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There're a lot of jokes making _why and Zed out to be foils today, and in a lot of ways they're true.

Zed's very no-nonsense. He's spent a lot of time manufacturing an image of himself. He lets himself get carried away and angry and he's been searching for a community he likes, butting heads all the way.

_why, on the other hand, was truly bizarre. I never got into his blog, for instance, because it seemed frequently nonsensical and more than a little rambling. Despite that (or, more likely, because of it), he seemed almost always happy with whatever it was he did. I only ever really got into TryRuby and his Poignant Guide, but they were the only two guides to programming I've played with. There was a giddiness in his work that I haven't found in other coding. It's comparable to the moods of artists in other fields.

Zed's argument against _why is that what he did was impractical and unproductive. That's what made _why as a persona, though: Zed is a hacker, _why was more of an artist, pretenses and unreliability and all. It's left-brained versus right-brained; it's also why there's a definite rift between the people who like _why and the people who think the guy was raving mad and immature.

Zed Shaw(and many others) may not agree with what _why did but what _why did was well within his rights and hence there is no reason to disrespect him. What disappoints me is that Zed shaw(and some in the original thread) quickly declaring _why a dick. "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it - Voltaire". Where is that spirit ?

I agree entirely. While I'll miss _why, he had the right to do what he did and I'm a bit offended that people would presume to tell him otherwise.

Huh? KKK members have every right to express their racist attitudes, but I'll still call them dicks. "You have every right to do what you did" and "I think what you did was an asshole move" are not exclusive statements.

I understand your point, but you just compared some guy removing his freely-released code from the Internet to a gang of people who went around lynching black people.

No he didn't (mature, right?), he was just showing the obvious flaw in the argument by taking it to its extreme. He did not in any way compayre _why to the KKK.

His and your analysis of the argument is incorrect, and I'm surprised you'd endorse such a Godwin-violating^ argument.

^ Yes, I know the KKK are not technically Nazis.

Leaving personalities out of it, there is a big qualitative difference between ceasing to share something (in the worst case, undirected passive-aggressive behavior) and actively attacking other people (in the worst case, highly directed active-aggressive behavior).

Maybe I wasn't very clear in my original statement. I wasn't reaching into the past and saying that the KKK burning crosses on lawns and lynching black people is a right in any way, shape or form. That sort of activity is illegal whether or not it is 'hatred' related and for good reason. Nowadays the KKK is pretty much just another protest group. They show up to places having to do with race and protest (or try to agitate opposing protesters). My point basically being 'freedom of speech' (i.e. the KKK expressing their racist attitudes by speaking or writing/publishing) is their right.

In any case, with or without the statement involving the KKK, I believe that my final statement in that post stands.

The editing clock has expired on my post above. I appreciate your point which was why I abstracted things into general terms - I still feel the qualitative difference is there, not because of specific history or PC-ness.

It's like if I was mad for some reason (eg my zero karma above) and responded by flaming you vs. simply not answering.

No, they don't have a right to express racist attitudes and thats why if they did they would be dicks.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to abuse and offend.

I'll assume that you're not from the US and politely disagree with the Canadian/European attitude that you can institute social change by making certain types of speech illegal... (i.e. Holocaust denial is illegal -- well at least publishing material about it is -- in Canada because it was deemed to be speech that 'incites hatred') (i.e. Nazi memorabilia is illegal in Germany, as well as other European nations like France)

I'll leave you with this little nugget though. Freedom of speech isn't really true freedom of speech if what you really mean is 'freedom to say only the things that I want to hear.'

Freedom of speech in Europe is essentially dead as long as in the countries with royal houses you can't insult the royals and you can't state any falsehoods wrt to whatever happened in worldwar II.

I'm all for documenting and educating, not for outlawing stupidity, no matter how long your toes.

I think I'd rather have USA style free speech laws than the make-believe ones that we have here. You can keep the guns though.

> you can't insult the royals

?? living in the UK I have yet ot be lynched for calling the royal family pompous.. well.. ;)

Also I think there is some confusion here on the difference between the statments:

"It is my belief that...." and "It is a fact that...."

One is covered in free speech, one is (rightly) restricted by all sorts of law (for example defamation when applicable to statements about people). Think about it - if we had the inherent right to tell people our ideas were fact when this is not established

Your free to think what you want, and tell people that's what you think. But presenting beliefs as fact is a big no no. Right? :)

(holocaust denial being illegal is, I agree, somewhat of an extreme case and I dont agree with it so much)

dutch example:

http://www.trouw.nl/krantenarchief/2007/07/31/2306950/Boete_...

international situation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se_majest%C3%A9

In the UK such laws are also still in the books.

Thanks. Though I would point out (still gotta translate the dutch example to read it) that "insult" is probably a bit of a generalisation.

