7 ms·

Blogger Finger

235 points by alexkay 16y ago

gahahaha 16y ago
Somehow I feel that the Google doctor would have a pretty good grasp on different forms of RSI. Good that he got help relatively quickly and seems better. But he should really IMNSHO stop playing guitar - typing all day is enough damage to the fingers. Personally, tuba playing pushed me over the edge, and the only choice I had was to stop working with computers and start teaching. RSI should be taken very, very seriously.
JunkDNA 16y ago
It was so great to read this post. It's a bit like an old friend moving back home after living far away for a while. I was always a little disappointed when I would see his blog title dimmed out in my RSS reader as I scrolled on to read things by less engaging bloggers. I think this is a side effect of Steve's blogging style: I feel like I know him personally because of the sheer amount of words he uses to communicate. This post is a good reminder that these are people you're talking to online (yes, even the "Internet famous"). They're just ordianry people who have the same feelings, needs, and wants as you. Things you say have real, tangible, even powerful effects in the real world. It's easy to forget that with all this virtual stuff in between.
fogus 16y ago
Let me be the first to say it: Welcome back Steve.
- brown9-2 16y ago
  And now that everyone's completely forgotten who I am... Not one bit! I've been eagerly awaiting this day.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    Indeed, now all we need is _why back. Oh and the old Zed Shaw.
    - FraaJad 16y ago
      I think he is the same guy because he "still gives a shit". Only, he is letting more and more of his code do the talk.
jakevoytko 16y ago
I'm thrilled that Yegge has made peace with the pack of wolves that roam the Internet, seeking to disparage those who... well, who knows their offense? He referenced them in some of his previous posts [0], so I figured they finally got the best of him. I loved reading his missives, and was sad to see them go. [0] In Story Time, for instance, Steve says "If you read the comments with (Comic Book Guy)'s voice, a lot of them make a whole lot more sense."
- j_baker 16y ago
  You get a +1 just for zero-indexing your footnotes!
- Loy 16y ago
  "Dogs bark but the caravan moves on." -- Arab proverb
  - JesseAldridge 16y ago
    "Haters gonna hate." -- Internet proverb
swah 16y ago
We should be producing more of this kind of bloggers, just in case he doesn't come back the next time.
- TomasSedovic 16y ago
  Or maybe, we should behave so that he doesn't leave in frustration the next time.
  - tomjen3 16y ago
    That wouldn't work - the few people who didn't behave then won't have any incentive to do so now, and the rest of us can't do anything about than. But we can be nice to him, so that he realize that the great majority like what he is doing.
fogus 16y ago
I've had my fair share of code reviews, so I had always assumed that I was adapted to criticism. However, in the process of writing a book I've discovered a whole new level of frustration. To be fair, there have been mistakes put down on the page and I fully expect that they be criticized. However, as soon as the face-to-face aspect of criticism is eliminated people lose their damn minds. I imagine 50 years ago there were boundless trolls writing their screeds to local newspapers. However, thanks to the Internet those guys have no barrier preventing their vitriol. As much as you try to avoid letting it bother you, the constant barrage is exhausting. I can't even imagine what it must be like for someone of Yegge or pg's readership. As a teen I worked at a record shop. 99% of all customers were nice, courteous, or at worst disregard my existence. However, a single dickweed was all it took to ruin your whole day.
- bockris 16y ago
  It's the GIFT. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/
johkra 16y ago
I used to have lot of open, long-standing concerns about the future of programming and productivity, but my sabbatical last year finally brought me some clojure. Mh, out of Steve Yegge's mouth, that's interesting to hear. I guess emacs is his tool of choice now¹ and Clojure's performance is pretty good from what I've heard. ¹ (Paraphrased: "Dynamic languages need better tools", see http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-strike-back.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-st...)
- scrame 16y ago
  I've been wondering when he would get to clojure, given how much he has covered lisp and emacs, even going so far as to promote emacs because as "the last stronghold for lisp programmers". Given his involvement with foo camp, and his coverage of other dynamic languages, I thought at times his absence was partly explained just by finally finding something that seemed like such a close fit.
- johkra 16y ago
  Yep! I use emacs + swank-clojure + slime. So, the future (of dynamic language tools) is actually the past. I'll have to give it a try - I'm surely interested in seeing what ideas can be stolen for another language's editor.
Yaggo 16y ago
I liked his superlong posts.
riprock 16y ago
I wonder what happened to his Rhino on Rails project...I would love to hear a follow up on that. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QD9XQm_Jd4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QD9XQm_Jd4 (2008)
j_baker 16y ago
Alright, so Yegge's back[1]. Who wants to take bets on when or if Spolsky will "un-retire"? [1] I'm actually excited too!
ananthrk 16y ago
Steve, in case you are reading this, do consider getting on HN as well. We don't mind long (and opinionated) rants.
- steveyegge 16y ago
  :-)
  - ananthrk 16y ago
    WOW! 800 days old account? (feels stupid for the suggestion) That said, would be glad to see more of you around.
lliiffee 16y ago
I thought that Steve's previous analysis that having crazily long posts was part of why they had such a impact was spot on. I'm surprised and disapointed that he's considering consciously making posts shorter and more frequent.
edanm 16y ago
