We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think your rant would be more interesting if you stuck to complaining about the topic at hand with more brevity.

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