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I think the level of self-promotion and/or other-people-promoting-him is the key factor. Not really the supposed productivity. I know many people who get a lot

I think the level of self-promotion and/or other-people-promoting-him is the key factor. Not really the supposed productivity. I know many people who get a lot done, both for day jobs, for contract work, as a hobby, as entreprenurial ventures, etc. but 99.9% never hits the front page of HN on a regular basis like Zed's activity seems to. Which doesn't lessen what he does and his skills, but it does pull back the camera a bit to put it into a broader context. Not everyone self-promotes to the same extent as Mr. Shaw, or has other people promote them.

zedshaw 15y ago
I personally have no idea why this stuff hits this site that often. Take this for instance: It is a half-finished manuscript that I announced in a tweet to people who follow me on twitter and asked for it. Already at the top of this set of comments is a dickhead saying he's such a bad ass 'cause he's changed "half a million lines of C code" and he thinks I'm not writing the book correctly because I'm being too low level. He gets all of this from three exercises and three paragraphs in the introduction. Frankly, I consider hackernews kind of irritating and not useful as a promotional tool. It amounts to about 5% of my traffic for 1 day at best, and I only have to be here because if I'm not answering the petty little idiots who troll here then the rumors spread through my professional circles. In other words: I could live without this kind of promotion, so it's definitely not "self-promotion".
- hp 15y ago
  hey, I was just idly chattering about C and the way people in general often approach it. Not intended to be a review of an unwritten book or imply that you plan to approach it in any particular way. I am a bad ass of course. But I thought it was relevant to the comment that I've written a lot of C.
  - X-Istence 15y ago
    When your second sentence is: "Play me a tiny violin ;-)" it isn't just idly chattering. It comes across as extremely petty and derogatory.
    - contrast 15y ago
      When somebody directs "derogatory" remarks at themselves, it's called "self-deprecating". It's a good thing in many Western cultures at least, and demonstrates a degree of modesty. In this case, hp made it clear that he doesn't expect sympathy (or applause or whatever) for having written a lot of C. It's just something he mentioned because he thought it was relevant. It is relevant - people not long out of school and talking at length about everything that's wrong with XYZ are tedious both to experts and experienced people generally. hp's comments on C use experience, clear reasoning, and absolutely no personal commentary whatsoever. This contrasts with the negative, personal and poorly reasoned attacks of people such as you. I hope for your sake that you're asserting someone is "extremely" petty based on a mere self-deprecating aside because you're only a few years out of school and haven't learnt to communicate yet, and not just an old hand trapped an inability to relate to people with different opinions or role models. The world can always do with more talent and fewer martyrs.
      - thebooktocome 15y ago
        "When somebody directs 'derogatory' remarks at themselves, it's called 'self-deprecating'... In this case, hp made it clear that he doesn't expect sympathy (or applause or whatever) for having written a lot of C. It's just something he mentioned because he thought it was relevant." This isn't the only possible interpretation of that comment. Sometimes words can have more than one meaning, and misinterpretation isn't always a sign of idiocy or acting in bad faith Also, when you say, "This contrasts with the negative, personal and poorly reasoned attacks of people such as you," do you mean, "I hope for your sake that ... you're only a few years out of school and haven't learnt to communicate yet, and not just an old hand trapped an inability to relate to people with different opinions or role models"?
        rfrey 15y ago