I'm not sure how to express how happy I am that Steve Yegge is back. He's one of my blogging heroes. One of the few bloggers that I'm planning to reread entirely one day, because his writing is just that good. If you've never had the pleasure, don't be put off by the long blog posts. Read them, read them all, they're all amazing. On the length issue: Honestly, Steve's posts were quite long (much like Paul Graham's). To me, it doesn't matter, because every one of them was worth reading all the way through. It sometimes meant I'd have to leave them for later, but I still read them. He mentions that he believed the length might have been a reason people read his posts. I can't speak for anyone else, but if the quality of his writing stays the same, I don't care how long his posts are, I'm reading them. The day he "retired" was truly a sad day for me. By the way, I would happily buy a book of his collected writings (ala Hackers and Painters), so I really wish he would make such a book.
- bitsai 16y ago
  He's one of my blogging heroes as well. He inspired me to get out of my C/C++/Java comfort zone and embark on a strange and mind-expanding journey through Ruby, Haskell, Scala, culminating in Clojure. When I got to Clojure, I immediately thought, "by golly, this looks like the Lisp Steve Yegge was searching for!" Can't wait to see his thoughts on Clojure.
  - thristian 16y ago
    Pretty positive, I expect. From the the end of today's post: > I used to have lot of open, long-standing concerns about the future of programming and productivity, but my sabbatical last year finally brought me some clojure.
- whereas 16y ago
  On the length issue: Honestly, Steve's posts were quite long (much like Paul Graham's). To me, it doesn't matter, because every one of them was worth reading all the way through. To me, it matters very much: I read Yegge because he dared to be verbose. Good, long reading is increasingly hard to come by in the Twitter age. And I think he had it fairly right with his "impact theory".[1] Most blogging today reads like the textual equivalent of TV infomercials: loud, terse, entertainment-focused, and utterly void of any memorable content, because the author is terrified of "boring the reader". The retention value is virtually nil. Of all the Internet writing I've read, only a handful is memorable: Bjørn Stærk's old blog (before he got brief),[2] Paul Graham's essays,[3] Erik Naggum's Usenet postings[4] and Steve Yegge's actual rants (like this one).[5] They were all long-winded, and confidently so, because they made a basic assumption about the reader: that of reading for enlightenment, not merely entertainment. Steve Yegge, if you are reading this: don't do what the others do. Memorable Internet writing is rare. Memorable Internet writing is very rare indeed. [1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-theory-201-size-does-matter.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-theory-201-... [2] http://blog.bearstrong.net/ http://blog.bearstrong.net/ [3] http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html [4] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum) [5] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.ht...
DanielRibeiro 16y ago
Glad to hear that. Steve Yegge's post I hold dearest to my heart are: Dynamic Languages Strike Back, Rhinos and Tigers and Rhino on Rails (for controversial reasons and the guts to do it more than anything else).
- wglb 16y ago
  Those plus "Kingdom of Nouns".
shoover 16y ago
Hooray, time to carve out some time and brew a second cup!
s1rech 16y ago
I went back to Steve's list of recommended books, and I noticed that when I first read it I had read one of his recommendations, and now I'm up to eight. Probably my favorite tech blogger.
edw519 16y ago
I know that negative criticism can hurt, no matter how insignificant or pointless. So to people like Steve Yegge, Joel Spolsky, the 37signal guys, pg, and many others who put part of themselves out there for the benefit of others, I suggest putting things into perspective with this handy formula: Let n = the number of people whose lives your writing has effected. Let m = the average magnitude of that effect. Let e = the distribution effect of your medium (for one on one, e = 1,in a room of others, e = 2, print, e = 3, popular blog or forum, e = 4, etc.) Let z = the sum of all the negativity of those who don't matter. Then if the net total effect of your writing is A, we can say: A = (n*m)**e - z So, for almost any value of z, A will remain positive. Keep on writing. Please.
- tjogin 16y ago
  I don't think any of Steve's critics is imploring him to stop writing altogether — they're asking him to start writing well.
  - scotch_drinker 16y ago
    What exactly is it about Steve's writing that is bad? Bad writers almost never have a following and certainly never have the following that Steve has acquired. I would argue the contrary, that Steve's writing is quite good in that it evokes an emotion in the reader almost without exception. The emotion may be positive or negative but the fact that the emotion exists is evidence that his writing is not bad. Maybe you disagree with it or maybe you find it objectionably long but those things are different from saying he is a bad writer. I think Steve's critics are typically angry about something he has written about one of their hobby horses but I strongly doubt too many of them are imploring him to write better.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - pvg 16y ago
      Bad writers almost never have a following Let's see, the guy who wrote the Da Vinci Code, the lady who writes the Twilight books, Ayn Rand, oh we could go on. Now, if you're willing to redefine the meaning of 'good' to mean 'creates a response' then a lot of bad things can pass for good. But it's the sort of silliness that might evince a response that is not, you know, good.
krugrj 16y ago
Did anyone else who read this title think "finger" was referring to the unix command line tool?
- anamax 16y ago
  > Did anyone else who read this title think "finger" was referring to the unix command line tool? Finger predates unix.
SkyMarshal 16y ago
