I'm sorry what? If you even consider saying that code is like an existing project but not good, or implying that a piece of code is badly written, you're an asshole!?
Don't you think you're taking this a bit far?
Don't you think you're taking this a bit far?
Here's his quote from twitter:
>Ever wanted to make sed or grep worse? http://github.com/harthur/replace
In the world I live in, that's called being an asshole.
Look, I'm not saying these guys should apologize (in fact, if this is how they apologize it's probably best they don't), I'm simply stating that they're dicks. I know a lot of computer programmers just like them.
Edit: And I hate working with people like them. I don't care how brilliant they are, programming is a team sport in most places. If you're a jerk I don't want you on my team, no matter how many awesome sed scripts you can whip up.
There's a difference between "being an asshole" and "sometimes acting like an asshole". We all do the second thing sometimes.
A snarky comment and a bad apology may be an instance of the second thing. But they don't imply the first.
Compare another toxic noun, "racist". There's a difference between "being a racist" and "making a racist comment". If people could apologize for the latter when it happens, understanding that it does not imply the former, the world would be a better place.
Sorry chief, I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there. The snarky comment can be forgiven. (although I've since read other tweets/posts from David Cramer and it appears as though he really is that abrasive all the time)
By contrast, a bad apology is a clear indication of someone's true nature. If the apology is backhanded or otherwise poor, it implies a lot. If you issue an apology but don't really feel sorry, then you're just doing it to placate others, and you really are a jerk.
Holly Ass, Twitter, by essence is an assholy thing. What can you expect from someone who has "3500 friends" or "50 000 followers" ? Follow the Holy Shoe of Jerusalem :)
Their actions weren't advisable by any measure, but you've certainly demonstrated a willingness to make up your mind about them, based off a number of extremely extremely short pithy statements. Dial down your indignation, friend: help us get rid of this reek.
I agree with you and gave you an upvote. Maybe my comments do make me look like a "tosser" - but these people were behaving like bullies, plain and simple. And man, I can't stand that shit. I see it every day. People will go out of their way to make others feel miserable. Or they use their power/standing/influence to pick a fight with someone weaker just because they can.
The fact is Nodeites are renowned for rehashing the entrenched. It also, gasp, has callbacks. These people weren't gentle in pointing out a capital example of just these two things. I don't think that makes them bullies or bad people, nor do I guess they even considered the human behind the works nor hardly the work itself: my _guess,_ and indeed, everyone is guessing here, is that they were making a crack on the idea of replacer, as justly emblematic of what Node is renowned for.
And although I think one would be a fool to become so polarized in view as these people showed themselves to be, I would much rather we have open channels where such conduct is permitted, where we can be a little low brow, boorish or lively, and express our ruffian selves: I'd rather have a wildness. I prefer tolerance and resilience. I loath the intolerance that says we must sterilize and purify and be of good behavior, must watch ourselves constantly.
Harthur talks about feeling like her identity has been injured, wounded forever. Yet here we are condemning and slining insults, armed with the zeal she has given us. Here we are, enacting new moral codes, legislating terms where nothing but support and good manners towards one another will be accepted. She felt that she had not been tolerated, not encouraged, yet the response is to mandate intolerance of another behavior, yes a boorish one, but regardless, just another tripline for ourselves to unintentionally trip over. Let's instead seek discourse- which she did- and failing that, tolerance. Let's not go troll hunting, lest we lay too onerous a minefield for any man to hazard.
A girl got caught in the crossfire of polarized communities. She cried. Everyone felt bad, many got indignant and decried other people and other communities for their action or contact with the affair. The internet got more uptight about itself. That, to me, is the absolute losingest situation imaginable, and I'd handily pass out yellow cards to 80% of this topic as contributors towards winding ourselves up, of taking ourselves too seriously, of ascribing way too much levity to an event that was tiny in size, and which we have not been given a codex to understand- it remains a context free situation, one we merely make projections about, without knowing what the real intent was, we just know people tweeted, for whatever reason, because something struck them, and they created, made and shared new content about their experiences.