        "This isn't the only possible interpretation of that comment" Genuine curiosity... what other interpretation could there be? Is it an ESL issue with literal translation causing offense? Or is there another interpretation in a non North American culture? In N.A. at least, this is an extremely common expression.
- staunch 15y ago
  You're the dick Zed. The guy (hp) barely mentioned what you were doing at all and was just offering some general advice on C. You take it like a personal attack on your manhood. You're always defending yourself against dreamed up conspiracies. You have a serious martyr complex.
  - burgerbrain 15y ago
    Sure he's a dick, but you know he's a dick.
- davnola 15y ago
  > I personally have no idea why this stuff hits this site that often. May I clue you in? You create interesting quality projects like Mongrel, Mongrel2, Tir, and LPTHW. You are also entertaining. If that's self-promotion, let's have more of it.
- bonch 15y ago
  I’m saddened by the number of grown men I meet who worship guys like the persona found in this rant. Too frequently men (especially younger men) will by default listen to whoever “talks tough” rather than the people who make the most reasoned arguments. They will listen to blow hards and pundits all day and blindly follow their “leadership” on fad after fad, never really questioning whether these people are worth listening to in the first place. -- Zed Shaw, backpedaling when his angry schtick gets called out by the community
- llambda 15y ago
  Why is it that every comment I read by you is either you whining about being treated unfairly or you attacking someone who supposedly "attacked" you? Are you honestly that insecure? Do you read every comment as though it is in some way attempting to degrade your image? Here you denigrate the HN community, saying it doesn't generate a significant amount of traffic for your site or whatever, and then go on to say you won't respond to the petty "idiots". I see. You're too "professional" for that. Obviously HN is so meaningless to you that you needn't bother with it. Yet you're here, commenting, making an ass out of yourself. Woe is poor Zed Shaw; always the victim.
  - tuxcanfly 15y ago
    Zed Shaw, the Kurt Cobain of programming.
  - bandushrew 15y ago
    A quick look through Zed's comment history tells me that the % of posts he has made that could fit your description is roughly 1%. So Im going to go with you having a selection bias. OTOH I do appreciate your vigorous defense of the HN community, too many people just dont care about implied insults to their self identified tribal group. Go llambda!
    - llambda 15y ago
      You're probably right. I've only seen a couple of his recent comments in threads related to his projects or site (and that thread about the GitHub community). So I no doubt have a selection bias; I suppose it's worth noting his reputation proceeds him, deserved or otherwise. Nonetheless it's disheartening to see self-proclaimed "professionals" (I use this term loosely for while a person may be employed professionally this is not a guarantee a given individual will behave professionally: they are distinct things) who are well known throughout the community, behave like trolls. And even more so when they decide it's appropriate to take a shit on this community. Well I will always try my best to preserve what I value. It's in my nature I guess. So thank you. :)
      - 15y ago
8ig8 15y ago
> Not everyone self-promotes to the same extent as Mr. Shaw, or has other people promote them. I don't know much about Zed. I've seen his name and articles here on HN, of course. I read you comment and was curious. I found nothing but a URL in his HN profile and zero submissions attributed to him here. From my very brief scan of his comments on HN posts, it seems like they are on topic. He's not hijacking threads. So here on HN, at least, it appears that others are doing the promoting. Zed seems to write original essays and he seems to have strong feelings and opinions on topics that interest the hacker crowd. And dude's got a memorable name. It reminds me of SEO strategy: Write original, compelling articles and you won't need SEO.
brianmatter 15y ago
can you name 2? doubt it...

