We expect too much of geeks
threads2.scripting.com
threads2.scripting.com
There's in particular a sentence right at the start. "If you're young and think you're hot shit, and there's some reason to believe you are, you can go far, very quickly."
When I think back at my time prior to going to University, I really did think this way. And I had reason to. Even during my time at University, that feeling never escaped me.
Once I entered full-time employment (almost by accident. I had started my own limited company at this point), my attitude changed completely. I was surrounded by so many people so unbelievably more clever than me, I was humbled. It wasn't just their abilities, but their "maturity".
Now I cringe to think of my attitude as little as 5 years ago. And I think I have reason to. Where I used to take pride in "fixing your 6-month problem in 4 days", I now realise I failed on a lot of aspects. I am now much more focused on doing things right. I focus on listening and understanding, on being tolerant and empathetic. I measure my work in quality, maintainability, measurable evidence. Every day I try my hardest to learn and to be a pioneer.
I do think this is a positive improvement. But when I come across an article like this one, and recall my youthful naivety and enthusiasm, I do worry if I haven't perhaps lost something more important.
----
Among swordmasters, on the basis of their own and their pupils' experience, it is taken as proved that the beginner, however strong and pugnacious he is, and however courageous and fearless he may be at the outset, loses not only his lack of self consciousness, but his self confidence, as soon as he starts taking lessons.
He gets to know all the technical possibilities by which his life may be endangered in combat, and although he soon becomes capable of straining his attention to the utmost, of keeping a sharp watch on his opponent, Of parrying his thrusts correctly and making effective lunges, he is really worse off than before, when, half in jest and half in earnest, he struck about him at random under the inspiration of the moment and as the joy of battle suggested.
He is now forced to admit that he is at the mercy of everyone who is stronger, more nimble and more practised than he.
You say this came from an essay on Zen. I haven't read it, but I will defend the western Aristotelian ideal of mastering the practical knowledge, the "knowledge how" of any activity, including the universal activity of living virtuously, over Zen.
A very skilled young carpenter spends 8 hours making a table, which is a perfectly sound and functional, and is proud of his work.
A very skilled master carpenter spends 250 hours making a table, which is one of the finest ever crafted, and is proud of his work.
Someone tasks both carpenters with creating a table in 10 hours. The first carpenter does so and tells them it is the finest table he has ever made. The second carpenter does so and tells them it was the best he could do in only 10 hours.
Which table do you believe will be of higher quality? Has the second carpenter "lost something more important" along the way?
The master shrugs and says "It can't be done" and so doesn't even try.
The young carpenter slaps together something ugly with only three legs that barely stands, but since its the only table available, everyone balances their stuff on it anyway.
This seems like a select spot to insert some distinct SQL jokes... but I think I'll just drop it.
This seems appropriate: http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm
I like the comments about how to avoid being depressed and anxious about not being perfect. No one likes admitting they're fallible initially... it takes practice =) And I've had lots and lots of practice.
In grad school it sounds like it is not unlike his description of silicon valley (minus the piles of cash, dominance of Caucasians, and lack of women, of course). If you're confident, aggressive, and think you're good at what you're doing, you will probably end up being so eventually. At least if you are able to take your own fallibility in stride.
I remember trying to explain things to younger students (and often postdocs too) and asking often "does that make sense?" and "do you know what I mean by ..." and getting rapid nods. I wasn't asking because I'm trying to make them look stupid, I'm asking because the subject material is legitimately really hard, and no one knows all of it offhand. No one. And then this is followed up a week later by them clearly obviously definitively not having understood a word I said. Whereas if they had admitted to not knowing what I was talking about, I would have stepped back a bit further and explained it from an earlier stage with no problem.
One of my biggest domain examples of my own was when I was like "oh, the melting point of copper is really high, surely it will work okay as a conductor at 500C". Do'h. Man that was stupid. On the plus side, now I know all about oxidative corrosion...
Right, I get that. But...
It did seem like he derailed his own point into a weird cultural commentary on programmers though
That's what I was commenting on - the way DW connected the initial thesis to the commentary made it seem (to me anyway) that these expectations were exclusive to programmers.