They shared. I don't understand, they haven't explained, I don't think I'd like it even if they did explain it better, but these were people keeping themselves amused, first and foremost. That that would be subject to so much scrutiny, the cause of injury, is itself the most tragic here. We need to be tolerant, and find good, not focus on censoring bad or fretting about our identities, as first Heather did, and now the three authors are likely doing.
Sorry for labeling your writing as tosser like, not cool of me. I feel like ascribing intent to what happened is an impossibility, and even with bad intent I'm still very uneasy with censoring, with mandatory good behavior. I beg for de-escalation.
First things first, bullying is not always conscious. You seem to imply that and I happen to believe that is not true. Someone can act bullying-ish without being a bully. It happens. It sucks, always. It sucks especially when you're not in fact a bully and you didn't mean to act like one. (someone made a comment about "being a racist" and "saying something racist". It's similar.)
This point has been made over and over again: Someone with such a large audience and such a public channel has a certain responsibility. For better or worse, they represent a certain part of a community, they are looked up to. You can't deny that with a certain amount of, let's say "Power" comes a certain amount of, let's call it "Responsibility" ;)
And that responsibility is that they can't afford the same boorishness and low brow-ness on their e.g. public twitter channels. It's not just a developer expressing an opinion anymore. It becomes a community thing. I even read tweets in German, bashing this github repo. And when it goes that far, the vitriol in the air just grows exponentially. People don't think about it anymore, it's suddenly a hive mind thing. That's why it spreads so quickly. Monkey see, monkey do.
It may have been only one tweet per person by three people, but they happened to be high-profile enough to spread it far and wide. I also want to keep the communication channels open and tolerant, but it is important to conduct yourself in a courteous manner that you would also use face to face. Especially if you have follower counts in the thousands or ten-thousands. (it's a tight-knit community...)
I don't, however think that the public communication channels need to be tolerant or indeed designed for low-brow, ruffian, boorish behaviour. You can do that at home with your friends. Or indeed on Jabber/XMPP. Or on your own forums. Or mailing lists. Not that I would want to ban people from exhibiting these behaviours on public channels (To the tolerance-mobile!), but I would like to see the community frown upon them. In my opinion, they add very little value to the content and they benefit mostly the person exhibiting them and not the community at large. That to me means definitely that it should stay in private circles, especially if it can be detrimental to a single person.
You say that the community doesn't do itself a favour, reacting as harshly as that. But many of us (I think) love the idea of open source. Many of us would put out a small tool like that on github and we would probably be upset if someone (seemingly) just took a quick look at it and go to twitter and just essentially start a high profile pitchfork mob. That is why the reaction has been soo strong and passionate.
Also, the fact that Heather got caught between communities warring (apparently. that was not known to me...) is fairly irrelevant. This kind of conduct needs to stop. If someone wants to duke it out on twitter, take it up with someone who 1. agrees to it, i'm sure there are enough zealots in either community. or 2. is of a similar high-profile stature.
Some thoughts on what was said, what was meant, what was perceived. What was said: "I cannot even make this stuff up [link to gh:harthur/replace]" What was meant [speculation?]: "Hmm, I wonder why someone would remake sed with node.js? Weird." What was perceived [speculation?][citation needed]: "OMGWTF, LOOK AT THIS IDIOT MORON!!11 DOESN'T TEHY KNOW THAT THIS IS LIEK SED BUT SHIT? ALSO NODE.JS, LAWL!!!11"
This is only one of the examples. This is a problem, agreed? Most people seem to forget that perception is the most relevant of these three things when you conduct yourself in public.
Wow, this got more rambly than expected.
PS: To everyone that says "grow a thicker skin, the world is bad", please don't do this. It should be very reasonable to expect people to not be idiots. It's not a stupid thing. It's something we as a community should strive for. We should be moving towards a community that frowns upon these behaviours, protecting the new and the defenseless. (What you do in your startup world is none of my business, of course.) Why this hit so close to home for Heather [speculation?] and many of us [speculation?] is because we feel safe in this community and we didn't expect to [citation needed] be backstabbed out of our own ranks.
