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It's weird, it's like in Chicago they don't have multiplication or something. Oh, and New York smells. (take that!) Two of my heroes dragging discourse on hac
by edw519 16y ago
It's weird, it's like in Chicago they don't have multiplication or something.
Oh, and New York smells. (take that!)
Two of my heroes dragging discourse on hacker news into the toilet. What's the world coming to?
- sspencer 16y agoAgreed, kind of depressing that neither appears to have anything better to do.
- commanda 16y agoNot really. They are both professional writers of online publications. This forum is the perfect place for them to stir up controversy to entertain their target audience. I'm entertained, at least.
- irahul 16y agoBoth of them have some insights worth pondering, but the attacks are kinda negatively overshadowing the discussion. Joel really shouldn't have started the Chicago hyperbole. Do they have some history or it's just impulsive?
- nadam 16y agoThey are competitors.
- irahul 16y agoThat alone shouldn't be reason enough and I would say both of them behaved very unreasonably if being competitors is all there is to it. I was asking more along the lines of previous altercations or confrontations. I do remember some post from 37 signals commenting about Joel's taking investment; not sure if it was David or someone else though. A very thin line divides frank and honest speech and rude and arrogant statements. Most of the internet celebs sit on the fence and cross it every now and then - Linus Torvalds (Open BSD devs are a bunch of masturbating monkeys), Zed Shaw(Rails is a ghetto) etc etc. That being said, there always is a take-away as these people are one of the most hardworking and talented people in the industry but the sad thing is it makes it difficult for people not familiar with their style to neglect the firework and just consume the good parts(not that it would matter to any of them).
- subbu 16y agoI think it all started with Joel's "Language Wars" article http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html for which DHH responded with "Fear, Uncertain, and Doubt by Joel Spolsky" http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000596.html http://www.loudthinking.com/arc/000596.html. They have been at loggerheads since then.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- xentronium 16y agoIf you're like me and can't access loudthinking link, here's a copy: http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=123&thread=174494#227118 http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=123&thread=1...
- irahul 16y agoThanks for the link. I couldn't really access the loudthinking link. On this one, I am with David. Joel pretty much negates his point about using something battle tested and mainstream in the end when he mentions using some proprietary language for his product, which translates to a couple of mainstream languages. I don't really see the point of cross-compiling to multiple languages. The work and time invested in maintaining the proprietary language can be better invested on other critical activities. If language interoperability is an issue, thrift or message queues is there to the rescue. Why he would use some fancy stuff when he himself is advocating using mainstream stuff is beyond me. I sure would be betting on ruby being more robust than whatever he is using in-house (preposterous claim; I have no ideas what they have in-house) IMO the only valid complain about Ruby was lack of good unicode support at the time post was written.
- runT1ME 16y agoDid joel ever post a response?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- js2 16y agoJoel really shouldn't have started the Chicago hyperbole He's a New Yorker, it's in his DNA.
- cromulent 16y agohttp://37signals.com/svn/posts/2159-all-the-wrong-reasons-for-stack-overflows-vc-chase http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2159-all-the-wrong-reasons-fo...
- dansingerman 16y agoYou should never meet your heroes (IRL or online). It invariably leads to disappointment.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- binspace 16y agoI wasn't disappointed by meeting DHH. In fact, it led me to respect him even more.
- dhh 16y agoApparently it wasn't obvious from the "New York smells" point that it was a joke. So let me spell it out: It was a joke (even if it's actually, technically true. Many parts of New York really do smell from all that trash on the street!).
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- spolsky 16y agopeople don't have a sense of humor. obviously my comments about chicagoans not knowing how to multiply was a joke, too. They multiply like bunnies.
- haseman 16y agoJust came from San Francisco to NY. If you think it's bad here...walk around downtown SF sometime ;-)
- GBond 16y agoJoel's comment: Is the problem that they're sitting there in a city without any other Internet industry, stewing in their own witty ideas, listening only to the adoring comments they get from the groupies? .. is a often genuine criticism of 37s here on HN. Probably part of the reason the joke was missed.
- mapgrep 16y agoHaving senses of humor, they are clearly JOKING with these lines. Warning: Prolonged exposure to HN comment sections may blunt your sense of humor, too.
- scorpion032 16y agoYou should take a chill-pill and go check out reddit sometimes.
- messel 16y agoThe fact that they responded to your jest in sincerity gives hope to the "little guy" HackerNews: battlebots for geeks who can't build an ashtray without a makerbot