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Comment by antirez | Hacker News Reader

Yep it's the open source, and in general the "spontaneous" development world, that happens without big money, just for hacking. This "place" once was kinda free and not observed much. Now you can't say anything, if you don't respect a good practice (LOL) people yell at you on Twitter. Even saying that commenting is a good idea is a problem. Not cool.

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> people yell at you on Twitter.

Dude, the problem is just Twitter. Everybody shouts on Twitter, it's a system that encourages mob reactions. "Back in the day" people had to subscribe to a ML to yell at you, so fewer people did; and we all knew which lists were cesspools of trolls and flamers, making it easier to avoid the bulk of it. Twitter instead gives you the whole firehose, unfiltered and amplified. It's not a problem restricted to opensource or programmers, we see it everywhere at the moment.

> Even saying that commenting is a good idea is a problem.

I'm glad I'm not alone experiencing this.

One of the core open source projects I use has taken a no comments stance because "the code speaks for itself". It does if you're a core contributor, but if you dive in less frequently it takes a while to grok what's going on and re-build the mental model. Comments would reduce that.

Thanks for all you've done Salvatore, and for your blogging. Your enthusiasm puts the fun back into my programming!

> Yep it's the open source, and in general the "spontaneous" development world, that happens without big money, just for hacking. This "place" once was kinda free and not observed much.

Thanks for explaining.

> Now you can't say anything, if you don't respect a good practice (LOL) people yell at you on Twitter. Even saying that commenting is a good idea is a problem. Not cool.

Just because they're loud does not mean they're correct or that they're the majority. I can understand not wanting to deal with any of it though.

The larger than life you become in your space, they more your words, actions, and non-actions get parsed and twisted for political intent. It's either step away entirely or hide behind the mask of a pseudonymous alt.

> Just because they're loud does not mean they're correct or that they're majority.

They're not. They're the mediocre developers with nothing substantive to contribute. Think of your developer heroes. Almost none of them will ever engage in such nonsense. They're too busy building wonderful things to bother with petty nonsense that gets nothing done.

I think some of these agile thought leaders have a bit to answer for here (but of course it's mainly up to the individual to be responsible for their own judgement - just because somebody else makes their money on marketing doesn't mean you are forced to buy the product)

Lowering the barriers to open-source contribution has allowed in people who have absolutely no business being there. If you have standards, you get accused of gate-keeping.

Thanks for mentioning the T- website specifically, it takes a lot of courage to call it out directly these days, because all it takes is one of them with a lot of followers and then you get swamped with hate. It's fucking unreal man.

There's a ton of us down here programming and having fun, free of politics and bullshit. Look forward to seeing you (again).

Where is "down here"?

outside of social media, inside our IDEs

There are times that discrimination is exactly what you want...

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