If you consider the "whole thing" most computers still have proprietary programs put in place by profit-driven organizations to subjugate and control the users. That isn't magic its witchcraft. It would be a miracle if computer programs and all other forms of software were developed collaboratively rather then secretively.
I've never been hot shit. The closest was the 90s when everyone who knew anything about programming or networking was the bomb, maybe followed by working at a startup for the first time and really digging it and feeling like I was the man because they ran on code I wrote.
Since then, I've gotten older. And increasingly more depressed about my job. I've changed workplaces and it doesn't help, if anything- it just changed the nature of it all. After burning out working crazy hours at startup company #2, I took a job that was way too easy. Fell into the trap and now I'm older, my mind doesn't work, and I'm back at a startup in higher stress.
I've not learned much really except that I don't like it.
Can you imagine explaining to a programmer in the 70s that they'd be able to determine someones precise location, place that location on an interactive map, and share it with all their friends, all from a tiny device that they keep in their pocket thats programmed using a simple, high-level API?
As a result, yes society does expect a lot from programmers, and rightly so.
In the 80s there were much simpler development environments than we have now. Turbo Pascal and Think C were the two I used.
It would be great to combine that level of ease of use and the browser or server-side programming environment.
But no one has gotten there yet.
As far as envisioning today's world of computing in the 70s, I was a programmer in the 70s and we envisioned this and a lot more. Read Ted Nelson's book Dream Machines for an idea.
We all knew it was coming.
Also - yeah. I kind of miss Turbo Pascal. But I'd never give up CPAN for it. Ha.
We still haven't gotten there.
Similar for general AI.
Of course, for most programmers it is only feasible to specialize, and even then the amount of data is enormous, e.g. you can study all the nuances of C++ or Java for years, and still not be an expert, and Java has plenty of libraries with a huge API overall, but practically you are required to have experience and deep knowledge of each commonly used one if you want to be hired as a Senior Developer, and that is just an example. It is a general rule that you are required to have deep knowledge of the area and technology you future employer is working with, despite it is one of an insane amount, and most of thar knowledge you will never use again.
Update: Traffic seems to have abated a bit. Not going to move it.
In case you entirely missed this subtext, I recommend re-reading it, and seeing how well the glove fits on a possible perspective of Aaron's life.
I know that it's pretty fashionable to hate on religion, but this is something that religious wisdom literature and religious communities are often very good at providing.
It's important to recognize the signs of burnout and acknowledge it before you get to the point where you never want to touch a computer again.
Just go to http://scripting.com/ if you want to see the article.
You're overriding my dyslexic fonts with your inappropriate inline style just like how most developers (Facebook, Reddit, and a whole laundry list of others) fail to observe relative font-sizes or the good-sense settings of the browser[1] .
Now what am I supposed to do? I'm ALREADY using Stylish WITH "!important"; just imagine how systematic this problem is[2]. And yet the only response I typically get whenever I bring up this issue is that some know-it-all thinks I don't know how to customize my browser or whatever else. Or snide comments that such-and-such dyslexic font is "shit" or "ugly." Then I lose all of my street cred when I'm the one being mindful of accessibility (even if it is at the cost of garden variety aesthetic choices in the world of Helvetinauts).
Please, red flag me for irrelevance; I've taken this kind of flack before[3]. But I am getting absolutely sick of this. Stop overriding good design choices with bad ones.
_Why_ are you using inline styles? I'm going to keep shouting this until I get acknowledgment: no more fontwalls[4]!
I was in reading mode, and your poor development practices just ruined that. Now I need a bloody cigarette.
[1]: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size
[2]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/opinion/the-reality-of-dys...
[3]: http://www.reddit.com/r/css/comments/15q12g/youre_about_to_s...
Is "!important" in your custom stylesheet not overriding it? It's supposed to, what is the technical problem?
Also, what are fontwalls? You link to a paragraph with a typeface that is exceedingly difficult to read (is that the point?), and then the rest appears to be in hieroglyphics.