TLDR: "I'm back after a year's hiatus from blogging... ramble ramble ramble ... And now that I'm rested up, I believe I'm ready to start tech blogging again... in moderation, anyway. The rest and relaxation and research did wonders for me. I used to have lot of open, long-standing concerns about the future of programming and productivity, but my sabbatical last year finally brought me some clojure[0]." [0] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934356336?ie=UTF8&tag=steveysblogra-20&link_code=wql&camp=212361&creative=380601 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934356336?ie=UTF8&tag=... (Nice affiliate link, but hey I'd do the same) Is anyone else as torn about long blog posts as I am? On the one hand, I do appreciate good software writing. But I also appreciate concise expressivity, saying more with less. They shouldn't be, and aren't, mutually exclusive. These days I feel like I'm forced to choose between sacrificing an hour of productive coding to read through a bunch of overly long blog posts at HN and proggit and evaluate whether they were worth reading or not.
- bad_user 16y ago
  The book "Dreaming in Code"[1] can also be summarized in a couple of sentences, but you won't walk away with anything from that summary ... that's literature for you. Also, sacrificing an hour of productive coding by reading good literature increases the chances that you won't grow up to be a dumb fuck. Steve's articles may not be of much artistic value, but he combines non-fiction with fiction in a wonderful way, explaining his reasoning through plots and drama :) He gets personal, not being afraid to expose his feelings, and I really wish more people would do that. [1] http://www.dreamingincode.com/ http://www.dreamingincode.com/
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  Since when do we downmod just for disagreeing with a post? I wasn't trolling. My concern isn't invalid. Others have also noticed: Paul Graham: http://paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html http://paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html Another good article: http://fitnr.com/filtering-the-web-of-noise/ http://fitnr.com/filtering-the-web-of-noise/ Don't misunderstand, I <3 Yegge and am glad he's back. His writing taught me stuff that should have been covered in my undergraduate education, and I still refer new programmers to his 'Tour de Babel' essay. But am I alone in wishing writers would cut to the chase a little more so as to help their readers reduce the info overload and the task of filtering through it quickly? It's not hard to spend an entire day reading through only the high-quality tech blogs alone, and find, as Paul mentioned, that you did a lot of 'fake work' and very little real work.
codewall 16y ago
Good to have you back Steve! No, not everyone had an issue with the length of your posts, quite the opposite - it was kind of fun to see a pleasantly small bar in the scrollbar knowing that the treat isn't ending any time soon. Big fan, big fan here... I once declined a job offer from a company whose engineers never heard of you as I figured out during interviews.
toadie 16y ago
If Steve reads this: Requested blog post please: "What I have learned at Google". Given your background/experience it would be interesting to read your thoughts on Google's engineering machine, assuming they let employees blog about it. So far I've seen quite a few entertaining writeups from Nooglers, but mostly college graduates. I wonder what Amazon veteran had to re-learn there.
- swah 16y ago
  More chance he'll read if you comment this on his blog.
presidentender 16y ago
Steve Yegge is the one person who comes closest to being singlehandedly responsible for my programming career. Back in high school, I discovered his game, Wyvern, while looking for a way to play Dungeons and Dragons online. At the time, the most prominent feature of the game was its extensibility, via Java and Jython. I made a few game areas and wrote an introductory manual for the world editor tool. Although I never submitted any of my code, the desire to create custom items and monster behaviors was my primary motivation for learning to program. The inspiration that his blog provides (and the prodding) is much less effective for me. I started a blog. It may have five posts.
roboneal 16y ago
I'm being petty - but that's an obnoxiously large Obama '08 button. I literally thought I was on the wrong site.
bdr 16y ago
Yegge plays Villa-Lobos? That's so cool. For those of you who skipped over that part of the post... listen to this etude and tell me it's not badass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxCR0aMeo8g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxCR0aMeo8g -- and don't bail before the middle tremolo section at 2:00.
grandalf 16y ago
Steve is clearly bright and interesting. So it perplexes me that his blog is adorned with a huge pledge of allegiance to a politician. *I'd react equally negatively if his blog had a huge Nader or W2004 button on it. I guess I just don't understand the desire people have to idealize authority figures.
- TheSOB88 16y ago
  So, haters...
jacabado 16y ago
In case anybody was wondering what was he playing, it's a brazilian classical music composer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAg8VHuXNKU&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAg8VHuXNKU&feature=relat... - Choros nr1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDc230BMy8Y&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDc230BMy8Y&feature=relat... - Choros nr10 (part 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GVWge4q8uc&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GVWge4q8uc&feature=relat... - Choros nr10 (part 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZnQj9yWTlo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZnQj9yWTlo - Trenzinho Caipira Well and what could you expect from one of the greatest composers coming from the Brazilian musical culture? I accidentally started watching the Proms and was completely obliterated by that performance of Choros nr10, I had never enjoyed classical music that way.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

