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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

This is curious, maybe a little too reactionary[1], but I think we could use the introspection.

On the one hand, being argued about is a problem a lot of people would like to have. I spent two years making a large canvas diagramming library and I would have loved for it to have frontpage'd on HN, even if everyone just told me it was terrible.

On the other hand, I do think the meanness of programming communities is a the biggest problem we have. Programmer-types are just not as supportive/empathetic as nearly everyone else I know. And I'm not talking about criticism, I'm talking about needless mean, shitty behavior that gets repeated and defended all too often. When the Linus/"Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!"[2] was posted to HN every single top comment was defending Linus' behavior.

Linus' mission and position do not excuse his language. In defending users, he's still attacking a person.

It upsets the hell out of me, and I think its a big part of why many women (and I'm sure men) prefer not to engage in programming communities. Even on StackOverflow I see people being horrible to confused newcomers, instead of steering them in the right direction.

I think rooting out this kind of shitty behavior is the most important thing we can do to advance programming communities and make others feel welcome. By miles. Especially if we want to alleviate gender and general newcomer disparities.

This article reminds me of one from 117 days ago, "What It's Like To Be Ridiculed For Open Sourcing A Project".[3]

~~~~~

[1] There were some remarks in the article that just left me confused, such as:

> They said I thought JavaScript was a bad language. How funny, because I'm writing almost all my code these days in JavaScript. They say I'm old and out of date. Funny. They're the ones who are out of date! :-)

???

~~~~~

[2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75

Some excerpts:

> Mauro, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

> It's a bug alright - in the kernel. How long have you been a maintainer? And you still haven't learnt the first rule of kernel maintenance?

> If a change results in user programs breaking, it's a bug in the kernel. We never EVER blame the user programs. How hard can this be to understand?

> Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously.

If you talked to your spouse like that it would be called abuse.

