I'm not a fan of some of the comments about the man posting, you'd think the developer community would be above "you look like frankenstein" and "your english sucks."
What is going on here? I think the fear people have is that this attack is laughably simple, but at the same time, was not noticed for a long time. It says something about complexity, all the interlocking parts may have simple problems that are hidden by the abstract models used. It reminds us that the law of unintended consequences are always in effect, and we need to really think out what we are doing, even if the tests all pass. It shows us that even good, well respected software is vulnerable. And it makes us wonder what we have done to open security holes and what is lurking in our code. No one wants to be responsible for such a thing, and it is not pleasant to think about potential consequences of them.
It is almost reassuring that the. If was so easy to exploit, because it means that a nonchalant hacker could bring it to mass attention...I'd hate to think of what havoc a dedicated miscreant could've sown in a week. I recently taught a group of neophytes how to use the web inspector, and used the example of altering a form merely to demonstrate the malleability of a webpage. I told them "this is just a parlor trick, don't think that it'll actually work..."
I'd say that's very likely the case. Unfortunate, but, in some ways, understandable. If a person is not able to articulate an issue effectively dismissing them becomes too easy. We all do it.
- David Foster Wallace, Authority and American Usage
"As an American and native English-speaker myself, I have previously been reluctant to suggest this, lest it be taken as a sort of cultural imperialism. But several native speakers of other languages have urged me to point out that English is the working language of the hacker culture and the Internet, and that you will need to know it to function in the hacker community.
"Back around 1991 I learned that many hackers who have English as a second language use it in technical discussions even when they share a birth tongue; it was reported to me at the time that English has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore simply a better tool for the job. For similar reasons, translations of technical books written in English are often unsatisfactory (when they get done at all).
"Linus Torvalds, a Finn, comments his code in English (it apparently never occurred to him to do otherwise). His fluency in English has been an important factor in his ability to recruit a worldwide community of developers for Linux. It's an example worth following.
"Being a native English-speaker does not guarantee that you have language skills good enough to function as a hacker. If your writing is semi-literate, ungrammatical, and riddled with misspellings, many hackers (including myself) will tend to ignore you. While sloppy writing does not invariably mean sloppy thinking, we've generally found the correlation to be strong--and we have no use for sloppy thinkers. If you can't yet write competently, learn to."
--Eric S. Raymond, How To Become A Hacker http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
Not that being a "Rails Rockstar" necessarily implies being a Hacker--what I like about your quote is that it shows the phenomenon is everywhere. One nice thing for programmers though is that with online text communications you can hide a thick accent that would otherwise be held against you even if what you speak is grammatically perfect.
Dismissing this guy because of his poor English is plain and simply xenophobic prejudice. In this case it came back to the Rails/Github guys and bit them in the ass.
If SWE is taught well, it helps people from poor neighborhoods get taken more seriously. If it wasn't taught, only people from richer neighborhoods would know it, and would be used by rich people to exclude upstarts.
That said, using SWE to discriminate is a bad thing. It's just a little less unfair than discriminating based on the fluency of a dialect that poor kids never had a chance to learn.
A 19 year old Russian male who wasn't taught English properly will need A LOT of effort to learn proper SWE. For some people, it will simply not be feasible. Ability to learn human languages - as opposed to computer languages, much easier to an introvert/math person - is a very distinct ability and you'd be surprised how little correlation it has to intelligence and other skills.
Help reducing discrimination by teaching SWE is akin to help fight discrimination against other races by cosmetics and plastic surgery. Sure, it works on an individual level, but it doesn't help the people who truly have a problem: the ones discriminating.
Does anyone have links to great videos of educated, intelligent discussion in typically looked down-upon accents (e.g., AAVE, deep south, etc)? For instance, I read once that the Queens accent was stigmatized until Feynman became so popular. When I hear videos of him, I notice his distinct speech, but it sounds "smart" because Feynman speaks it!
(there's also the accent/dialect/creyole/pidgin distinction, which often revolves around who has an army)