235 points by alexkay 16y ago

Somehow I feel that the Google doctor would have a pretty good grasp on different forms of RSI. Good that he got help relatively quickly and seems better. But he should really IMNSHO stop playing guitar - typing all day is enough damage to the fingers. Personally, tuba playing pushed me over the edge, and the only choice I had was to stop working with computers and start teaching. RSI should be taken very, very seriously.

JunkDNA 16y ago

It was so great to read this post. It's a bit like an old friend moving back home after living far away for a while. I was always a little disappointed when I would see his blog title dimmed out in my RSS reader as I scrolled on to read things by less engaging bloggers. I think this is a side effect of Steve's blogging style: I feel like I know him personally because of the sheer amount of words he uses to communicate. This post is a good reminder that these are people you're talking to online (yes, even the "Internet famous"). They're just ordianry people who have the same feelings, needs, and wants as you. Things you say have real, tangible, even powerful effects in the real world. It's easy to forget that with all this virtual stuff in between.

fogus 16y ago

Let me be the first to say it: Welcome back Steve.

brown9-2 16y ago
And now that everyone's completely forgotten who I am... Not one bit! I've been eagerly awaiting this day.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  Indeed, now all we need is _why back. Oh and the old Zed Shaw.
  - FraaJad 16y ago
    I think he is the same guy because he "still gives a shit". Only, he is letting more and more of his code do the talk.

jakevoytko 16y ago

I'm thrilled that Yegge has made peace with the pack of wolves that roam the Internet, seeking to disparage those who... well, who knows their offense? He referenced them in some of his previous posts [0], so I figured they finally got the best of him. I loved reading his missives, and was sad to see them go. [0] In Story Time, for instance, Steve says "If you read the comments with (Comic Book Guy)'s voice, a lot of them make a whole lot more sense."

j_baker 16y ago
You get a +1 just for zero-indexing your footnotes!
Loy 16y ago
"Dogs bark but the caravan moves on." -- Arab proverb
- JesseAldridge 16y ago
  "Haters gonna hate." -- Internet proverb

swah 16y ago

We should be producing more of this kind of bloggers, just in case he doesn't come back the next time.