I was horrified by the HN reactions. You can read some of them here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4962912

~~~~~

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106767

View on HN

I could not agree more.

One factor that I think contributes to the Asshole Ethos common among programmers is this idea that great men of genius cannot be held to the same moral standards as mere mortals. This idea, combined with an inflated sense of self-worth, makes for a host of Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds wannabes, convinced that their special nature absolves them from social norms and responsibility.

The Raskolnikov-ian egoists ought to read Crime and Punishment...

I can fortunately say that in my experience, few programmers are assholes in person. Online forums are another matter. :)

On the other hand Dave has a notoriously thin skin. He is very good at criticizing everyone else but he absolutely doesn't take criticism himself. Only time you are going to strike up a conversation with him is if you agree with him on everything. He generally expects everyone to bow to him as the inventor of blogging and RSS and podcasting and whatever, and that means you are supposed to listen to his opinions on everything, agree with him, and see his wisdom and if you dont, YOUR BLOCKED, cut off, dismissed and ignored.

Who knows how that meeting with Marissa Mayer actually went down but there are plenty of people who have been lectured, scolded and demeaned by Dave who have probably wanted to walk out on him so its entirely beleivable that she did and he probably provoked at least some of it.

You would think Dave would, after all these years, realize that if you post stuff on the Internets people are going to flame you for it because A. They disagree B. They troll for fun C. Dave has ticked off so many people over the years they flame him because they are perma-tired of his holier than thou attitude.

No people shouldn't be rude, ever, but they are. Dave is rude all of the time too. Yea you can just like, you know, block the entire Internet and that will stop it, but at what price. I think Dave is mostly pushing for the latter, or at least he wants anyone who doesn't agree with Dave on everything to be blocked permenently from everything.

Dave, if you want, to block everyone on the Internet who disagrees with you, fine, go for it, write your own tools to do it, but don't expect everyone else to do it for you.

I think what disturbed me more was the defense of the lies told in order to 'just get the deal done.' In my book, it's not ok. It's not 'just business.'

It has been my privilege in my career to work with some truly talented people, and my misfortunute to work with some whose talents were only in bullshit. I am thinking now of the smartest, by a considerable margin, guy I know, a former cow-orker and a cryptographer. He is the nicest, humblest guy you could hope to meet, he always had time to deal with my stupid questions (I was the only non-PhD in that team). And this is a general pattern: truly smart guys are beyond ego, they exist on another plane. They have time for mortals because they effortlessly see the big picture.

Now let me be brutally honest about Torvalds: Tanenbaum was correct. He is not a great coder or a great thinker, Linux as he wrote it was indeed as Tanenbaum said, a giant step backwards. Torvalds just happened to be at the right place at the right time to be at the nucleus of a nascent social movement (what we now call Open Source). What has he done lately - Transmeta? And he is well aware of this himself I suspect: the abrasive personality is his insecurity showing.

What he's done lately? Git.

Two out of three isn't that bad.

Sure, git's nice, but there are a dozen, as-good, DVCSs out there. I never said Torvalds wasn't a competent programmer - merely that he is wildly insecure about his technical authority. Alan Cox is 10x the programmer, when does he pick fights with anyone?

"convinced that their special nature absolves them from social norms and responsibility."

Is it that they feel this way inherently (maybe) or that there are a large percentage of people that surround them, and/or stand to gain from them, that tolerate and allow that behavior?

My feeling is that people act the way they do because they can get away with it with little repercussions.

If you've ever dealt with a person with an anger problem you will see that many times when they deal with someone close to them they act one way (abusive) but with complete strangers they can be as sweet as pie because that person is the unknown and they aren't going to take a chance with a stranger who might react in a way to deny them what they want (of course yes there are those who act like total loose canons with everyone but most that I have observed tend to differentiate between degree of closeness).

From a very early age, probably. We all remember the kid who could get away with calling out in class because he was always right, or goofing off and harassing the other students because he already knew the material being taught, or demanding the college professor address his long, convoluted and only tangentially-related comment no one cared about.

I agree that people should be talking more about this. As an older student who hangs out on IRC a lot, I see two phenomena:

- People get initiated into programmer culture pretty young, before they learn to stop being pretentious. They really like how meritocratic programmer culture is, but they get carried away with it the same way that people who say "gays should go to hell" or "the weak have no place in society" get carried away. And maybe some people never grow out of it because we've reached asshole critical mass and they find themselves surrounded by like-minded people; and because they're rewarded for technical merit even when they behave badly. The result is your typical Dickensian villainy.

- The meanest IRC channel that I know of, #C, is full of people who are honestly not very smart. Every time that I've patiently and kindly tried to teach someone - while the rest of the channel was busy being huge dicks to that person - I've regretted it because the person just wasn't able to absorb and synthesize information. I'd argue that you can't give a $5 dollars to every beggar, and some people should be firmly kept out of the community until they get better, so as to avoid harming the community in the long run. It's a tough situation, and handling it well is tough even for mature people. Being rude isn't an unreasonable tool if your goal is specifically to scare people away (and hopefully towards a more productive endeavor for them).

The point is that there are imperfect people on both sides of our social boundaries. But note that this is a very specific point, and rarely justifies the vitriol that comes out of people in #C.

This is what keeps me from getting more involved in a lot of online discussions.

As it stands, I code mostly as a fun thing I like to do (I work it into my day job where I can). It's something I really enjoy. I've got a shelf full of books and an interest in the esoteric. I'll like casually reading about lambda calculus and taking long walks on the beach, but when I run into something I can't figure out, I have a problem.

It's painful to even think about going to some irc channels or forums to ask for advice on something I'm writing, even when it's the most sensible thing to do. I just think about how exhausting it'll probably be to cut through the vitriolic responses and get to some useful information.

I'm typically not looking for a dissertation, even. What I'm usually looking for is "Here's what I'm writing. What am I doing wrong, and what resource/book/article could I read to best get a grip on this problem?"

I don't want to face the prospect of mental exhaustion for something I do for enjoyment.

I think language/framework evangelists usually know about this kind of thing. You never see them say "Yeah, the community is great and if you have any questions head on over to our IRC channel. They're super abrasive in there, but if you really slam your head against them, you'll probably get an answer!"

Take this for what it's worth, maybe nothing...

A fair number of the people in these communities that offer help are doing so to help those of us who have questions.

They can be annoying, abrasive and downright rude. If you are polite and persist most of the time you will get your answer. I went through this in the late '80s on the C/C++ forums on FIDOnet and RIME/RelayNet. I managed to persist (and get pissed off a number of times) and get most of my answers. To this day I see people from FIDOnet and RIME/RelayNet still answering questions on web forums, StackOverflow etc. Jerry Coffin is one of them and the man is a saint. Bob Stout of Snippets fame has been around forever as well. The advice I read from Joseph Carnage on RIME was some of the most valuable ever and has a lot to do with how well I turned out as a developer.

I guess what I'm getting to here is to grow some thicker skin and try not to take it all so personally. A fair number of the guys answering the questions have seen the same questions a million times and gone to the trouble to write the FAQs for C and C++ and are presumably tired of answering the same old questions. Put yourself in their place and see if your perspective changes.

I don't think your response is worth nothing, and I do understand a lot of the reasons why people would low on patience. I also don't think it's always unwarranted to be terse about things. People ask the same questions and people ask silly questions, or they ask questions that lead someone to believe they haven't even tried to find a response, and that they're just trying to be spoon fed. I think those are all totally valid complaints. I don't think anyone with a job worth doing gets out of asking questions they think are absurd to have ever been asked in the first place.

For me, I don't think taking something personally is what is exhausting. I have my own propensity for verbal sparring and for trying to find the psychological upper hand. Once I get into it, I don't care about conversation or communication, just about feeling like I was the most strategic combatant. It turns into drawn out verbal warfare, and it's draining for me to resist the urge to get into those fights when I get a condescending response. I realize that places most (or a lot) of the blame on me, for the exhaustion, but there it is.

It helps a lot that there are places like Stack Overflow and that the web is just so damned big and accessible, these days. I can almost always find an answer on my own, so it's not usually worth investing in a forum to get answers.