1. Code bloat: "font-family: Crimson Text; font-size: 20px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 135%;" appears 9 times. For the same reason in the CSS world we're trying to eliminate unnecessary and unwieldy div-itis and non-semantic classes. It's about reducing footprint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-BX4N8egEc. If you cannot see the logical next step that each of his Web pages may be doing the exact same thing, and thus his entire site; and further he might be using a plugin or theme that perpetuates this bad practice... if you cannot see that, then fair. But those are the kinds of problems I reflect on in my studies.
2. I'm not even sure what you're getting at with your second question. I wouldn't be posting this if my "!important" worked. If anything, Stylish may not benefit from the well-noted point that !important overrides inline styles. If that's the case: fascinating new problem we've discovered here. I am overriding paragraph elements with "!important"; that is the fact of the situation. Is there a technical problem? Perhaps.
3. Fontwalls are situations like this: a dyslexic reader is incapable of reading the content in place because the typesetting makes it inaccessible. So, like with your criticism of my typesetting on my Website: the OP has used "a typeface that is exceedingly difficult to read."
And yeah, the !important should be working. I've never used Stylish, but something's clearly broken -- in any case, your beef should be with Stylish or your browser, not with the author/developer of the blog. If you stick to a user stylesheet in your browser it should be guaranteed to work -- after all, that's the whole point of them, so that people with visual disabilities can override default styling.
So, I don't really get what the problem is. Inline styles are an integral part of the web (and are particularly, and correctly, suited to blog posts), and user stylesheets generally allow you to override them, so you can use dyslexic fonts if you choose.
You haven't even tested it, nor do you even really know what Stylish is, it seems, and you're arguing with conviction.
What am I doing here?
Thanks for the advice. I'll keep my distance then.
Do you understand what the wanted effect is? Because I'm pretty sure the gist of this entire discussion is: Don't use inline styles, which any front-end developer worth their salt would already agree to[1], outside of the accessibility debate. But what is more, accessibility might be one of many reasons why a front-end developer would raise the point about inline style at all.
What is needed is something like Dyslite[1] but free (and probably better). A browser plugin that overrides font-settings to use dyslexia-optimized fonts. Ranting about inline-styles doesn't help anyone. Clearly, one should be able to override even inline-styles for accessibility rather than forbidding web designers their use, even though I agree it's not exactly a good practice anyway.
Then again, I like to say that there's always a time and place for everything. Damnit even goto's have some valid use cases.
If that's what you mean by your concluding comments. Yes, I should be working on software for these issues, and I am; -- but in my morning reading time, my crutch was kicked out from under me. If you want to say that you disagree with my style, that's fine. I disagree with yours. Most people, most of the time, disagree when it comes to details, and certainly, even further, on opinions of style. I'm not going to lose sleep over people disagreeing with my diction. If I did that, then I'd never get any sleep. (That is, I have not, and I will not change my style. I'm being myself, and using my own voice.)
And it still isn't even clear why this is the case, that my Stylish "!important" overrides are not overriding the inline styles of that Web page. I've provided a link to my post which contains my Stylish snippet. You can see it for yourself, that this should not be happening, given the rules of CSS Specificity.
You could also try writing a user script that deletes all font-related styles from all elements.
Does running that post through the Readable or Readability bookmarklets leave the inline styles intact?
You are supposed to separate the design from the structure from any logic.
> Wait, since when are inline styles a poor development
> practice?
If you want people to listen and understand what you are trying to say, you might want to take a breather and start writing more constructively.
I can completely understand where you are coming from, but you really need to adjust your tone and message if you want to convince people.
How is it that you merely "think" you've got it, but in your own words immediately after admitting that, you demonstrate quite clearly that you actually did in fact understand?
If you want to make friends, that's your prerogative. You were informed, and you demonstrate that you got my point. I don't care for your etiquette or aesthetics of communication.
[Added:] I see no lack of understanding of my point here, but only disagreeing opinion on what counts as an acceptable font, which is question begging, and factual inaccuracies.
And I want you to understand that this angers me. That is part of my point: I am angry, and yes, it is a rant. It's not clear to me how that is relevant or even a criticism. I am mad about this. I want that to be understood and clear. If you immediately picked up on my "rant-y" style, then I have succeeded at doing what it is I set out to do. At the same time, phrases like "absolutely sick," I am quite sure, tipped you off, and such phrases will tip most readers off. I honestly do not feel the need to add the disclaimer: "this is a rant." Most ranters don't, who are truly ranting, rather than being critical.
