This article was written hastily, and I don’t want to further improve it. You’re lucky I wrote it.
I feel so privileged to read this random guy's blog, and it's terrific that he eschews inflating his ego so well.
I feel so privileged to read this random guy's blog, and it's terrific that he eschews inflating his ego so well.
The author is taking the time to post his thoughts on a private blog. If you're not happy with the level of rigor, then don't read it, don't share it, and don't believe it. But no, the author has no responsibility to provide you with a comprehensive list of citations and references.
What I don't like about that attitude is that it suggests that the blogpost should be excused from criticism of its rigor. But any assertion and opinion by anyone can and should be considered open to criticism.
> "But no, the author has no responsibility to provide you with a comprehensive list of citations and references."
Of course he is not responsible. But if someone expects or wants people to be convinced of their argument, then prefacing with his rude dismissal does not help.
A better way than "This article was written hastily, and I don’t want to further improve it. You’re lucky I wrote it." without the unnecessary rudeness and ego boosting could be more along your lines: "This article was written hastily and shouldn't be subject to PhD-thesis-level scrutiny, so I've posted without any expectation that I will improve it or respond to criticism."
Sounds to me like you agree with the substance of what the author said, and just happen to disagree with the delivery. Keep in mind that different people have different writing styles, and people often post things like what you quoted in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Some people prefer a formal, humble style of writing. Others like a more humorous style, and others yet enjoy a Steven Colbert faux-braggadocious style. It would be unfortunate if we browbeat anyone who dares to inject some quirky humor into their writing.
The author makes a bunch of assertions that range from misinformed to straight-up wrong. There is 0% Steven Colbert-style self awareness. No one is lucky that it exists. When you engage in personal endeavors, do them for their own merits. And especially if you're doing something that no one and nothing is compelling you to, please at least try.
You can just start the countdown until all the unix greybeards come out and slams them with why it's so wrong and how to do it with some obscure bash feature.
I'm not saying it has to be PhD-thesis-level, but if proven wrong you are morally obligated to update the information or remove it. Otherwise you are spreading false knowledge. This doesn't apply to opinions ofc (the bulk of private blogging).
Screw entitled users though, they should fix it themselves :)
After 20+ years of working in the business and reading ridiculous amounts of articles, and some books, I can quite easily find clear errors or omissions in most everything written about computers and programming, Knuth excluded. If everyone were obliged to update to fix any errors, even only factual, it's likely that much - or even most - of all I've read would never have been posted for me to read in the first place, and I think both the world and I would be poorer for it.
Correctness is important, but so is the ability make judgments of validity, to critique, disseminate, inspire and express ones thoughts, even when they turn out to be wrong.
I was envisioning people nit-picking the lack of formality, when it was merely an enthusiastic, from-the-hip post.
A day later I realized that wasn't the best way to start things off with, and toned it down. But I get where he's coming from. And I'm grateful he took the time to write it. It was an interesting read.
You wouldn't consider it to be immature to not do the right thing just because it was communicated in an unpleasant way that a 'self-respecting person' should have disdain for? I'm not talking about this particular article or defending immaturity, - I just don't see how your position is any better; more so it's just as unhumble as the 'rockstar position' since you would apparently be willing to write worse code just to avoid learning from someone that's an asshole.
A lot of people find that cockiness funny and find the informality welcoming. And many of those tend to find cold formality, fake humility or lack of self-confidence as signs of something being boring, uninteresting or outright creepy.
EDIT: Comment was edited, original:
It's hard to believe this came from a place of humor after reading the otherwise dry article. The article was otherwise fairly interesting, but that certainly left a sour taste in my mouth. He's lucky I read past the first paragraph, if it wasn't so prominent on HN I probably wouldn't have bothered listening to anything he had to say.The edit was because I only ended up scanning what I intended on reading and felt the second part of my criticism overly harsh.
>How to touch all files in foo (and its subfolders)?
find foo -print0 | xargs -0 touch
find foo -exec touch {} \;
> The provocative tone has been used just to attract your attention.
There's irony in people being insulted by arrogant tone and loudly proclaiming they stopped reading something.
It may be that the author is not actually a self-important asshole, but starting an article like that makes it look like he likely is.
You could also have guessed it when you noticed it was a kid student showing up (and off) with a lengthy critic on the historical evolution of UNIX tools and others OSes and tools that he discovered a couple of years ago, while you possibly were using them and watching them evolve while he was still in his father's bollocks (and some of us (not me) were working on UNIXes while his father was a kid). You know what to expect in this case, especially if you remember having produced the same kind of over-confident and yet uninformed rant in your days :-) (I do :-D )