The downside is I miss out on community and getting to know prolific figures or interacting with other programmers as much as I could, and that's definitely my loss.

I also miss out on the large number of generally decent folk, which sucks, and it's a big reason I've tried to make a few more comments on HN that I used to, in areas where I think I have something to say. Most of the time it's worth trying to open up the line of communication. I just try to balance risk versus reward.

Basically, I think I'm pretty capable of tolerating the negative responses that can pop up, but is it worth enduring them for what I would get out of it? In my current context, I'm not sure.

People online have tended to be more abrasive to total programming novices than to people who have more advanced questions. I don't think it would be that bad for you. But another thing is that, for large and old communities where the developers aren't hanging around, people on IRC aren't necessarily going to be experts who know more than you. Those people have better stuff to do, by virtue of their skill.

I personally think that I've picked up very useful "learning skills" because I have my own social reasons for answering technical questions without outside help. So maybe your exhaustion might also be a benefit for this reason.

Yeah. It's been frustrating at times, but it is satisfying to figure something out "alone" (clearly I only figure it out because someone else wrote a book about it).

I can get away with it because I don't have any deadlines or anything like that, really. I can just hammer away until I figure it out.

It's definitely been useful, though. And you're right; learning skills are still skills for sure.

Oh God, I have had a similar experience with #C. I know very little C, it was four in the morning and I was trying to get something finished, but it wouldn't work for some reason.

I joined #C to ask for some help, but people were trying to get me to discover the solution on my own, which is well and fine if you want to learn, but at that point I just wanted the trivial fix (it was something about an incorrect type, it was a 1-line fix and anyone with C experience could see it).

I asked them if they could just tell me how to fix it, because it was late and it wasn't really a good time for me to learn C, but they said something about them not being my personal tutors or something, and then just refused to help and treated me like an idiot for not knowing C.

In the end I just left the channel with very high blood pressure and asked a friend on IM who told me the correct line, and that was it.

#C: not even once.

To be fair, they had no obligation to help you in the way you wanted, and in fact probably could not do so without sacrificing a great deal.

It sounds like #C has chosen as its mission to teach people the C programming language. To that end, they see it as a derailment of their existential purpose to help people who "just want the trivial fix." To them, it's rather like going to a math tutor with your homework and saying "I don't want to know how to do it, I just want the answer." Correctly or incorrectly, they think that helping you in the way that you ask won't teach you anything, and that it will ultimately hurt you on the final.

Even among communities whose mission is to help people with specific questions, like StackOverflow, the folks answering questions still require a certain amount of buy-in: evidence that you've thought about the question enough to understand precisely what the problem is, and evidence that the problem doesn't have an easily found solution on Google. Without that buy-in, the social environment they've set up will inevitably devolve until it's really difficult to separate the genuine difficulties that can be solved from the white noise of people asking the same question over and over.

So while I wouldn't defend the people in #C wholesale, and there may be plenty of vitriol there, a refusal to help when someone just wants a quick answer doesn't sound unreasonable, and in fact may be all that holds their community together.

> To be fair, they had no obligation to help you in the way you wanted

Sure, but they didn't have to be dicks about it. They could have said "we don't want to tell you if it won't teach you anything" and I'd have left. Berating me wasn't very productive.

> fact probably could not do so without sacrificing a great deal.

It was a "you're using sprintf("%d") when you need sprintf("%u")" sort of thing. Not exactly that, but very easy.

> it's rather like going to a math tutor with your homework

Not really, given that I don't ever work with C. It's more like asking for help with a flat tire and having the person say "I will ask you questions until you figure out how to do it". Thanks, but I just want to get to my job interview on time.

> the folks answering questions still require a certain amount of buy-in

I had done all the debugging I could and narrowed it down to that specific line, but doing anything more would require reading a large amount of material (which I didn't know where to find) on the intricacies of the C standard/compiler/etc, so it wasn't like I just went in saying "help me I don't remember the for loop syntax".

> a refusal to help when someone just wants a quick answer doesn't sound unreasonable, and in fact may be all that holds their community together.

I doubt that's what holds a community together, and I agree that it's not unreasonable. However, the way they treated me was.

I suspect that a lot of that context (or "buy-in") was missing, as it was when you explained it the first time here, which is why you got the response you did.

A lot of people show up in programming communities asking for help with their intro programming homework. Once you see a few dozen of those, it's understandable if your knee-jerk reaction is at least somewhat insulting.

Agreed, context is everything. In the context of a poor guy with just this dead-simple programming question going to someone for help, being shut down hard is rude and unfair. In the context of a small community of programmers who are barraged constantly by novice questions, asking for evidence of significant amounts of effort on the part of the question-asker is the only way to avoid chaos.

I'm almost certain that this anecdote arises purely due to the structure of the forum in which the question was asked, and has very little bearing on the vitriol and malice (or lack thereof) present in the denizens of #C.

I think I had told them that I narrowed it down to that line, as they specifically offered to help me debug it. I said I got the error pinned down to line X, but still... It might have been a fluke, though, as I think there was one person who instigated this whole bad treatment. Apparently he was well-known for it, because someone said something like "heh, hell will freeze over before X will just hand out a solution".

I agree with all points, however, if your mission is to teach people, vitriol is the straightest way to not teaching them shit in 99.9999% of cases.

Refusing to provide direct answers is #programminglanguage in general, otherwise you can just be helping a stream of beggars.

>the meanness of programming communities is a the biggest problem we have

Or maybe it's our biggest asset. In a world filled with bullshit (how many people you think really empathize with you - vs. just going through the motions?), it's refreshing to have a little corner where they honestly tell you why your ideas suck and your background is deficient. It kind of comes with the profession, yes. Only a relentlessly critical kind of person can effectively hunt down bugs and deal with dozens of other frustrating problems everyday.

There is no fundamental incompatibility between being honest and being respectful and understanding.

You can tell someone “you suck, go back to the corner of the Internet you came from, I don't have time for this”, or you can tell them “your skills don't seem to be quite at the level where we can accept your contributions; in particular, you don't understand X, Y, and Z very well and it shows in your code. I'm short on time, but if someone else has time to explain why that would be great.”

The difference is almost immeasurable between those two interactions, even though they are saying the same thing.

I've made this point before regarding derision, which I think is the true issue. I'll quote myself, since I've already written the thing[1]:

“Derision is not curtness. It is not impatience. It is explicit, intentional putting-down of someone because they aren't as good at something as you are or think they should be. And it is a poison. Unfortunately, if you take it frequently enough, it becomes habit. It becomes second nature. And you stop noticing it's poisonous. And so, unfortunately, it is an oft-enjoyed poison in intellectual circles. It doesn't help anything. It doesn't help you understand the world or other people. It doesn't really save you that much time. It simply makes you feel better about yourself.”

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4921579

It also takes quite a lot of self-control on the part of the receiver to get something constructive out of derision. Frankly, it's exhausting.

A specific example: I was looking for some help with a bash script a while ago. I am no bash expert. I got heaps of abuse for my terrible script. At first I got emotional, and a good 75% of the time I would have stopped there, feeling grumpy and hating assholes on the internet. This time I took a deep breath, posted my whole script as a gist, and said to one of the most abusive but seemingly knowledgable IRC citizens, "Ok, I see it's not as robust as it could be, so I would appreciate some help. What am I doing wrong? How can I improve this?" The script was much improved in robustness and readability.

I got a good script but I was drained by the effort. If I had gotten your second response instead of the first, think of how much time and good will would have been saved.

Being respectful and understanding is not a waste of time, and being rude is not cutting through the bullshit. Your point regarding derision is spot on, except I don't think it makes the derider feel better either.

Or, to quote Heinlein:

'Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.'

Formalities indicate social distance, they're general-fit heuristics. Of course they seem dishonest to kids, when you're friendly with your friends and don't need them, and when the other option is that you hold someone in poor regard, they can never be anything but lies.

I suspect anyone who's ever written an inter-company email will know the value of having a formal way of speaking that is unlikely to give offence though.

Completely agree.

