This is why we shouldn't entertain personal attacks period, regardless of who it is.
It most certainly is not. I'm very used to shouldering insults and ego-bruising without reacting.
The problem here isn't about me at all. The problem here is about the consequences of Zed's behavior towards newcomers to computer programming.
You mean his behavior of offering newcomers education resources to get their careers started that for many years he offered completely for free? I think it's pretty clear from the tweet that he wasn't attacking some newcomer but calling into question professional credentials.
Calling into question professional credentials is, ceterus paribus, fine and not noteworthy.
His metric for evaluating professional credentials was "Has this author done this oddly specific thing to attack a library I don't like?"
When asked, he doubled down on this arbitrary litmus test.
I even included a personal anecdote for how this kind of behavior can negatively impact newcomers to any field (regardless of actual skill level!).
Unnecessary gatekeeping is a problem. Impostor Syndrome sucks.
His comment was a response to your post. Your post discouraged people from writing crypto, because they aren't qualified. This is where you were gatekeeping.
His response was, effectively: "well, you're so qualified, but you never said anything about how the industry standard library for crypto was swiss cheese for 20 years". He's basically saying that even the qualified people don't do a good job and that nobody should be discouraged from at least trying.
The point is that everyone is fallible and you went out of your way to prove him right.
Re-read the post carefully. I included examples of people unwittingly trying to gatekeep me in the past.
The negative part of that post was about scammers and crackpots who, when confronted with constructive feedback about their designs, doubled down insisting they were smarter than their critics.
Being a neophyte doesn't make you a crackpot.
From the article:
> If you’re reading this blog post and feel like learning about cryptography and cryptanalysis and feel put off by the “don’t roll your own crypto” mantra, and its implied gatekeeping, I hope it’s clear by now who that phrase was mostly intended for and why.
(i.e. "NOT YOU" was the implication of that sentence)
The post in question is a lot of things, but it's not a gatekeeping piece.
For that matter, I also previously wrote this one to resist the tendency of gatekeeping in cryptography: https://soatok.blog/2020/06/10/how-to-learn-cryptography-as-...
That's way too much drama for what's going on here. I know and don't particularly enjoy Zed very much, but honestly he's pretty neutral. He's done a lot of good in his community and has had some nuclear hot takes that have received outsized attention. If you really feel he's as toxic as you say, you shouldn't be giving him more of it.