8 ms·

This article was written hastily, and I don’t want to further improve it. You’re lucky I wrote it. I feel so privileged to read this random guy's blog, and it'

by wyclif 10y ago

This article was written hastily, and I don’t want to further improve it. You’re lucky I wrote it. I feel so privileged to read this random guy's blog, and it's terrific that he eschews inflating his ego so well.

smudgymcscmudge 10y ago
I want to add this as a comment in all my source files.
- maxaf 10y ago
  I'm notorious for leaving behind gems such as this. For example: https://twitter.com/noahlz/status/767851284930199557 https://twitter.com/noahlz/status/767851284930199557
  - ChristianBundy 10y ago
    > notorious
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
kwoff 10y ago
yep, that's where I closed the tab
malcolmgreaves 10y ago
There's such a problem with immaturity in tech. It's frustrating because it creates barriers to learning from others. No self-respecting person is going to want to learn from someone who has a "holier than thou" or "I'm a rockstar" mindset.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  > There's such a problem with immaturity in tech. It's frustrating because it creates barriers to learning from others. No self-respecting person is going to want to learn from someone who has a "holier than thou" or "I'm a rockstar" mindset. You wouldn't consider it to be immature to not do the right thing just because it was communicated in an unpleasant way that a 'self-respecting person' should have disdain for? I'm not talking about this particular article or defending immaturity, - I just don't see how your position is any better; more so it's just as unhumble as the 'rockstar position' since you would apparently be willing to write worse code just to avoid learning from someone that's an asshole.
- mixedCase 10y ago
  Contrary to your beliefs, one can have both self-respect and a sense of humor.
  - lojack 10y ago
    It's hard to believe this came from a place of humor after reading the otherwise dry article.
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      It's your prerogative to follow trends to determine what you find worthy of your time or not, but it's not a good thing to suggest that anyone that tolerates that type of language better than you do or even enjoys it, lacks self respect. A lot of people find that cockiness funny and find the informality welcoming. And many of those tend to find cold formality, fake humility or lack of self-confidence as signs of something being boring, uninteresting or outright creepy. EDIT: Comment was edited, original: It's hard to believe this came from a place of humor after reading the otherwise dry article. The article was otherwise fairly interesting, but that certainly left a sour taste in my mouth. He's lucky I read past the first paragraph, if it wasn't so prominent on HN I probably wouldn't have bothered listening to anything he had to say.
      - pharrington 10y ago
        I guarantee you would not find it funny if I called you a cunt. Remember none of the rest of the article even remotely matches the tone of the sentences in question, and the content larges comes from a place of ignorance.
        rwallace 10y ago
        Actually there have been a couple of times when people called me a cunt and it was funny in context. Now granted, whether this article is that kind of context, is a different question.
      - lojack 10y ago
hexane360 10y ago
Isn't this ironically referencing a lot of Unix development?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
whack 10y ago
As an hobbyist blogger, I can perfectly empathise with why the author wrote that. People love to crap all over a blogger who dares to post his thoughts on a private blog, without first subjecting it to PhD-thesis-level scrutiny. This really gets on my nerves for the same reasons that engineers get pissed off when they decide to open source a pet project and suddenly start getting "URGENT ASAP" feature requests from entitled users. The author is taking the time to post his thoughts on a private blog. If you're not happy with the level of rigor, then don't read it, don't share it, and don't believe it. But no, the author has no responsibility to provide you with a comprehensive list of citations and references.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
  > "If you're not happy with the level of rigor, then don't read it, don't share it, and don't believe it." What I don't like about that attitude is that it suggests that the blogpost should be excused from criticism of its rigor. But any assertion and opinion by anyone can and should be considered open to criticism. > "But no, the author has no responsibility to provide you with a comprehensive list of citations and references." Of course he is not responsible. But if someone expects or wants people to be convinced of their argument, then prefacing with his rude dismissal does not help. A better way than "This article was written hastily, and I don’t want to further improve it. You’re lucky I wrote it." without the unnecessary rudeness and ego boosting could be more along your lines: "This article was written hastily and shouldn't be subject to PhD-thesis-level scrutiny, so I've posted without any expectation that I will improve it or respond to criticism."
  - whack 10y ago
    > A better way than "This article was written hastily, and I don’t want to further improve it. You’re lucky I wrote it." without the unnecessary rudeness and ego boosting could be more along your lines: "This article was written hastily and shouldn't be subject to PhD-thesis-level scrutiny, so I've posted without any expectation that I will improve it or respond to criticism." Sounds to me like you agree with the substance of what the author said, and just happen to disagree with the delivery. Keep in mind that different people have different writing styles, and people often post things like what you quoted in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Some people prefer a formal, humble style of writing. Others like a more humorous style, and others yet enjoy a Steven Colbert faux-braggadocious style. It would be unfortunate if we browbeat anyone who dares to inject some quirky humor into their writing.
squeaky-clean 10y ago
it's a joke. Last sentence of the article is > The provocative tone has been used just to attract your attention.
- dawidw 10y ago
  That's a pity because of that tone I abandoned reading after few sentences and did't go to last sentence.
  - diminoten 10y ago
    ...and the world continued to spin. There's irony in people being insulted by arrogant tone and loudly proclaiming they stopped reading something.
    - dpark 10y ago
      I don't think there's anything ironic about dismissing the views of self-important assholes. It may be that the author is not actually a self-important asshole, but starting an article like that makes it look like he likely is.
  - wott 10y ago
    For good or bad reasons, you made the right choice: the article was full of crap (bad understandings, lack of historical knowledge and just technical knowledge even about current tools versions, bad references, bias, repeating blindly wrong or outdated rants, etc.). You could also have guessed it when you noticed it was a kid student showing up (and off) with a lengthy critic on the historical evolution of UNIX tools and others OSes and tools that he discovered a couple of years ago, while you possibly were using them and watching them evolve while he was still in his father's bollocks (and some of us (not me) were working on UNIXes while his father was a kid). You know what to expect in this case, especially if you remember having produced the same kind of over-confident and yet uninformed rant in your days :-) (I do :-D )
- pharrington 10y ago
  Yes, anything funny (even absurdist humor) is predicated on a kernel of truth. Quite odd, then, that the article contains so little well informed opinion and even less humor.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
steve-howard 10y ago
What bugged me more was the snippets designed to show how hard it is to write shell scripts. It looked like the author just didn't know enough about their tools: >How to touch all files in foo (and its subfolders)? find foo -print0 | xargs -0 touch find foo -exec touch {} \; I agree with the other commenters who think it's fine to write whatever you like on your own blog, I just feel that it went from interesting historical warts to bagging on legacy systems because they're complicated.
- kccqzy 10y ago
  If we take UNIX to mean the POSIX standard, it doesn't work because -print0 is not in POSIX, and neither is -0 for xargs.