You don't have to be a fluffy bunny about everything.

You stop and realize that your momentary investment in sincerity and tact reap rewards for your personal image, which people want to work with you, who is going to feel like taking a bit of extra time to help you out when you need it, and the general good will and atmosphere of the community, which inspires growth and adaption while lubricating the flow of ideas (as another response said; I'm stealing that).

I understand that this might be specific to me, but I'd actually rather have someone tell me:

"You're useless. For god's sake stop contributing until you get your sht together"

rather than:

“your skills don't seem to be quite at the level where we can accept your contributions; in particular, you don't understand X, Y, and Z very well and it shows in your code. I'm short on time, but if someone else has time to explain why that would be great.”

I don't have a good explanation why that is. Maybe it's because I feel some condescension in the second while the first one is just plain raw "I don't have time to deal with your sht. You're an adult: fix it and come back later".

The more polite response gives at least some shred of a foothold on which the recipient can find out how to better themselves. "Fix your shit" does't explain how your shit is lacking, or the major things you don't understand.

e.g., if I were to post some patch that used bubble sort, one could easily say "This is total crap. Don't come back until you fix your shit". If I were a noob, that wouldn't help me contribute better. If one were to rather say something like, "This is very inefficient," and then mention something about O notation or efficient sorting, and point out that this is a performance-critical section of the code, I might be more likely to actually take the time to learn enough to be able to fix it.

Consider also the effect on newer programmers. They start, they commit crap, you tell them to die in a fire. They get better, and years later decide that they're not going to bother fixing bugs in your project because "that guy's a jerk". Constructive criticism, or at the very least politeness, helps prevent poisoning the well of talent that is interested in working with you.

Programming, more so than many other fields, has a strong tradition of self-improvement and education. Tell any "noob" that they are an idiot for using bubble sort and they should have more than enough resources and know-how to figure out why they are wrong and correct it themselves. (Either they independently invented it themselves, in which case they are at least moderately clever and you just told them the name of what they created (what they should google), or they googled it in the first place so they should be able to google it again).

Is it best, in a controlled environment with both low signal and noise, to take your time and explain things in detail in a "civil" manner? Sure. That works great in (small) classrooms for example. In a public kernel dev mailing lists though? No, a fuck off should suffice. If the recipient of the fuck off wants more, they can seek it in a more appropriate place.

IRC is somewhere in the middle; usually civility or ignoring the person works best. This is particularly true since most IRC channels are fairly explicitly there for people who want to give or receive advice. I've only told someone who was seeking help from me on IRC to fuck off once, and that is when he demanded I talk with him on skype instead of IRC, and pressed the issue.

Edit: I suppose I shouldn't expect a civil response if I explain in a civil manner why I don't think civility is always necessary. Hoisted by my own petard perhaps?

If that's true I think it is pretty specific to you, and honestly I doubt that you would actually prefer it in practice. It's easy to say you can take the abuse when it's clearly framed as an alternative to a polite comment, not so easy when you get piled on by a bunch of obnoxious commenters. Emotional maturity makes it easier to deal with, but it still sucks.

Also you can still give a franker response without being blatantly derisive: "Thanks for your contributions, but I'm afraid they do not meet the quality standards of our project. I think you might need to learn a little more about X, Y and Z, before you do any more work."

Hmm, the first one would basically stop me contributing at all. You go in feeling all good and like you're going to lend a hand, presumably to people you respect if you want to work with them in the first place, and then they turn around and basically tell you they think you're a retard. It'd hurt pretty bad.

I'd be interested, would you find something like this to be as patronising:

"Thanks for your submission. Could you improve X, Y, Z and resubmit?"

Definitely less patronizing, yes. I like it very much, but that works better in a situation where you can see that they already understand X/Y/Z reasonably well. I guess I was trying to present the worst possible situation, where it seems like they are stumbling around with concepts that seem to be over their heads, and then I think the risk of being patronizing is worth the value of being as honest as possible.

A good response here would probably look more like, "While we appreciate you making the effort to contribute to the project, the patches you've been submitting don't meet our quality standards because [reason - poorly structured? no tests? full of bugs?]. I recommend you [take an online learning course, write tests, read our coding guidelines] before you submit any more patches."

Maybe, if they're right. If they're wrong, the second one is a lot better than the first.

Deleted comment

That's not a particularly good analogy, because both roles require significant commitment to practice and study. Trying to achieve both would take would likely render you worse than most at either. Being a good programmer takes training and effort; being respectful and understanding does not take any superhuman effort. It just requires understanding that demeaning people is not acceptable behavior.

vs.

SHUT UP. Your analogy is awful and I never want to hear that kind of drivel from another HN poster EVER again. Go rtfm on English lol

You can cut out a lot of bullshit without being an asshole; it's just another set of social skills.

Being an asshole also doesn't inherently cut out bullshit.

However it should also be pointed out that being polite doesn't inherently mean being worthy. The top comment in this thread is polite, is complaining about the hacker culture not being polite... and is making flat-out lies to promote the case.

Yeah, you're right. Being polite doesn't make you more honest or sincere than being an asshole.

I'd say that they're just not as correlated they seem to be at times.

I'm always suspect of any solution that goes to any extreme.

I also think there are enough micro-cultures in the programming space, themselves crossing a myriad of geocultural contexts, to defy broad generalizations.

I think it's most constructive and useful to approach it as a way of generally dealing with people and not a specific group. We haven't developed in such a way to easily and rationally react to abrasive responses in conversation. I don't think it creates a social atmosphere that optimally takes advantage of our modern context.

Where do you think bullshit comes from anyway? Bull assholes. n.n

I think people are talking about multiple phenomena here. Yeah, there's the whole blunt/direct/borderline asshole behavior when someone is making a mistake and someone else is trying to correct that mistake in the most efficient way possible, hopefully educating the person making the mistake and maybe being a jerk about it to highlight for everyone what a huge mistake it is so everyone else remembers not to do that thing.

That's what the Linus defenders are usually standing up for, at least. Maybe in his case it's an effective way to run his project, I don't know. He's the boss and it's up to his contributors whether or not they want to deal with that kind of thing.

I don't think that's the phenomenon that's being discussed here though. You say it's refreshing to be told when your ideas suck by someone who knows better, but in my experience that's not the case in most programming communities. Most of the time, the people who are going to tell you that you that your ideas suck are not actually that much more experienced and may not even have better ideas.

When I first got on Usenet in the early '90s, I was just starting to learn programming. I thought the people on comp.lang.c and elsewhere were just the smartest people in the world (some of them were, of course). I loved it when they skewered people asking dumb questions or proposing dumb ideas, and I felt like I learned a lot from reading their posts. In hindsight, they only seemed to be so smart because I knew so little. Looking back on it now, many of them just seem like bitter and pedantic people that knew a lot of technical minutiae but didn't necessarily know or care about creating software that actually did things, that other people could use. They were smart and knew a lot of useful things, but just as often they would make very personal and subjective observations about things, but mask those observations as bold, objective proclamations about This Is How Software Should Be Written. Unfortunately, in my larval hacker stage I couldn't tell the difference.

Anyway, what I was getting at was that it's good to learn things from people who know more than you do, but just because they're assholes about it doesn't mean they're right (it frequently means the opposite). Programming communities tend to be dominated by the assholes though, because they're the most motivated post comments and get into arguments with people about technical minutiae. It's the way it is, but it's not necessarily a good thing.

I qualify as a Linus defender, but I disagree with your "he's the boss and it's up to his contributors to leave" idea. The whole point of these discussions is to use reason to encourage problematic people to change themselves, rather than cutting those people off entirely, as you suggest.

In my journey as a programmer I discovered that sometimes people who told me my ideas sucked turned out to be wrong, and many of the folks who leaned on superior background were stagnant and became institutionalized in a way that is similar to a professor who relies on tenure for credibility. There are a lot of false idols to be worshipped in programming if you are looking for someone else to tell you what to do.

The elitism isn't shocking anymore, but it is sad and limiting. I want to hang out with / work with a programmer like this as much as I want to hang out with a religious zealot. Which is to say not at all.

