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At this point people just keep trying to pick fights with Zed. He's not out there picking fights with others (well any more than anyone else).

And all of the posts pointing this out all disclaim that "while they don't agree with Zed about some things..."

It's just kind of sad from a rhetorical perspective.

It's clear that the guy who wrote this post doesn't agree with Zed's pedagogical style, but that doesn't make Zed's book wrong in detail or approach. It just means this guy doesn't agree with the style. And he's not upfront about it either due to a lack of introspection or forthrightness.

People who behave in a combative and dogmatic manner have not programmed in to themselves a check to ask "does this issue really matter?". There is no decision making code in their brain to work out if something REALLY matters. Many things, even small things, matter enough to go to war.

They also value the war/being right/the point more highly than they value maintenance of positive human relationship.

What they don't understand is that people forget the issue and remember the grace (or not) with which you handled it.

Often they are not very good at empathizing with others and find it hard to imagine what it is like to be someone else interacting with them.

I know cause I am one, hopefully reformed.

I agree that the tone of the blog post could have been less combative, but essentially all of this complaints are valid. Zed's does introduce things in the wrong order and in a very confusing fashion. The rant about C strings is also completely misguided and would lead a novice off course into using ugly thickets of macros and crappy frameworks rather than simply using C strings correctly. Any C function will misbehave if passed invalid input... and things like valgrind, which Zed is clearly well aware of, make C-style strings much less dangerous.

Zed also made many completely unjustified attacks on the K & R book, which is a well-written, easy to read book which introducse C concepts in a clear and readable way. Even if this was justified (and it's really, really not), that all belonged as a separate blog article rather than as part of an alleged "tutorial."

Finally Zed published a "rebuttal" to all of this in which he basically says that C sucks, is not worth learning, and he's learning Go. So the author quite reasonably asks, why would you want to learn C from someone who doesn't like the language or think it's worth learning?

I think we can all agree that Go (or some other high level language) probably is the better choice for most projects. But after all, there are still many places where C will continue to be used like the Linux kernel. Those people would be much better off reading K&R, as old as it is, than anything Zed has written. And his attacks on the K&R authors are just sad.

It sounds like more than a just a "style" disagreement.

In the discussion of C strings, the author is arguing that Zed's arguments are nonsensical, maybe even objectively wrong. I write a lot of C, and the author is right in this case about C strings and undefined operations. In C you must arrange your code so that you always supply valid input to functions, there is no way around it, and it is perfectly safe once you do so.

I'd rather see discussion of the actual arguments, rather than complaints about the article's tone. :)

Zed's book is concretely about introducing programmers (particularly new ones or ones going from higher level managed languages down into C) to where and how C can be dangerous especially around string management.

And that's why this is a style issue. Even if he disagrees with Zed's approach (and in particular how undefined behavior is discussed) it's just mendacious to claim that Zed isn't introducing his readers to the idea that one needs to be careful with strings and understand what kind of inputs one will receive.

This is a critically different behavior when compared to Ruby or Python where string management is done for you, and coming from the POV of someone who's familiar with those languages... Zed's approach makes sense. Especially when the alternative being suggested is "you absolutely must go read the C spec and K&RC".

This is the second time this post has been voted to the front page of HN. It's puzzling. Are C programmers supposed to find this compelling now, when they didn't the first time around?

I wonder if it's simply a case of:

1. Zed Shaw is controversial on HN

2. I know, I'll write a post that disses Zed Shaw

3. ???

4. Profit!

Sorry, I didn't find it the first time around. I think it's generating good discussion. I didn't post it to diss anyone.

The article seemed a little off to me, and I thought HN would enjoy picking it apart

>Zed Shaw, whilst his approach to certain issues may be questionable, is not "a writer rather than an engineer".

He didn't say Zed wasn't an engineer. He just said that he isn't a writer so the article will be written in an engineering voice.

People do the same things with presentations. "Sorry, I'm not a public speaker, so this might suck."

I think it's a pity that people can't see past him being "combative and dogmatic". I don't agree that it takes away from the core message of his work at all.

A lot of really smart people are cantankerous, and often they can afford to be.

The only time I've met Zed I found him to be a perfectly pleasant and non-cantankerous person.

My understanding of his approach to teaching is that it's based getting people to do things that bring results and then getting them to understand why after - which I think is a perfectly sensible one for beginners

It is very good. There's an educational philosophy around this that state that people who are new need to know "why should I care" first, then "how do I do it" next, followed by "ok, why does it work that way?" last.

When you're cooking, you follow a recipe. When you are learning to be a cook, you graduate to figuring out why you do it the way the recipe did.

And when you get really good, you start saying things like "Well, I wouldn't teach people to cook THAT way! That's wrong!"

:)

I don't believe your paraphrase of the line you quoted from the author is accurate.

His own words, strictly read, imply that:

  - Shaw is a writer;
  - The author is not a writer;
  - The author is an engineer.

It doesn't imply anything either way about Shaw being an engineer.

The full quote is "Let me start by saying that unlike Mr. Shaw, I am not a writer. I'm an engineer. Thus, this will be written from that perspective."

By implication, Zed's book is not written from the POV of an engineer (otherwise why would this be worth noting in any way shape or form? The topic under discussion is already software engineering).

That is not the implication that I took from it; as I read it, this is an apology of sorts that the critique is not informed by the perspective of a writer.

I read it as a snarky smackdown of Zed as "a writer and not a software engineer".