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Background: http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1306816425.html http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1306816425.html In all fairness, the guy was being a dick (no pun int
by jz 15y ago
Background: http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1306816425.html http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1306816425.html
In all fairness, the guy was being a dick (no pun intended) to Zed. However, Zed should have kept the insults to the troll and left Github, Powerset, Engine Yard, and the Ruby community out.
- defroost 15y agoI guess he felt that others besides the troll were having a laugh at his expense, (i.e., the HN Tips guys comments, other penis-oriented repos connected to employees of aforementioned companies) and were, if only indirectly, in on the joke.
- zedshaw 15y agoYep, that's what people seem to gloss over when they think I just overreacted. I knew for a fact that several Ruby people considered this hilarious, and that one or more of them worked at github. In that situation, it's either I leave silently (which everyone thinks I should have done), or bring the issue up and make sure everyone knows what's going on. I prefer the latter because it at least lets others come behind me and avoid the problem. Thankfully, they've fixed the problem now and I don't have to worry about it anymore.
- robsan 15y agoYou and others which may have been trolled before and did not "make a fuss". I see many here with a bully mentality, saying that one should just keep their head down and endure the trolls crap and they will go away. Except they won't.
- gaius 15y agoHow does anyone in the Ruby "community" have the time to get any actual work done? No other language community in the world behaves like this.
- wisty 15y agoThe same way the Open Source "community" has time to get actual work done - real developers do it while the trolls mess around.
- gaius 15y agoBut where are the Erlang trolls or the C++ trolls? They don't exist!
- sudont 15y agoI don't know about the Erlang trolls, but the C++ trolls are out writing shitty internal corporate apps for Windows, leaving no source and forcing a company to use the buggy app in perpetuity. Real trolls ship.
- forensic 15y agoThe value proposition of the Ruby community has more to do with their mindshare than their technical merit. Compare and contrast Scientology with Psychiatry. Both communities make similar value propositions: improve mental health. Scientology is optimized to gain and keep converts and to spread like a viral meme. Psychiatry is optimized to achieve good treatment outcomes. Scientology makes more money despite being a less effective form of therapy. Virality itself is adaptive, so the Ruby community thrives and survives despite being a mediocre technology. Everything about ruby is optimized for gaining converts, attention and cohesion. Hard technical merit is less important in this case than community cohesion, growth, and publicity. Flamewars bring the ruby community publicity and this leads to growth which leads to the survival and replication of ruby. Erlang and C++ survive on hard technical merits. They take a different evolutionary strategy that requires less propaganda / groupthink. Just look at the life cycle of communities as if they were a species and it all makes sense.
- hieronymusN 15y agoThat's a pretty lucid and well written account. I would like to know more about the connection between HackerNewsTips and Github though. Github employees have denied it here on HN.
- e40 15y agoAs a paying customer of github, I'd like to know, too. If there is a link, I am deeply disappointed and believe this is exceedingly unprofessional.
- pjhyett 15y agoWe've responded multiple times that we have nothing to do with that account. In this thread just a couple of pages up, in fact: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2606408 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2606408 We haven't shouted this from the rooftops primarily because we're tired of this being the story when it should have focused on the bullying and our addressing of the problem.