TomasSedovic 16y ago
Or maybe, we should behave so that he doesn't leave in frustration the next time.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  That wouldn't work - the few people who didn't behave then won't have any incentive to do so now, and the rest of us can't do anything about than. But we can be nice to him, so that he realize that the great majority like what he is doing.

fogus 16y ago

I've had my fair share of code reviews, so I had always assumed that I was adapted to criticism. However, in the process of writing a book I've discovered a whole new level of frustration. To be fair, there have been mistakes put down on the page and I fully expect that they be criticized. However, as soon as the face-to-face aspect of criticism is eliminated people lose their damn minds. I imagine 50 years ago there were boundless trolls writing their screeds to local newspapers. However, thanks to the Internet those guys have no barrier preventing their vitriol. As much as you try to avoid letting it bother you, the constant barrage is exhausting. I can't even imagine what it must be like for someone of Yegge or pg's readership. As a teen I worked at a record shop. 99% of all customers were nice, courteous, or at worst disregard my existence. However, a single dickweed was all it took to ruin your whole day.

bockris 16y ago
It's the GIFT. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/

johkra 16y ago

I used to have lot of open, long-standing concerns about the future of programming and productivity, but my sabbatical last year finally brought me some clojure. Mh, out of Steve Yegge's mouth, that's interesting to hear. I guess emacs is his tool of choice now¹ and Clojure's performance is pretty good from what I've heard. ¹ (Paraphrased: "Dynamic languages need better tools", see http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-strike-back.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-st...)

scrame 16y ago
I've been wondering when he would get to clojure, given how much he has covered lisp and emacs, even going so far as to promote emacs because as "the last stronghold for lisp programmers". Given his involvement with foo camp, and his coverage of other dynamic languages, I thought at times his absence was partly explained just by finally finding something that seemed like such a close fit.
johkra 16y ago
Yep! I use emacs + swank-clojure + slime. So, the future (of dynamic language tools) is actually the past. I'll have to give it a try - I'm surely interested in seeing what ideas can be stolen for another language's editor.

Yaggo 16y ago

I liked his superlong posts.

riprock 16y ago

I wonder what happened to his Rhino on Rails project...I would love to hear a follow up on that. http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QD9XQm_Jd4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QD9XQm_Jd4 (2008)

j_baker 16y ago

Alright, so Yegge's back[1]. Who wants to take bets on when or if Spolsky will "un-retire"? [1] I'm actually excited too!

ananthrk 16y ago

Steve, in case you are reading this, do consider getting on HN as well. We don't mind long (and opinionated) rants.

steveyegge 16y ago
:-)
- ananthrk 16y ago
  WOW! 800 days old account? (feels stupid for the suggestion) That said, would be glad to see more of you around.

lliiffee 16y ago

I thought that Steve's previous analysis that having crazily long posts was part of why they had such a impact was spot on. I'm surprised and disapointed that he's considering consciously making posts shorter and more frequent.

edanm 16y ago

I'm not sure how to express how happy I am that Steve Yegge is back. He's one of my blogging heroes. One of the few bloggers that I'm planning to reread entirely one day, because his writing is just that good. If you've never had the pleasure, don't be put off by the long blog posts. Read them, read them all, they're all amazing. On the length issue: Honestly, Steve's posts were quite long (much like Paul Graham's). To me, it doesn't matter, because every one of them was worth reading all the way through. It sometimes meant I'd have to leave them for later, but I still read them. He mentions that he believed the length might have been a reason people read his posts. I can't speak for anyone else, but if the quality of his writing stays the same, I don't care how long his posts are, I'm reading them. The day he "retired" was truly a sad day for me. By the way, I would happily buy a book of his collected writings (ala Hackers and Painters), so I really wish he would make such a book.