This is the proverbial: if someone smart starts by telling you that they are unsure or that it depends, (in a field you are quite sure they know something), then you had probably better listen to what they say: at least it will not be rubbish.

On the other hand, dogmatism is frequently a way to relieve insecurity.

No, being impolite does not come with the profession, this is an easy excuse which sidesteps the problem.

The difference between: "You cannot use a pointer without previous initialization becuase it may lead to corrupt memory, or some other error".

and

"Nobody with a fking idea of C would dereference a pointer as you have done"

is politeness. And the first one helps, the second one just offends. Both are right, but one is more useful than the other.

Especially in public discussions.

Being polite requires, as any other virtue, habit. And usually, acquiring it requires effort. But we, all of we, expect it from all of us.

There's plenty of legitimate reasons to give brusque, dismissive answers.

It's tough to distinguish between someone dismissing an idea because he sees the inevitable problems that make it unworkable, and someone dismissing an idea that falls outside his comfort zone.

It's tough to distinguish between someone giving an abrupt answer because her time is too valuable to spend on a detailed one, and someone giving an abrupt answer because she doesn't have the understanding to formulate an actual rebuttal.

And of course it's impossible to tell any of the above from a nice guy having a shitty day.

There's a lot of gripe about our shitty community, and I often wonder whether the griping is just a byproduct of having so many conversations in permanently archived public fora, or whether there really is some force at work that makes impolite people choose programming or makes programmers impolite.

It's not actually that hard:

A) They politely provide reasons, citations or rational for their opinion and may ask you to address those concerns.

B) If their time is too valuable and mine isn't there had better be a significant actual differential in our importance in the world. I'd take it from my CEO, but I expect explanations from anyone under him. Otherwise the "brusque" answer is like someone who doesn't bother capitalizing and using proper punctuation: a mark of disrespect for my time.

C) The nice guy having a shitty day feels bad when you call him on acting like an asshole.

I often see the 'honesty' argument when people talk about the programmer community being mean. The way I see it, most of the time there is no more honesty than anywhere else. People jump on some hate bandwagon whether it is bullshit or not. Or sometimes, there is just some fad going on and everyone jump on the love train where critical thinking is met with a defensive/reactionary attitude.

But you can be honest about a bad/terrible idea without being and asshole about it. I thrive on the criticism I get from others and look forward to speaking with people who think my ideas are no good, as long as they can explain their reasoning. There's a world of difference between "Your idea sucks." and "Your idea sucks because,"

Or even better "I'm not sure about your idea because..." as that leaves the door open to it being a misunderstanding on my part, which is always a possibility.

This is always a good way to start a conversation because at least the other party feels safe and that he will be dealt with as a person with ideas, not a donkey.

But its not honesty as you're implying - its blind vitriol. Anything that turns off communication which is always a Bad Idea, especially when dealing with subjective topics.

Also I find it disturbing that you connect bug fixes to a world view, the two couldn't be more separate.

Did you read the thread the OP is responding to? The top comment is a personal insult that doesn't respond to the content posted and basically says "the feature you had a meeting with Google about is unimportant, so get over it" [1].

The comment itself is completely in contrary to the relentlessly critical attitude that believes every detail is important.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5738455

This might be credible if I noticed any correlation between this kind of bad behavior and actual talent, but I don't. It's the folks who cling to their sekrit knowledge who tend to be the dicks.

"(how many people you think really empathize with you - vs. just going through the motions?)"

I don't know that I prefer people going through the motions of hating on each other. It's not necessarily honest and genuine just because it's unpleasant.

>> If you talked to your spouse like that it would be called abuse.

And if you hit your spouse like boxers do in the ring then that would be abuse too. It's almost as if there are different rules for different situations.

(No, I'm not saying that kernel development is like boxing)

The difference is consent.

Now, of course, that sparks off a question about whether submitting your post or your startup to HN is de facto consenting to be verbally abused. But I think that's a pretty useful conversation to have.

Whenever you put your own work in the world, then expect criticism. It doesn't mean verbal abuse should be the norm - it just means that criticism is most likely gonna' happen. HN isn't the only online community - and it's most likely not your target market for a startup. So pushing a product that's not intended for HN users as a target demographic, and bleeding over every critique here is the wrong move. If anything, you'll understand your tech stack and scalability concerns by doing a Show HN here. It shouldn't be your go-to source for pushing your startup.

I like to think of HN as one big subset of focus group users. Get another subset of people with a similar psychographic/demographic trait and you're likely to face just as much criticism, just of a different bent than you would receive here.

Generally, I agree with everything you say here. If you're asking for feedback, then you will get feedback, and some of it will be critical.

I think you'd agree that feedback does not equal verbal abuse. So, to go back to the original question, do you feel that by asking for feedback you're consenting to be verbally abused, or do you feel that's not the case?

I think verbal abuse is a subjective x on the number line of criticism and said feedback. Some people can handle getting called shit, and some people think it's the end of the world. To answer your question, no I don't think when putting something out in the world you're consenting to verbal abuse. I think you're consenting to unmitigated feedback (if it's an online forum, perhaps), and sometimes that feedback will come in the form of verbal abuse - whether that's someone's right or not to give said feedback, I can't say.

I would say no. I'd say especially no if someone else submits it!

I can't load up the article again (squid error) but IIRC the guy was posted to HN by someone else,d then received a bunch of abuse on his site and via email etc. Perhaps better to keep the verbal abuse here rather than there?

When I first started using HN, only a little over a year ago really, it did seem different to now. A lot less criticism (yay, no mudslinging or fanboi fights!) and a lot more bootstrappy startup speak (though that can get just as annoying).

Oh well.

The Internet is not yours. If you put content on the PUBLIC Internet, consider yourself to be consenting to any abuse the Internet as a whole wishes to dish out in return.

So if I see you walking down a PUBLIC street and you are talking loudly, it's acceptable for me to smack you round the head with a baseball bat for being too loud? Or do we expect people in a civilised society to have some higher standards of behaviour?

Bad analogy - you are escalating the situation from talk to violence. It's nothing like talking on the web about how others talk on the web. Your analogy would better suit "I didn't like what he said, so I DDoS'd the server" - escalating whats going on.

Really?

So if a person decides to post a picture of themselves on their blog, they're consenting to having that picture photomanipulated onto hardcore pornography then emailed to their family and co-workers, for example?

Exactly.

Otherwise, include a license with your work, state that it is copyrighted, and still expect people to say whatever they want about you or it... Or, put it on your own private network, known as Not-The-Internet.

The 1886 Berne Convention first established recognition of copyrights among sovereign nations, rather than merely bilaterally. Under the Berne Convention, copyrights for creative works do not have to be asserted or declared, as they are automatically in force at creation: an author need not "register" or "apply for" a copyright in countries adhering to the Berne Convention.[10] As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work, and to any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

Honest question -- is it conceivable that the work is never "fixed" on some physical medium? Years ago, I thought "internet law" was a silly concept -- but as in the case above, the letter of the law might not be enough to support the spirit of the law.

Hard drives are a physical medium.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fixed_in_a_tangible_medium_of...

But is memcached on RAM?

I'm not super familiar with memcached, but either memcached on RAM "is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration", or memcached is talking to a persistent database (i.e., HDD) in the background. Because I can read posts on that blog that are over a year old.

The recent Blizzard case found that making a copy of something into RAM created a fixed copy of it, I believe.

Remember, intellectual property rights are all thought-crime laws. They don't have to make sense.

So, either have a laugh about it, or you don't put personally-identifying info up on the 'net.

Shocking, I know, that maybe oversharing is a bad idea without some permissions mechanisms in place.

>> "On the other hand, I do think the meanness of programming communities is a the biggest problem we have. Programmer-types are just not as supportive/empathetic as nearly everyone else I know. And I'm not talking about criticism, I'm talking about needless mean, shitty behavior that gets repeated and defended all too often."

I agree with this. I've noticed it in myself. The more involved I've got in the tech community the more argumentative I've been with non-tech friends. Spending time debating with other programmers on HN and in comment threads and mailing lists has lead to me trying to debate even small points my friends make. It's something I'm trying to tone down but it's definitely been a big change in my personality over the last few years.