If what you mean to suggest is that rants exclude or prevent the flow of information, then as demonstrated by the numerous replies here, information was not impeded and critical dialogue is sitting along side and emotional/personal issue. I personally think it asks too much of one to set aside how they personally are affected, given the nature and gravity of the situation being mentioned (i.e., the scope and unwitting lack of sensitivity to dyslexia sufferers).
I have provided my arguments and points. And I am mad. It is quite clear to me that most of you are perfectly processing both of those informative gestures.
And it would be terribly presumptuous of you to assume that my persona given here is found in all of my social activities. If you assume this, you're not being fair (really, to yourself).
You need to understand that a handicapped person just hit a Web page, out of the hundreds, if not thousands, that are hit a day, that, in my understanding, just overrides that dyslexic person's crutch, that handicapped person's wheelchair. When that page loaded, I personally _felt like_ someone (accidentally) kicked my crutch out from under me, or criticized me because I am not able to perform as well because of a handicap. This is how accessibility issues play out[1]; people feel hurt and victimized by facts of their obscurity which they cannot control.
I am very confident that you are not fully appreciating the gravity of the issue here.
Being penalized 1/100 of 1% of revenue doesn't really inspire a sense of urgency or "gravity". Seems like it might be worth it for companies to wait until they get sued before taking accessibility seriously.
I assume your goal is to get people to say, "this is a problem that should be fixed, so I'm going to fix it". The tone and methods with which you're communicating in this discussion are much more likely to get people to say, "this is a problem that should be fixed, but the only people who care about it are assholes, so I see no reason to help them." You appear to be well-intentioned, and your anger is more than justified, but it's important to recognize when toning down your hostility (which, to be clear, doesn't necessarily mean masking your passion and ferver) is a necessary step towards enacting positive change.
Submit this, then, to HN.
I'm happy if it is a rocky start. But I side with Wittgenstein: "My difficulty is only an — enormous — difficulty of expression."
I dig your suggestion, but your criticism I feel lacks sufficient observation.
"One obvious quick and low-cost solution is to make a CNAME Record that renders the dyslexic font via CloudFlare; like mobile."
I just spurted that out while reviewing another forum where I have made the suggestion to render dyslexic fonts. The above suggestion would not have to impact anyone, and it is trivial to pull off. The outcome is there becomes a reserved DNS space for http://{dyslexic_contextualization}.{domain}.{ext}.
So, for example, like with mobile's http://m.domain.com: http://d.domain.com or http://dys.domain.com.
What is needed here is not more code, but agreement and strategy. But before all of that, an understanding that this is a problem, regardless of the number of people it affects. Dyslexia is a feature of nature; so pointing out that it only affects a small number says nothing about the future holds. And even further, dyslexia is a spectrum disorder, so it plausibly could be and probably is more widespread than we understand it. Most people live with it out of shame or fear the consequences of "coming out."
I'm _sure_ we're all on the same page with these points I've made, and that I really did not need to express them. Then again, the tech industry is hotly debating sexism as if women were "coming out of the closet": "I'm a programmer!"
Yes, I use Readability. What does "preferred font" mean to you? The aforementioned software allows for a fixed set of fonts that correspond to color themes.
* { font-family: "Eulexia"; }
But thank you for the advice.
It kind of does feel like the world is throwing "everything" at you when all the books are rendered in fonts that give you headaches. All the Websites too. And the Newspapers.
That personal point aside. Inline styles are well known bad practice. It's a shock to me that this is being argued on Hacker News.
The quote is about making your cause succeed. Here you could have won by sending an email. Instead you shouted at people on HN. Nobody learned anything about making the internet better for you. Maybe your goal is just to let people know that this makes you angry, you succeeded. Well done. But you didn't follow through with why they should care, so no change is effected.
Its good to be hated by those who hate your just cause. Maybe its less good to be hated by those who are simply ignorant of it?