Yes it does, unless it is restricted (as it is in many places, online as well as offline).

Freedom of speech is not a right if it conflicts with the rights of others. That is what i believe in.

Anyway comparing _why's actions to hate speech is just ridiculous.

Ahh, so people suddenly have a right not to be offended now?

I find this view of yours very offensive. Shut up.

From what I heard, people said _why is a machine that constantly crank out code.

> "the people who think the guy was raving mad and immature."

haha. which one are you talking about?

I think that in Zed's case people would say "raging mad and immature."

Practicing yoga is the only requirement to be a yogi. Hacking is much the same way. We all share similar goals but our practices are always intensely personal. If you're practiced enough you know that what you consider important and what you consider progress continuously changes. Thus we don't judge someone else or their practice but appreciate the opportunity to practice with them. Without question both Zed Shaw and _why have hacked. I think it's important to appreciate many qualities of both without needing to apply labels to either.

Namaste

I don't remember to ever read _why's texts or interact with him in any other way - but what you write here, seem close in a way, even if the very opposite in other ways, to the story of Netochka Nezvanova (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?NetochkaNezvanova). By they way I've already posted that link as a story here.

Now wouldn't it be hilarious if Zed Shaw and _why were the same person? I know, they're not, but damn..

...especially if they were the same person in a Fight Club kind of way. Zed sleeps and _why comes out to play... or vice versa.

That would make for a fantastic nerd-Swede tribute film!

What the hell is a nerd-Swede tribute film? That's not funny.

"Swede" is a term from the movie Be Kind Rewind. It refers to homemade remakes of movies.

The first rule of Code Club, is you do not tweet about Code Club!

If you're wondering why Zed Shaw is always at the top of HN whenever he blogs about his least favorite kind of steak sauce, this is why. He writes some random, moronic, offensive comment on Twitter, and we can't shut up about it. There ought to be a word for this tactic he's using. I think I'll coin one. Zed Shaw is a message board goblin. He's goblining you.

The next stage in Troll evolution: from polluting other people's discussions to creating negative meme's.

They wrote it, despite everyone telling them it wouldn’t work.

Why are we programmers, as a group, so negative? When Ernest Lawrence was going on-and-on about the Cyclotron, other physicists got tired of him, but they told him to get off his ass and build it, not that he was an ignorant git and it wouldn't work. Why is it that every interesting idea in programming is met by someone saying it wouldn't work with the supporting logic inversely proportional to the nastiness of the tone?

I would deeply love to know the answer to that question. And why do I feel so angry about thing like that?

I suspect it's because programming is an intense meritocracy, but a meritocracy governed by the intense subjectiveness of how smart your peers think you are rather than some more objective criterion like published papers or citations.

Therefore, to some programmers, if someone else is likely to do something more brilliant than you, it's motivating to stop them. Especially so, since if you are successful in stopping them, your own perceived merit goes up as the smarter dog in the room.

This game is reinforced by the game of karma on many programmer discussion sites. I have to admit, I succomb, as I want my karma to cross 200 so I can downvote. It's a stupid goal, but my ego is prone to it.

P.S. Please note that science is also prone to this behaviour, and programming and science have the same solution to the problem: actually building a verifiable { experiment / correct theorem / more efficient algorithm }.

cf. Science in Action by Bruno Latour (1987), which I tried to summarize on http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SocialConstructionOfScie...

I suspect it's because programming is an intense meritocracy, but a meritocracy governed by the intense subjectiveness of how smart your peers think you are

But then, why are the objections so often brain-dead!?

There's more to Zed's response than that. Consider the following:

http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3414550229

"Actually, I didn't see a lot of sympathy from _why when I was going through similar tough times. In fact, the inverse."

And: http://twitter.com/zedshaw/status/3414567310

"Totally jealous, I wish I could leave the ghetto as completely. :-)"

What comes off as gruffness, I think, overlies a complex substratum of hurt and ambivalence.

Of course. Zed's a complex human being like all of us. He and _why have a history. I recall _why delivered a pretty twisted put-down to Zed once, the sort where you were more confused than hurt. And they both had a unique position in the RoR community.

Doesn't change the fact that Zed's cursing out _why and acting like a jerk. He's not just being a jerk, but he is being a jerk.

Good work (not necessarily "hard work" ;-)) pointing out Zed's hypocrisy.

I love how _why considered code art. I loved it when he wrote out his code by hand and animated the background of the text. It made the code seem magical, which it sometimes is.

Parsing through that led me to this: http://whoiswhytheluckystiff.wordpress.com/

Which is what Zed is referring to when he says "the second he's outed."

...which is odd, since it was hardly the "second he's outed". The post was made over a month ago. We have no guarantee the post and his disappearance are actually related.

Curiously, an old Wikipedia edit identifies the same place of employment, three years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Why_the_lucky_stif...