by wyclif 10y ago

smudgymcscmudge 10y ago

I want to add this as a comment in all my source files.

maxaf 10y ago
I'm notorious for leaving behind gems such as this. For example: https://twitter.com/noahlz/status/767851284930199557 https://twitter.com/noahlz/status/767851284930199557
- ChristianBundy 10y ago
  > notorious

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

kwoff 10y ago

yep, that's where I closed the tab

malcolmgreaves 10y ago

There's such a problem with immaturity in tech. It's frustrating because it creates barriers to learning from others. No self-respecting person is going to want to learn from someone who has a "holier than thou" or "I'm a rockstar" mindset.

forgotpwtomain 10y ago
> There's such a problem with immaturity in tech. It's frustrating because it creates barriers to learning from others. No self-respecting person is going to want to learn from someone who has a "holier than thou" or "I'm a rockstar" mindset. You wouldn't consider it to be immature to not do the right thing just because it was communicated in an unpleasant way that a 'self-respecting person' should have disdain for? I'm not talking about this particular article or defending immaturity, - I just don't see how your position is any better; more so it's just as unhumble as the 'rockstar position' since you would apparently be willing to write worse code just to avoid learning from someone that's an asshole.
mixedCase 10y ago
Contrary to your beliefs, one can have both self-respect and a sense of humor.
- lojack 10y ago
  It's hard to believe this came from a place of humor after reading the otherwise dry article.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    It's your prerogative to follow trends to determine what you find worthy of your time or not, but it's not a good thing to suggest that anyone that tolerates that type of language better than you do or even enjoys it, lacks self respect. A lot of people find that cockiness funny and find the informality welcoming. And many of those tend to find cold formality, fake humility or lack of self-confidence as signs of something being boring, uninteresting or outright creepy. EDIT: Comment was edited, original: It's hard to believe this came from a place of humor after reading the otherwise dry article. The article was otherwise fairly interesting, but that certainly left a sour taste in my mouth. He's lucky I read past the first paragraph, if it wasn't so prominent on HN I probably wouldn't have bothered listening to anything he had to say.
    - pharrington 10y ago
      I guarantee you would not find it funny if I called you a cunt. Remember none of the rest of the article even remotely matches the tone of the sentences in question, and the content larges comes from a place of ignorance.
      - rwallace 10y ago
        Actually there have been a couple of times when people called me a cunt and it was funny in context. Now granted, whether this article is that kind of context, is a different question.
    - lojack 10y ago