bitsai 16y ago
He's one of my blogging heroes as well. He inspired me to get out of my C/C++/Java comfort zone and embark on a strange and mind-expanding journey through Ruby, Haskell, Scala, culminating in Clojure. When I got to Clojure, I immediately thought, "by golly, this looks like the Lisp Steve Yegge was searching for!" Can't wait to see his thoughts on Clojure.
- thristian 16y ago
  Pretty positive, I expect. From the the end of today's post: > I used to have lot of open, long-standing concerns about the future of programming and productivity, but my sabbatical last year finally brought me some clojure.
whereas 16y ago
On the length issue: Honestly, Steve's posts were quite long (much like Paul Graham's). To me, it doesn't matter, because every one of them was worth reading all the way through. To me, it matters very much: I read Yegge because he dared to be verbose. Good, long reading is increasingly hard to come by in the Twitter age. And I think he had it fairly right with his "impact theory".[1] Most blogging today reads like the textual equivalent of TV infomercials: loud, terse, entertainment-focused, and utterly void of any memorable content, because the author is terrified of "boring the reader". The retention value is virtually nil. Of all the Internet writing I've read, only a handful is memorable: Bjørn Stærk's old blog (before he got brief),[2] Paul Graham's essays,[3] Erik Naggum's Usenet postings[4] and Steve Yegge's actual rants (like this one).[5] They were all long-winded, and confidently so, because they made a basic assumption about the reader: that of reading for enlightenment, not merely entertainment. Steve Yegge, if you are reading this: don't do what the others do. Memorable Internet writing is rare. Memorable Internet writing is very rare indeed. [1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-theory-201-size-does-matter.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/01/blogging-theory-201-... [2] http://blog.bearstrong.net/ http://blog.bearstrong.net/ [3] http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html [4] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum) [5] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.ht...

DanielRibeiro 16y ago

Glad to hear that. Steve Yegge's post I hold dearest to my heart are: Dynamic Languages Strike Back, Rhinos and Tigers and Rhino on Rails (for controversial reasons and the guts to do it more than anything else).

wglb 16y ago
Those plus "Kingdom of Nouns".

shoover 16y ago

Hooray, time to carve out some time and brew a second cup!

s1rech 16y ago

I went back to Steve's list of recommended books, and I noticed that when I first read it I had read one of his recommendations, and now I'm up to eight. Probably my favorite tech blogger.

edw519 16y ago

I know that negative criticism can hurt, no matter how insignificant or pointless. So to people like Steve Yegge, Joel Spolsky, the 37signal guys, pg, and many others who put part of themselves out there for the benefit of others, I suggest putting things into perspective with this handy formula: Let n = the number of people whose lives your writing has effected. Let m = the average magnitude of that effect. Let e = the distribution effect of your medium (for one on one, e = 1,in a room of others, e = 2, print, e = 3, popular blog or forum, e = 4, etc.) Let z = the sum of all the negativity of those who don't matter. Then if the net total effect of your writing is A, we can say: A = (n*m)**e - z So, for almost any value of z, A will remain positive. Keep on writing. Please.

tjogin 16y ago
I don't think any of Steve's critics is imploring him to stop writing altogether — they're asking him to start writing well.
- scotch_drinker 16y ago
  What exactly is it about Steve's writing that is bad? Bad writers almost never have a following and certainly never have the following that Steve has acquired. I would argue the contrary, that Steve's writing is quite good in that it evokes an emotion in the reader almost without exception. The emotion may be positive or negative but the fact that the emotion exists is evidence that his writing is not bad. Maybe you disagree with it or maybe you find it objectionably long but those things are different from saying he is a bad writer. I think Steve's critics are typically angry about something he has written about one of their hobby horses but I strongly doubt too many of them are imploring him to write better.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - pvg 16y ago
    Bad writers almost never have a following Let's see, the guy who wrote the Da Vinci Code, the lady who writes the Twilight books, Ayn Rand, oh we could go on. Now, if you're willing to redefine the meaning of 'good' to mean 'creates a response' then a lot of bad things can pass for good. But it's the sort of silliness that might evince a response that is not, you know, good.

krugrj 16y ago

Did anyone else who read this title think "finger" was referring to the unix command line tool?

anamax 16y ago
> Did anyone else who read this title think "finger" was referring to the unix command line tool? Finger predates unix.