"At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. " - Billy Madison
Man I love your version of tolerance.
You are way too attached to your code.
. . .
What these guys said was still extremely rude.
> You are way too attached to your code.
For most people this is subconscious. If you're not, good for you.
Someone who's so attached to their code that they can't accept criticism (even harsh criticism) of it is pretty much guaranteed to be writing crappy code.
You'll notice that harthur didn't flip out as if her child was insulted. Instead she asked for constructive feedback, a sign of professional maturity.
Whoever came up with the orig quote does have good sense. I've worked with a lot of people ranging from NASA to new hotness start ups. I would say 95% people would be pissed no matter the skill level if you just made fun of their work as opposed to offering constructive criticism.
> Someone who's so attached to their code
I'm sure that most people who care about the quality of their work is somewhat attached to their code.
> that they can't accept criticism (even harsh criticism) of it is pretty much guaranteed to be writing crappy code
The issue at hand isn't that Heather can't accept any sort of criticism. The issue is still that you don't have to be a fucking dick to criticize someone else's work. It's not hard to offer constructive criticism as opposed to just trashing and making fun of something someone worked on for months or even years.
> You'll notice that harthur didn't flip out as if her child was insulted.
Umm she was crying; not only that - she posted that she cried. I would say she was pretty upset; she just handled herself well despite the circumstances.
I wasn't saying people wouldn't get pissed if you insult their work. I'd be annoyed if someone made fun of my work. But I certainly would not be as angry as if someone insulted my child. Or even my dog.
> The issue at hand isn't that Heather can't accept any sort of criticism.
Obviously not. She handled the situation with an overabundance of grace and asked for meaningful criticism.
> The issue is still that you don't have to be a fucking dick to criticize someone else's work. It's not hard to offer constructive criticism as opposed to just trashing and making fun of something someone worked on for months or even years.
Absolutely. These guys were being jerks. My comment was about being as attached to your code as you are to your child.
> Umm she was crying; not only that - she posted that she cried. I would say she was pretty upset; she just handled herself well despite the circumstances.
I'd say the fact that she asked for feedback is clear evidence that she is not attached to her code the way she might be to a child. Try walking up to a parent and tell them that their child makes your eyes bleed and let me know if they ask you for constructive feedback, vs hitting you, screaming at you, spitting in your face, or just walking away scowling.
Everything in this world is subjective. When you talk about someone's work you are inevitable bringing some degree of comparison into it, and human ego has huge troubles dealing with that.
Nobody ever forgets an insult, it comes back sooner or later.
It's not "a single skill" as if you were telling Torvalds that his juggling skills were crap and he should keep his day job; if someone has enough coding experience that they're releasing OSS on GitHub, coding is quite likely their job (or they're in school to make it their job).
So yeah, snarkily saying that the product of someone's career activity makes your eyes bleed (or whatever) is demeaning to them -- i.e., directly attacking their dignity and others' respect for them.
Also: "should" != "is", I'm afraid.
But I'm going to hope it's not just a post you disagree with. Just like I hope you don't call code bad because it uses OTB or omits semicolons. It should be failing to solve the problem it sets out to solve, and in an interesting manner. (Note: I have not looked at the code tweeted about.)
Edit: Wait how did THIS post get downvoted? I can understand the earlier posts but I can't even imagine what's objectionable about this one.
The outrage is not about constructive (or even unconstructive) criticism of the code itself (which appears to be fine): At least one of the guys ridiculed the author and questioned her competence for the sole reason of implementing a subset of the features of GNU find+sed on top of Node.js.
Thank you for the useful info.
Fact: The vast majority of people would take the twitter conversation Heather posted as a personal attack. Not many people are able to separate attacks on their work product from attacks on themselves (for good reason - since I feel like most people derive a sense of pride from their work).
I dare say it would also take an asshole to not recognize this fact and make rude comments and not realize someone would be personally offended even though "it's just some code".
That's a beautiful bit of writing and thinking, right there :)