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Comment by georgemcbay | Hacker News Reader

I have to object to your post because you're arguing against some general situation which does not apply here. Charles Bloom is a great programmer. I've seen his code.

http://www.cbloom.com/3d/galaxy4.zip

http://www.cbloom.com/misc/index.html

etc.

Also FWIW he was the lead programmer at Oddworld on games such as Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, which while not particularly well-known to the mainstream is one of the greatest modern console games ever made and which was also very technically impressive at the time of its release. He's also kind of a big deal in the compression world.

If you want to argue specific points he's made, bring them up and debate them on the merits, but don't handwave him away like he's one of those kids just learning Ruby who decided to put up a blog to show everyone how smart he is.

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Well, all I can say to that is each engineer has to decide for themselves how much they will be swayed by popularity vs real supporting evidence. There's a great rush to quality in software engineering, just as there once was in science. Today, no self respecting scientist would write, "As mature researchers, of which I am the model because I'm telling you what one is, method A is the best because when I worked at Acme chemical for over ten years I personally implemented method A. I'm amazed at how other researchers still don't understand chemistry, and, by the way this is just a rant so I'm allowed to say whatever bullshit I want without the need to support it with fact."

I disagree. It doesn't mater how much credibility the author has, if subjective matters are presented as facts because the author puts himself in a position of unquestionable knowledge, a reader may very well argue that this is pretentious and has zero value.

Know, for many people, the author has enough credibility to write like this because they know his work. If you're one of those persons then you should read and take the author's word. But it still pretentious. Just because someone 'has the' to be pretentious doesn't mean that he/she won't be.

But most importantly, why would you care about those opposing this article?

Wait, what? Is there no such thing as someone who has enough experience that they are allowed to speak directly and clearly about an issue? Rather, you think people are supposed to be all mealy-mouthed so that you don't feel like they are too presumptuous?

That doesn't make sense. There are people in the world who are worth listening to. The "democratic" nature of the web means that a lot of people post a lot of crap, and maybe some people are so used to reading crap that they have just forgotten what it's like when people really know what they are talking about. I don't know.

There's a huge difference between Rails Bros and smart guys who attack the hardest problems they can, whenever they can. Charles is one of the latter people and has been for, I don't know, 16 years? I don't want to live in a world where someone like that is not permitted to speak in an uncushioned way.

You missed my point.

Even rails kids can write in such fashion if they want. The fact that nobody cares makes it pathetic though.

Obviously, many people will care about Charles Bloom's opinions. _That_ is the difference. Out of respect of his work they don't mind whatever style he uses. That's enough for them. Why wouldn't it be? Why would they care if others find it pretentious? I suspect the author itself could care less about those who find his writings pretentious.

Why do you care? All I am saying is that you cannot impose on others the respect you give to a third person.

Sure. But if you expect that everyone should engage in mediocre speech, just because you don't know whether you should respect them or not, the result is kind of a sucky world.

People can oppose the article all they want. I will internally laugh at them a little bit because I've been programming long enough to realize he is absolutely right in this case, but I won't attack the opposers because they are probably basically just me 6-8 years ago. And me 6-8 years ago was much "smarter" and more "sure" of everything than me today, so I'd realize that debating this point with them will be fruitless.

As others have mentioned in other posts, Charles Bloom's blog isn't your typical "look how smart I am" programmer blog. He's been writing it for years just as a stream of consciousness, self-reference type of thing. I follow it because it is worth following for insight into whatever set of problems he is currently deep-diving into (lately it has been very threading heavy). I don't always agree with him on everything, but again, someone disagreeing with him isn't the part of this I have a problem with.

My point wasn't that Charles Bloom is beyond reproach, my point was that codeonfire lumped him into a group of people to which he is clearly and objectively not a member so that he (or she?) could handwave the whole article away without actually saying anything about it.

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