I'd say you missed the point of the quote entirely.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
I am asking _why are you using inline styles?_ I'm trying to explain "stupidity," not "malice." You're interpreting assumption of malice from my tone, style, and frustration. And I am frustrated, furious even. I'm furious about typesetting. I'd happily go down being that guy. The guy who foams at the mouth and rages about typesetting; what's more, when it's about liberating dyslexic users.
Yes, go ape-shit about typesetting.
I'm citing my sources, and making my arguments. You're not reading me aright. And that's a matter of "opinion filter"; that's all I can really say about that. We don't read the same self-help books. Where I come from, Nietzsche and Mencken are the tour de force, not diplomatic tongue. My apologies if you feel that is inappropriate for Web development practices; but I honestly do not care. And moreover, I just saw Torvalds flip off Nvidia. So, what? Who do I follow? Not one of you has the right idea on personal brand.
I'm asking why. The question is why. Why? It's "why?" "Why?"
I'm calling them "poor development practices." How do you get blame out of that?
"(nonemotional deadpan) How?"
I'd suggest a different approach. Take a deep breath, have that cigarette you need.
I'm might start out by sending a polite comment or email to Dave. "I was wanting to read your post, but your pages don't do this...."
Dave actually wrote the whole stack of software that manages his writing. Some of it is quite amazing, and some of it is probably older than you are, so it might have some issues ;-). He is actually someone who could fix valid problems. He's a good guy. So treat him that way. Be polite. You can see your current "get mad" approach isn't getting a good reception here, or probably anywhere else. If you want to change the world, you need to learn to communicate, not shout.
"One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong." -- http://halfhalf.posterous.com/dont-work-be-hated-love-someon...
What makes you right and that ^ wrong? Given that you are trying to guide me, for some reason, I think this is an absolutely fair question. Why follow your advice and not Adrian Tan's? I'd absolutely love to understand where you are coming from since what I have quoted, and then twice, outright contradicts what you are saying.
And it actually fits well within the framework of this entire thread, even if it does not get my dyslexic-accessibility agenda further.
Further, it might be amazing software. But that is an opinion. Plone is amazing software, but I wouldn't work in it. Diazo is amazing software, I wouldn't work in it. Drupal is amazing; wouldn't work in it. Joomla, etc., etc., etc.
I know things can be fixed. My concern is right now, what are the consequences of architectural decisions like his software? -- In my mind, immediately: larger Web footprint, inaccessible to dyslexics, more costly (even if it is tiny, but that is relative total footprint).
I'm not calling you names or insulting your intelligence. I'm being critical, and expressing frustration in an intimate way. The all caps are a rare thing, but as I said: I am mad. I want you to know that. So please stop re-iterating that it is not "effective." I don't think anyone here has the background in sociology or communications to really support their arguments on that matter. Just one programmers' opinion to another.
I guess I don't see the contradiction. Your beloved quote seems to be saying that you should not to be afraid of being hated by people who disagree with your convictions. I think most people on HN would agree that having accessibility on all web pages is a good thing. I'm sure that Dave is not for denying the web to dyslexics. He is not a "bad" person who's hatred you should desire. I've followed his writings for 20 some years, and he is an interesting, complex, thoughtful, good guy. In this case, programmer to programmer, you have a technical problem to solve.
I hope you read the next section of your link, about the importance of Love, as well.
* { font-family: "Comic Sans MS" !important; }
Are you sure that your CSS override is correctly worded? Are you using a different version of Stylish?
My selector works on just about every other site. I assume most of them do not have inline styles on every paragraph.
What limited knowledge I have of CSS selector precedence tells me that a top-level override is the only way to ensure that the fonts that you require to be able to read the internet without raging are applied.
With classes like "divOutlineItem" and inline CSS padding, not one of you bothers to note that. It's like I'm wasting by bloody time learning best practices only to bring them back to developers who just do not seem to care. And I'm supposed to yield to claims of "amazing software" and age-authority.
I'm not even sure what to say anymore. You're absolutely right. I, as a Web Developer, for whatever that is worth, have no business being here in the Hacker News community.
Cheers.
Right here.