hexane360 10y ago

Isn't this ironically referencing a lot of Unix development?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

whack 10y ago

As an hobbyist blogger, I can perfectly empathise with why the author wrote that. People love to crap all over a blogger who dares to post his thoughts on a private blog, without first subjecting it to PhD-thesis-level scrutiny. This really gets on my nerves for the same reasons that engineers get pissed off when they decide to open source a pet project and suddenly start getting "URGENT ASAP" feature requests from entitled users. The author is taking the time to post his thoughts on a private blog. If you're not happy with the level of rigor, then don't read it, don't share it, and don't believe it. But no, the author has no responsibility to provide you with a comprehensive list of citations and references.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
> "If you're not happy with the level of rigor, then don't read it, don't share it, and don't believe it." What I don't like about that attitude is that it suggests that the blogpost should be excused from criticism of its rigor. But any assertion and opinion by anyone can and should be considered open to criticism. > "But no, the author has no responsibility to provide you with a comprehensive list of citations and references." Of course he is not responsible. But if someone expects or wants people to be convinced of their argument, then prefacing with his rude dismissal does not help. A better way than "This article was written hastily, and I don’t want to further improve it. You’re lucky I wrote it." without the unnecessary rudeness and ego boosting could be more along your lines: "This article was written hastily and shouldn't be subject to PhD-thesis-level scrutiny, so I've posted without any expectation that I will improve it or respond to criticism."
- whack 10y ago
  > A better way than "This article was written hastily, and I don’t want to further improve it. You’re lucky I wrote it." without the unnecessary rudeness and ego boosting could be more along your lines: "This article was written hastily and shouldn't be subject to PhD-thesis-level scrutiny, so I've posted without any expectation that I will improve it or respond to criticism." Sounds to me like you agree with the substance of what the author said, and just happen to disagree with the delivery. Keep in mind that different people have different writing styles, and people often post things like what you quoted in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Some people prefer a formal, humble style of writing. Others like a more humorous style, and others yet enjoy a Steven Colbert faux-braggadocious style. It would be unfortunate if we browbeat anyone who dares to inject some quirky humor into their writing.

squeaky-clean 10y ago

it's a joke. Last sentence of the article is > The provocative tone has been used just to attract your attention.

dawidw 10y ago
That's a pity because of that tone I abandoned reading after few sentences and did't go to last sentence.
- diminoten 10y ago
  ...and the world continued to spin. There's irony in people being insulted by arrogant tone and loudly proclaiming they stopped reading something.
  - dpark 10y ago
    I don't think there's anything ironic about dismissing the views of self-important assholes. It may be that the author is not actually a self-important asshole, but starting an article like that makes it look like he likely is.
- wott 10y ago
  For good or bad reasons, you made the right choice: the article was full of crap (bad understandings, lack of historical knowledge and just technical knowledge even about current tools versions, bad references, bias, repeating blindly wrong or outdated rants, etc.). You could also have guessed it when you noticed it was a kid student showing up (and off) with a lengthy critic on the historical evolution of UNIX tools and others OSes and tools that he discovered a couple of years ago, while you possibly were using them and watching them evolve while he was still in his father's bollocks (and some of us (not me) were working on UNIXes while his father was a kid). You know what to expect in this case, especially if you remember having produced the same kind of over-confident and yet uninformed rant in your days :-) (I do :-D )
pharrington 10y ago
Yes, anything funny (even absurdist humor) is predicated on a kernel of truth. Quite odd, then, that the article contains so little well informed opinion and even less humor.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

steve-howard 10y ago

What bugged me more was the snippets designed to show how hard it is to write shell scripts. It looked like the author just didn't know enough about their tools: >How to touch all files in foo (and its subfolders)? find foo -print0 | xargs -0 touch find foo -exec touch {} \; I agree with the other commenters who think it's fine to write whatever you like on your own blog, I just feel that it went from interesting historical warts to bagging on legacy systems because they're complicated.

kccqzy 10y ago
If we take UNIX to mean the POSIX standard, it doesn't work because -print0 is not in POSIX, and neither is -0 for xargs.