"I do think the meanness of programming communities is a the biggest problem we have."

It depends. I generally try to be reasonably civil online, but I also think there are valid reasons to be less so. A good example is when people are giving advice to newcomers that has a good chance of putting them in imminent danger. E.g. someone goes to an online mushroom identification forum and posts a picture of some random mushroom they found and asks if it's edible, and someone else replies with something along the lines of, "Don't worry, anything you find in your back yard is edible," especially when the mushroom in question is a destroying angel or something. You see similar things happening all the time, with medical advice or otherwise.

Another less extreme example is when people know they're wrong, but they keep repeating whatever they're wrong about because they're being intellectually dishonest to promote whatever agenda they have. A good example of this is my comment the other day on the 'class of 2013: you've been scammed' story, where I tell the guy and his editors he's wrong but he still doesn't correct the article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5728788

In these cases a lot of times I find that I correct someone once, but then they actually try to use my civility against me in one way or another, so sooner or later you kind of have to drop the hammer.

If someone is wrong about something because they're just unaware of some fact then by all means be civil. But sometimes there can be underlying issues that are fairly toxic and in order to preserve the community you need to find some sort of way to quash them, whether that's through a technological solution or through some form of social condemnation. In the real world when someone commits a crime like rape we generally don't just gently tell them it was wrong, because we accept that civility is a tool that allows reasonable people to have productive conversations, but at some point people forfeit their right to civility if they're being blatantly unreasonable. The same should apply online.

I think in the situations you describe it's much more effective to have some kind of authority in place to discipline people for this kind of behaviour rather than relying on abuse. Especially since it's usually done by trolls for whom the emotional response is the objective. I think a brief "This is in breach of rule X, you have been banned for Y days" combined with locking/deleting the relevant comment, is far more effective at discouraging negative behaviour than angry tirades.

If I understand what you're asking re [1], I believe he's stating that the HN commentators are making comments about him and his past work unaware of his latest work (shipped 2 products recently and working with javascript).

That's correct.

EDIT: In the spirit of being less negative, I'm deleting my original comment. I still contend that Mauro was in the wrong, and refused to acknowledge or fix his mistake, but will agree that Linus probably could have handled it better.

>You can probably stop reading now, because you obviously didn't read the whole Linus/Mauro thread from the beginning, and don't really want to understand.

Amazing.

I will confess, that was a bit over the top, and the main reason I deleted the original comment; but much like many people who criticized Linus's comment, it was also out of context. Negativity comes in many forms, selective quoting is just one.

Are you saying that the "You can probably stop reading" quote was out of context? If I remember correctly, it was the first sentence. What context are you referring to?

Don't look now, you're human.

How about pointing out the problem calmly and rationally, like you just did?

The written equivalent of spittle-flecked screaming is neither professional nor constructive. Unless, of course, the goal is to hound someone out of the community and make others less likely to participate, in which case that was an excellent comment.

> At that point what can you do?

Take action (remove commit rights), message Mauro in private, call him and let him know you are disappointed and why, ... but having an ASCII-based temper just makes Linux and/or programming look silly. Kernel dev is rough but there is plenty of time to let things cool down and let rational criticism sink in.

These are all ridiculous routes to follow.

I remember reading once an author who refused to e-mail or respond to e-mails, because he was concerned that every piece of text committed to a private commentary between him and another person would never have been published in a book, and will potentially even become a privileged (private) conversation, that nobody else can benefit from, ever.

There is an obvious difference in tone between the 'polite disappointment private note of passive-aggressivity' and the 'verbal ass-chewing' that you issue when someone 'breaks one of the rules'.

What happens when this person gets chewed out on a forum on the internet?

People talk about it. Word spreads. Now I know that linux kernel devs are not meant to introduce breaking changes into userland, because of the power of his words.

Would I have heard if he had chosen other routes? Isn't it possible that he can keep a (potentially) helpful developer on the staff (we try to keep them, especially when they are unpaid, since they are harder to come by) without permanently or temporarily revoking his commit access? I don't know if he still works on kernel, but don't you think he would have been more alienated by forcible removal from the working group, for any period of time?

If my boss tells me to take a vacation, I would get worried.

Now I know that linux kernel devs are not meant to introduce breaking changes into userland, because of the power of his words

And I also know that Linus isn't a person with whom I'll never interact on purpose.

Sure, if you want, but I can guarantee that without the flame thread, we would not be hearing about this bad patch at all. As a newbie, I'd be seeking out the Rules/FAQ thread, where I'd hopefully have the patience to read all the way down and find that breaking changes are never good.

Some things are important enough to flame over. I grew up on IRC, so I have a thick skin to that, and I've been flamed on my fair share of mailing lists too. Know what I learned there? I'm often wrong.

To an outsider, a thread where nobody gets flamed is usually pretty inconsequential. Coarse or colorful language makes it stand out more.

You're actually defending an immature and abusive temper tantrum as a legitimate means of getting attention.

We can do better than this.

I'm not talking about getting (personal) attention. I'm talking about making the rules known to everyone, even those who haven't broken them yet. This is something you cannot do with a private phone call, and when you insist and they don't get it, you only have so many options available to make your point.

I honestly haven't read the thread, I'm not defending his particular flame, I'm defending the idea of flames in general. I would assume from all the commentary I've seen though that (the target... Mario?) was defending his breaking change, "it's actually the userland software that's broken" and Linus wanted everyone to know that he was wrong, and there's no defense for breaking changes that affect userland stuff that "used to work."

Have you ever joined Exherbo community? I think it's more like what you want.

It's anything but User Hostile, but there's a mountain of documentation to read when you arrive, you're expected to have read every word _before_ you come to start asking questions, and when I say 'anything but user hostile', I'm not sure I am using the term correctly. It's not user friendly for noobs. It's almost hostile. They don't really curse at you like Linus, but you have to read, and you have to read lots.

I haven't used it in a while, but every time I've gone back after some months, I've found breaking changes or a brand new puzzle to get to first boot, that I couldn't work through without somebody's help. My rating, -1 would not ask for help again, better to live with a broken system that doesn't work until you can know what's wrong for yourself.

Anyway enough about Exherbo. Back to Linux, I was compiling kernels when I was 16 years old, I never joined the mailing list, and it was a good experience. Good old, reliable, make menuconfig. I attribute this to Linus, and Alan Cox, whose kernel patches I often tracked.

I haven't done that in a while, and I stopped keeping up. It didn't take long googling Alan Cox's name to find the words "castigate" and "quits linux development" in the same article. That makes me sad. So I'll concede that maybe you're right.

> At that point what can you do?

Verbally abuse him, obviously.

Revoke his maintainer status and fix the problem? Then give him a second chance sometime later. I'm sure that verbal abuse, especially in public, isn't the only solution.

Have you ever watched the "Big Bang Theory" TV show? There's a reason a character like Sheldon is portrayed in the show: Elements of that character are found in a number of disciplines, including programming. What I am saying is, there are people who are utterly rude and inconsiderate and don't actually know it. They somehow failed to develop human qualities about them. They exist and are very real. I worked with a guy who would wear a badge reading "Asshole <his name>" for years. People left him alone. He was very nice, but playing that role got him peace and quiet.

I would venture to guess that most online assholes are socially dysfunctional people.

I don't think this is a "programme-type" thing. Generally, people are often mean, especially if they can get away with it or they can forget that the other person is also a human being (both of them are very easy to do on the Internet). Women too. It's human behaviour.

You know I would agree if the situation was unwarranted and about something trivial. Like say if your hamburger doesn't have cheese it's unacceptable to slap the cook and cry out I SAID CHEESE MOTHERF...ER! But when you are in a profession and you get dressed down for acting like you have no sense, well it's time to pull those marshmallow pants up because there are real life consequences, such as time and money being wasted. And that is abusive to everyone.

Yawn. Most of the "OMG, Linus swore!" wowserism is presented completely free of context, implying that this is how he generally goes about life. And contrary to what you're saying, the top comment in your link is not defending linus - hardly 'every single top comment'. The same is true of most odd-number-branch comment that I cared to look at.