zedshaw 15y ago

I personally have no idea why this stuff hits this site that often. Take this for instance: It is a half-finished manuscript that I announced in a tweet to people who follow me on twitter and asked for it. Already at the top of this set of comments is a dickhead saying he's such a bad ass 'cause he's changed "half a million lines of C code" and he thinks I'm not writing the book correctly because I'm being too low level. He gets all of this from three exercises and three paragraphs in the introduction. Frankly, I consider hackernews kind of irritating and not useful as a promotional tool. It amounts to about 5% of my traffic for 1 day at best, and I only have to be here because if I'm not answering the petty little idiots who troll here then the rumors spread through my professional circles. In other words: I could live without this kind of promotion, so it's definitely not "self-promotion".

hp 15y ago
hey, I was just idly chattering about C and the way people in general often approach it. Not intended to be a review of an unwritten book or imply that you plan to approach it in any particular way. I am a bad ass of course. But I thought it was relevant to the comment that I've written a lot of C.
- X-Istence 15y ago
  When your second sentence is: "Play me a tiny violin ;-)" it isn't just idly chattering. It comes across as extremely petty and derogatory.
  - contrast 15y ago
    When somebody directs "derogatory" remarks at themselves, it's called "self-deprecating". It's a good thing in many Western cultures at least, and demonstrates a degree of modesty. In this case, hp made it clear that he doesn't expect sympathy (or applause or whatever) for having written a lot of C. It's just something he mentioned because he thought it was relevant. It is relevant - people not long out of school and talking at length about everything that's wrong with XYZ are tedious both to experts and experienced people generally. hp's comments on C use experience, clear reasoning, and absolutely no personal commentary whatsoever. This contrasts with the negative, personal and poorly reasoned attacks of people such as you. I hope for your sake that you're asserting someone is "extremely" petty based on a mere self-deprecating aside because you're only a few years out of school and haven't learnt to communicate yet, and not just an old hand trapped an inability to relate to people with different opinions or role models. The world can always do with more talent and fewer martyrs.
    - thebooktocome 15y ago
      "When somebody directs 'derogatory' remarks at themselves, it's called 'self-deprecating'... In this case, hp made it clear that he doesn't expect sympathy (or applause or whatever) for having written a lot of C. It's just something he mentioned because he thought it was relevant." This isn't the only possible interpretation of that comment. Sometimes words can have more than one meaning, and misinterpretation isn't always a sign of idiocy or acting in bad faith Also, when you say, "This contrasts with the negative, personal and poorly reasoned attacks of people such as you," do you mean, "I hope for your sake that ... you're only a few years out of school and haven't learnt to communicate yet, and not just an old hand trapped an inability to relate to people with different opinions or role models"?
      - rfrey 15y ago
        "This isn't the only possible interpretation of that comment" Genuine curiosity... what other interpretation could there be? Is it an ESL issue with literal translation causing offense? Or is there another interpretation in a non North American culture? In N.A. at least, this is an extremely common expression.
staunch 15y ago
You're the dick Zed. The guy (hp) barely mentioned what you were doing at all and was just offering some general advice on C. You take it like a personal attack on your manhood. You're always defending yourself against dreamed up conspiracies. You have a serious martyr complex.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  Sure he's a dick, but you know he's a dick.
davnola 15y ago
> I personally have no idea why this stuff hits this site that often. May I clue you in? You create interesting quality projects like Mongrel, Mongrel2, Tir, and LPTHW. You are also entertaining. If that's self-promotion, let's have more of it.
bonch 15y ago
I’m saddened by the number of grown men I meet who worship guys like the persona found in this rant. Too frequently men (especially younger men) will by default listen to whoever “talks tough” rather than the people who make the most reasoned arguments. They will listen to blow hards and pundits all day and blindly follow their “leadership” on fad after fad, never really questioning whether these people are worth listening to in the first place. -- Zed Shaw, backpedaling when his angry schtick gets called out by the community
llambda 15y ago
Why is it that every comment I read by you is either you whining about being treated unfairly or you attacking someone who supposedly "attacked" you? Are you honestly that insecure? Do you read every comment as though it is in some way attempting to degrade your image? Here you denigrate the HN community, saying it doesn't generate a significant amount of traffic for your site or whatever, and then go on to say you won't respond to the petty "idiots". I see. You're too "professional" for that. Obviously HN is so meaningless to you that you needn't bother with it. Yet you're here, commenting, making an ass out of yourself. Woe is poor Zed Shaw; always the victim.
- tuxcanfly 15y ago
  Zed Shaw, the Kurt Cobain of programming.
- bandushrew 15y ago
  A quick look through Zed's comment history tells me that the % of posts he has made that could fit your description is roughly 1%. So Im going to go with you having a selection bias. OTOH I do appreciate your vigorous defense of the HN community, too many people just dont care about implied insults to their self identified tribal group. Go llambda!
  - llambda 15y ago
    You're probably right. I've only seen a couple of his recent comments in threads related to his projects or site (and that thread about the GitHub community). So I no doubt have a selection bias; I suppose it's worth noting his reputation proceeds him, deserved or otherwise. Nonetheless it's disheartening to see self-proclaimed "professionals" (I use this term loosely for while a person may be employed professionally this is not a guarantee a given individual will behave professionally: they are distinct things) who are well known throughout the community, behave like trolls. And even more so when they decide it's appropriate to take a shit on this community. Well I will always try my best to preserve what I value. It's in my nature I guess. So thank you. :)
    - 15y ago

8ig8 15y ago

> Not everyone self-promotes to the same extent as Mr. Shaw, or has other people promote them. I don't know much about Zed. I've seen his name and articles here on HN, of course. I read you comment and was curious. I found nothing but a URL in his HN profile and zero submissions attributed to him here. From my very brief scan of his comments on HN posts, it seems like they are on topic. He's not hijacking threads. So here on HN, at least, it appears that others are doing the promoting. Zed seems to write original essays and he seems to have strong feelings and opinions on topics that interest the hacker crowd. And dude's got a memorable name. It reminds me of SEO strategy: Write original, compelling articles and you won't need SEO.

brianmatter 15y ago

can you name 2? doubt it...