The Zed Shaw Phenomenon

Zed Shaw discourages learning and opensource, rly? You probably missed the Learn X The Hard Way series he puts up a shitload of work in so newcommers can actually learn efficiently to code. And what on earth that has to do with women?! You're seriously barking at the wrong tree.

//edit: btw for your amusement http://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedshaw... enjoy

Nothing more constructive than a nice dose of character assassination.

The author is basically doing exactly the same as Zed Shaw, only using more words and less four letter ones.

Edit: Correction, this is post is more insidious than simply calling someone a fucking moron on Twitter. Both are wrong, but only one of them can be excused as a very human impulsive reaction.

We need more strong personalities without the mouthy egos behind them, and without the over-self-promotion I find off-putting in the design-side of the industry. Is it possible to be a popular, opinionated programmer without being a dick? I hope so, as whether we want them to or not; people are often on the lookout for a role-model.

And hell, I got insulted by ZS just for saying I liked a keyboard player. I think his opinion on the matter is wrong, but I'm not popular enough on Twitter to win that argument. Not that I like partaking in arguments on Twitter anyway.

If you think about it, on Twitter the barrier between people is pixel-thin. It's pretty easy to get into an argument with someone with a single tweet in mere seconds. Within minutes you could easily find yourself being on the receiving end of the latest internet crusade.

While I'm sure it would be nice if everyone was forced to act nice, the reality is Twitter is so immediate and in-your-face that when you receive a tweet its almost as if someone has come up to you and said it in your face. And to some people that hits deep. Deep enough to start the drama unfolding.

Zed seems a lot nicer in the videos of his presentations I've seen. Also, he once posted that his online persona is a parody of abrasive tech guru. I was skeptical then. I'm skeptical now. I have yet to quite make up my mind on this. In any case, Zed, by his own admission, writes like he does in order to gain attention. Whether or not you think it's obnoxious and whether you think it's a net loss or gain in this case is up to you.

I suspect Linus only does what he does because he wants to gain a small set of people's attention.

In any case, this strategy works. I think we need to ask ourselves why. I think a part of the answer could be that our the programming field is immature -- both emotionally and in terms of how our culture supports the maintenance of our body of knowledge.

Snide half-truths that tech people say about technology keep propagating, even when they are as useless as the typical ethnic stereotype. It's like we lived in a world where half of all doctors believed in ethnic stereotypes and wrote about them as if they were true in technical literature and openly made professional decisions based on them.

I'll close with a quote: "I'm an old-fashioned guy, & I believe in history. The disinterest & disdain for history is what makes computing not-quite-a-field." --Alan Kay

I don't know him. I only occasionally come across something he's written. But I'll be damned if I wasn't angry to see a post about him on Hacker News.

Overall I think Zed is overreacting. It's so easy to do. I would guess he may just be one that may not be able to discern tone through text very well (most people can't, I think). That said, I have a lot of respect for Zed and his contributions, such as Learn Python The Hard Way.

I somehow doubt that whatever Zed puts on twitter is going to have any bearing whatsoever on your future employment/ hobbies/ life.