Misrepresenting your sources to make your point is FAR worse than 'shut the fuck up' in my opinion.

Alan Cox, once considered second-in-command after Linus; left Linux development after receiving criticism from Torvalds.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cox

Not to mention, it was for a very similar reason that Linus exploded on Alan -- kernel changes breaking user space applications.

Honestly though, looking at the discussion, I have to admit that some of these userland apps did do wildly ridiculous stuff that sorta almost relied on certain kernel "flaws" -- so IMO they deserve to be broken (perhaps?)

"I see people being horrible to confused newcomers, instead of steering them in the right direction."

Side thought - this happens in many communities as an indoctrination ritual (people laughing making fun of the newbie). So I'm wonder what the basis of it is (rooted in survival or human nature?) because there must be one.

It's common to make inclusion into the tribe a difficult or expensive thing to do, so that you can more easily differentiate outsiders who may be a drain on your tribe's finite resources.

If you're curious about questions like this, Pinker's "How the Mind Works" is a very reasonable and readable take on evolutionary psychology.

"friction" in other words a barrier to entry to get filter those seeking the low hanging fruit.

Thanks for the book suggestion I've been looking for something along those lines..

Also see: fraternity hazing, boot camp, making the newest person at work your bitch and having him/her get the coffee and shine your shoes.

I went to college in the early 90's... just thought I'd share the sense that programmers have gotten more polite over time.

That could either be that the community is creating norms that make all programmers more polite, or, just that programmers as a group tend to get more polite as they get older.

"On the other hand, I do think the meanness of programming communities"

Disagree. Fluffy unicorn social hour, when discussed by a programming community, resulted in flamewar behavior.

Let me pick the most recent three "real programming" type articles. Phantom.py the headless webkit engine, Arduino Yun, and Nimrod the static typed language release. Behavior in the articles, by programmer types while discussing programmer type things, was fairly civilized.

Well, OK. The Arduino Yun is yet another product that is not terribly well differentiated from a zillion other products in an extremely crowded market. And there was a smoldering birthday candle sized flame in the nimrod comments about unicode, but not that bad. Phantom.py had some minor war story about a competitor being a nightmare but Mostly on topic and interesting discussions.

You are comparing apples and oranges. Linus works on the kernel, it's like a fight between coworkers. Winer talks about the usual internet trolling in general.

>On the other hand, I do think the meanness of programming communities is a the biggest problem we have.

This is very true. I don't know what it is about it, I'm pretty sure it's the lack of social skills that is prevalent with us nerd-types, but it could also be the anonimity of the internet.

But yeah, programming forums can get WAY too snarky for their own good.

That's nothing. Check these comments, anywhere else you would get summarily fired for emails like this.

http://www.muktware.com/5276/linus-torvalds-secure-boot-supp...

"Guys, this is not a dick-sucking contest. If you want to parse PE binaries, go right ahead.

If Red Hat wants to deep-throat Microsoft, that's your issue..."

What if that email was to a female kernel dev? What if a whizkid reads the kernel dev mailing list and goes asks their parents what deepthroating means?

> What if that email was to a female kernel dev?

So it is okay to swear at men but not at women? Why in this context?

Really, this is ridiculous. Why would something become acceptable/inacceptable simply because of the gender/religion/haircolour/height/taste in music of the recipient?

It's not OK for anyone (in my opinion). However, because it's a sexualized email sent from a man it would have a not insignificant chance of being interpreted as sexual harassment (i.e., meeting the legal definition for creating a hostile work environment) towards a woman.

So I can send such an email to a woman as I am gay? But if I sent it back to Linus, it’s sexual harassment?

As I said, ridiculous.

> So I can send such an email to a woman as I am gay?

No, probably not. I painted in broad strokes, but the situation is more murky. I don't know of any situations where legal action for this kind of behavior has come from men doing it to men.

> But if I sent it back to Linus, it’s sexual harassment?

Possibly. That may depend on the state? I'm not terribly familiar with same-sex sexual harassment issues, I'm afraid. Need to re-read up on it, I guess.

Sadly, it's not about what you intended. It's about how things are perceived on the receiving end. That's the only thing that matters.

If you work in California, you might want to check out the laws on workplace harassment. Here's a not-bad summary: http://www.ehow.com/list_6006205_california-workplace-harass...

If one employee repeatedly causes offense or discomfort to another, especially on the basis of protected categories like race, religion, or sexual preference, and the management is aware of the offense but doesn't do anything about it, the company is opening itself to a lawsuit.

If management became aware of the remarks above, and they were within a workplace context (the above ones were out of the workplace), management would have to do something. They are making crude sexual references and could reasonably be regarded as offensive.

It does not matter if you think it is ridiculous, although it would be smart to reflect that the reason we have these laws is because, historically, there has been real and pervasive harassment.

> Why would something become acceptable/inacceptable simply because of the gender/religion/haircolour/height/taste in music of the recipient?

There are some things that might (for instance, a reference that had a widely accepted meaning in general usage but also a specific use in the context of a particular group might be less appropriate to use to a member of that group where the context might be ambiguous enough to support both the group-specific and the more general use, while being perfectly fine otherwise), but I don't really see that being the case for the particular email in question.

> What if that email was to a female kernel dev?

Are you saying men can't suck dick?

You 're implying that women don't swear?

I think you missed the point.

Go ahead and repeat that quote to the nearest woman and see if they share your view.

I think you missed the point. Go ahead and repeat that quote to every male around you and see if they all approve.

The particular quote doesn't ring particularly sexist or homophobic. It's NSFW, but the linux kernel is not exactly kindergarten material.

I understand what you're saying but you are making the classic "protect the kiddies" argument and I'm not sure I can accept your position. I'd rather not live in such a world. Linus' mailing list is different from an email at work.

"anywhere else you would get summarily fired" Speak for yourself. I've never worked anywhere where someone got fired for speaking English.

"What if that email was to a female kernel dev?" What if it was man? A martian? A lickle putty tat? I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here saying here.

"What if a whizkid reads ... deepthroating means?" Whizkid? Doesn't know what deepthroating means? Were you home-schooled?

We have as much right to defend the behavior as you have to attack it. It's an arbitrary questions of norms and of tolerance to criticism. In modern society it seems that we're so isolated and insecure in ourselves that we can't handle criticism and meanness.

That everyone must be over socialized to be overly concerned about what everyone else thinks and not be concerned about the objectivity of what we're trying to achieve. In political questions this is overly dangerous.

A healthy level of tolerance of criticism is necessary for any sort of critical culture. Without it disasters like the nuclear disaster in Japan occur. Where everyone is trying to be so polite and get along that obvious problems go unsolved because criticism is not brought to bear on the right people at the right time.

Yes there are limits to what is acceptable and not overdoing it. But then there is also a need for tolerance of criticism to an extent and perhaps if there is enough confidence a rebuttal to criticism.

The sooner people understand that anti-social behaviour is about community and not about rights the better, but I still see people confusing the two. Yes you've got a right to be rude, you've also got a right to blather on for two hours about Dragonball Z. Both behaviours will leave adults concluding that you're not capable of mature discussion. And if you and your mates establish a norm of anti-social behaviour, you will neatly exclude large portions of the population including most women, most children and most men over 30.

If, on the other hand, you want an intelligent conversation about tech and startups with the largest number of intelligent people, I suggest that we should all talk a bit more like Paul Graham and a bit less like a 14-year old playing Call of Duty (or, for that matter, Linus Torvalds)

Young men are the only group to whom you can arbitrarily assign a negative stereotype without encountering any backlash it seems. In my opinion similarly aged female social groups are often just as excluding of people - though not, perhaps, in the same way.

I have no problem with the idea that in this community, Paul Graham is the best role model for communication. But let's not pretend that the place is flawed purely because of it's demographic.

You make a very good point. There are other groups e.g. bankers, but they tend to be privileged groups. This point was made to me quite memorably this Christmas. A local group was collecting presents for orphans. I brouyght in two boxes for kids the same age as my daughter. In the whole community, 14-16 year old boys got one box. Next year, I plan to get something for them (if only I can figure out what a 14-16 year old would like that doesn't require power and will fit in a shoebox).

The 14-year old CoD player is, however, not just a stereotype, but pretty much the archetype of what happens in online communities that don't self-police behaviour. The standard of discourse engages in a race to the bottom, where shouting beats listening.