SkyMarshal 16y ago

TLDR: "I'm back after a year's hiatus from blogging... ramble ramble ramble ... And now that I'm rested up, I believe I'm ready to start tech blogging again... in moderation, anyway. The rest and relaxation and research did wonders for me. I used to have lot of open, long-standing concerns about the future of programming and productivity, but my sabbatical last year finally brought me some clojure[0]." [0] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934356336?ie=UTF8&tag=steveysblogra-20&link_code=wql&camp=212361&creative=380601 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934356336?ie=UTF8&tag=... (Nice affiliate link, but hey I'd do the same) Is anyone else as torn about long blog posts as I am? On the one hand, I do appreciate good software writing. But I also appreciate concise expressivity, saying more with less. They shouldn't be, and aren't, mutually exclusive. These days I feel like I'm forced to choose between sacrificing an hour of productive coding to read through a bunch of overly long blog posts at HN and proggit and evaluate whether they were worth reading or not.

bad_user 16y ago
The book "Dreaming in Code"[1] can also be summarized in a couple of sentences, but you won't walk away with anything from that summary ... that's literature for you. Also, sacrificing an hour of productive coding by reading good literature increases the chances that you won't grow up to be a dumb fuck. Steve's articles may not be of much artistic value, but he combines non-fiction with fiction in a wonderful way, explaining his reasoning through plots and drama :) He gets personal, not being afraid to expose his feelings, and I really wish more people would do that. [1] http://www.dreamingincode.com/ http://www.dreamingincode.com/
SkyMarshal 16y ago
Since when do we downmod just for disagreeing with a post? I wasn't trolling. My concern isn't invalid. Others have also noticed: Paul Graham: http://paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html http://paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html Another good article: http://fitnr.com/filtering-the-web-of-noise/ http://fitnr.com/filtering-the-web-of-noise/ Don't misunderstand, I <3 Yegge and am glad he's back. His writing taught me stuff that should have been covered in my undergraduate education, and I still refer new programmers to his 'Tour de Babel' essay. But am I alone in wishing writers would cut to the chase a little more so as to help their readers reduce the info overload and the task of filtering through it quickly? It's not hard to spend an entire day reading through only the high-quality tech blogs alone, and find, as Paul mentioned, that you did a lot of 'fake work' and very little real work.

codewall 16y ago

Good to have you back Steve! No, not everyone had an issue with the length of your posts, quite the opposite - it was kind of fun to see a pleasantly small bar in the scrollbar knowing that the treat isn't ending any time soon. Big fan, big fan here... I once declined a job offer from a company whose engineers never heard of you as I figured out during interviews.

toadie 16y ago

If Steve reads this: Requested blog post please: "What I have learned at Google". Given your background/experience it would be interesting to read your thoughts on Google's engineering machine, assuming they let employees blog about it. So far I've seen quite a few entertaining writeups from Nooglers, but mostly college graduates. I wonder what Amazon veteran had to re-learn there.

swah 16y ago
More chance he'll read if you comment this on his blog.

presidentender 16y ago

Steve Yegge is the one person who comes closest to being singlehandedly responsible for my programming career. Back in high school, I discovered his game, Wyvern, while looking for a way to play Dungeons and Dragons online. At the time, the most prominent feature of the game was its extensibility, via Java and Jython. I made a few game areas and wrote an introductory manual for the world editor tool. Although I never submitted any of my code, the desire to create custom items and monster behaviors was my primary motivation for learning to program. The inspiration that his blog provides (and the prodding) is much less effective for me. I started a blog. It may have five posts.

roboneal 16y ago

I'm being petty - but that's an obnoxiously large Obama '08 button. I literally thought I was on the wrong site.

bdr 16y ago

Yegge plays Villa-Lobos? That's so cool. For those of you who skipped over that part of the post... listen to this etude and tell me it's not badass: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxCR0aMeo8g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxCR0aMeo8g -- and don't bail before the middle tremolo section at 2:00.

grandalf 16y ago

Steve is clearly bright and interesting. So it perplexes me that his blog is adorned with a huge pledge of allegiance to a politician. *I'd react equally negatively if his blog had a huge Nader or W2004 button on it. I guess I just don't understand the desire people have to idealize authority figures.

TheSOB88 16y ago
So, haters...

jacabado 16y ago

In case anybody was wondering what was he playing, it's a brazilian classical music composer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAg8VHuXNKU&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAg8VHuXNKU&feature=relat... - Choros nr1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDc230BMy8Y&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDc230BMy8Y&feature=relat... - Choros nr10 (part 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GVWge4q8uc&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GVWge4q8uc&feature=relat... - Choros nr10 (part 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZnQj9yWTlo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZnQj9yWTlo - Trenzinho Caipira Well and what could you expect from one of the greatest composers coming from the Brazilian musical culture? I accidentally started watching the Proms and was completely obliterated by that performance of Choros nr10, I had never enjoyed classical music that way.

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