This isn't necessary, even in Shooters: I used to play Unreal in an online community back in the day, and the chat was friendly ("played", or "well played" was one of the standard things you said when you got shot). Even the taunts were actually funny (often Monkey Island references). However, that's a long time ago: I don't find online shooters a fun place to hang out anymore.

I agree completely. (I accidentally downvoted you, sorry.)

> The sooner people understand that anti-social behaviour is about community and not about rights the better

"Anti-social" behavior according to whom and to what extent and for what purpose? For the purpose of feminizing men so that they are more passive and they fit better into your ideals of who people should be? So to fit men who want to be themselves into your little cult of civility?

> I still see people confusing the two.

There is no confusion. People want to be themselves and want a culture to cater to that. Instead you want a culture that caters to your needs. Which is fine, but that is no global definition of what that is and how to implement it. The idea that everyone and every community should conform to these feminizing norms is highly flawed. And is totally arbitrary.

> Both behaviours will leave adults concluding

Massive generalization. Adults, eh? Fuck you for calling any ideals that don't conform to your to be childish.

> mates establish a norm of anti-social behaviour, you will neatly exclude large portions of the population including most women, most children and most men over 30.

The point is to appeal to your group, not to appeal to all of society. That's what religions attempt to do, and fail all the time doing. There are no ideals that fit every community or even all of society. To attempt to create such ideals is essentially social engineering. It's the purview of totalitarians.

> intelligent conversation about tech and startups

Fuck you for calling people who don't conform to your norms unintelligent.

You're right. Everything is relative and you can do whatever you want, exactly as the poster whom you've responded to but completely ignored pointed out. The point is that he's calling on people to either match his values, or else risk losing his favor and those of the communities he mentioned. You may not care much, but the evidence of the downvotes on your comment suggests that the HN community agrees with him and not you. So you may find that your message of exclusion ironically helps to effect your own exclusion from a community that you apparently care about, since you're posting here.

>feminizing men

The thing with edgy, weird opinions like that is that it's unlikely that you hold them because you're wiser than prevailing wisdom. Apparently, Real Men antagonise strangers over the internet.

You're new here, so you may think people are downvoting you for what you're saying. They're really downvoting you for how you say it. We try to put a premium on being civil.

You're right (and it's one of the reasons I enjoy reading HN) but it's kind of ironic in this context, isn't it?

We're all so good at not telling people to STFU and what-not, but we still have enumerable troubles with entire discussions not being derailed into hate-fests, albeit with some uncharacteristically (for an internet discussion) polite language.

Something to think about.

For what it's worth, your post made me realize how much of a polite hater I was being in my post above.

I am thinking about it. Not sure what to do about it, though.

You tried to defend yourself in this post, but I think you accidentally ended up making his point for him.

> For the purpose of feminizing men so that they are more passive and they fit better into your ideals of who people should be? So to fit men who want to be themselves into your little cult of civility?

Grow up.

> The point is to appeal to your group, not to appeal to all of society.

The point is your group is flawed, and that flaw legitimately keeps newcomers out and cause well-intentioned contributors to leave. There's absolutely no reason why the community should have the stance "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Competition is only going to make you better. Taking the time to help someone will also help you. Having the support of your peers for being courteous does far more for you in the long-run than intimidating them into submission does. But I guess that's "feminizing men" vs. holding them accountable as not only adults but as advocates and respectable members of the community.

Expletives were uncalled for, judging by your comment history you can do much better than that.

Thank you for writing your point in a manner the reinforces your point. I have given your point a point.

I think you're conflating criticism and being mean. It's quite possible to offer kind, empathetic criticism, which I would argue is more effective. When the person receiving criticism doesn't see it as an attack, he/she is far more likely to listen to it.

It is the difference between some drunk on the street yelling at you about your behavior or one of your friends sitting you down on a park bench and saying "we've been friends for a long while and I think you need to hear a couple of things..."

Are you sure his problem was really criticism? I think that his problem was rather that people were making value judgements about his character in a manner that what he felt was unfair.

There's a wide gap between giving objective, straightforward criticism and being insulting. The latter is not necessary to get one's point across. The latter is also what Linus did, and what many in the programming community encourage, under the guise of being the former. You don't need to be a bully to give pointed criticism. The fact that people don't seem to get this, and rabidly defend terrible behavior, is discouraging.

The fact that something is 'artificial' (i.e. a product of art, essentially) does not mean it is 'arbitrary' (i.e. just a product of freedom or authority -arbitrium-). Do not take social norms as 'arbitrary': they usually have deeper meanings than what we usually assume.

I am not saying you are obviously wrong. I complain about the 'arbitrary'.

In Western cultures, educated criticism is always enveloped in smoothness, and language is an important part of this envelope. This is not evolutionary, it is cultural and we do it because, in the long term, society has noticed that this is useful.

Academia is the classical example of this: one may hate his colleague in the same Department, and also his ideas, but one is not going to bully him linguistically in a paper. Because the time spent in explaining the insults is not worth it.

Unless one is a simple bully, obviously. But this is not the usual state of affairs.

> We have as much right to defend the behavior as you have to attack it. It's an arbitrary questions of norms and of tolerance to criticism. In modern society it seems that we're so isolated and insecure in ourselves that we can't handle criticism and meanness.

Criticism means something in particular though, namely being critical of something.

Being critical of an idea does not mean insulting the person who proposed the idea, rather it means replying to the idea with intelligent commentary and feedback. There is rarely cause to be uncivil in providing criticism, and indeed doing such frequently closes doors to communication.

> A healthy level of tolerance of criticism is necessary for any sort of critical culture. Without it disasters like the nuclear disaster in Japan occur. Where everyone is trying to be so polite and get along that obvious problems go unsolved because criticism is not brought to bear on the right people at the right time.

Indeed this is true, but I think the overall feel in this thread is that the technical community frequently confuses criticism with outright personal attacks. In the very least, legitimate criticism is frequently mixed with verbal abuse, which adds nothing to the discourse.

> Yes there are limits to what is acceptable and not overdoing it. But then there is also a need for tolerance of criticism to an extent and perhaps if there is enough confidence a rebuttal to criticism.

A good engineer is one who accepts criticism, for that is how one improves. But if I am doing a code review, I would not tolerate someone questioning my history of career decisions when judging if my software architecture is correct.

I would not tolerate it because it is not on task, nor does it have a point or purpose.

There are times when bringing up the topic of someone's credentials or personal history is relevant, but even then there is no need to be disrespectful about it.

Now there are of course sometimes when more forceful language is called for, such as when personal or public safety is at stake, or when the future of a company is on the line. I would say that under those conditions, one should still do their best to communicate in a civil fashion, and then slowly escalate language used as is appropriate.

While I think that Dave's complaint in this case is hypocritical and entirely without merit, I agree that there is a problem in general. I'm not sure it is really about "programmer-types" though so much as it is a few bad leaders combined with hero worship. Linus is an asshole, plain and simple. And people worship him, so they will justify, excuse, and emulate his behaviour.

There's plenty of examples of programming communities that are the exact opposite, haskell being an oft cited example. The haskell community is very patient, calm, and avoids fighting/drama. Is it because haskell has some magic power that soothes the savage "programmer-type"? Or is it because the community standards are set by emulating the behaviour of the leaders? Compare how SPJ behaves to how Linus behaves. I think the only negative things I've ever heard from SPJ have been mild criticisms of his own work. Even in his role as an advocate for not just a language, but for entire fields (functional programming, static typing) he is consistently calm, respectful and pleasant.

Why does anyone care whether one group of people (e.g., women) wants to participate? I love how the antithesis of "equality" and "fairness" is always creeping its way into every sector under the misnomer of the latter two.

    "Here, be fair to everyone by limiting what you say so that women can participate."

If you want to participate in a community, do so, otherwise don't. A community is an emergent whole comprised of the free will of its constituents, not some inorganic machine that should be influenced by special interest groups (e.g., <XYZ group>'s Rights Advocacy).

TL;DR - If you don't like our community, go the fuck away or make your own "community" wherein your dogma can be enforced.

Alt TL;DR - If you love something let it go...

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