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> The best teachers I ever had were the ones who were unafraid to tell me exactly what I was doing wrong. doesn't contradict with > But as soon as someone say

by fedd 15y ago

> The best teachers I ever had were the ones who were unafraid to tell me exactly what I was doing wrong. doesn't contradict with > But as soon as someone says a software project is “retarded”, unfollow them. anyway, the teacher should first earn the right to teach. if maradona tells me i am retarded at football, i'll listen. if a random jerk tells that, i'm gonna ask why and say go to hell if i dont like the answer

MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
My issue wasn't with the "retarded" line, actually; I was more concerned by this: "If someone says something negative about your project in an unreasonable way, don’t take it to heart. There’s something good in every project (it’s open source, it already has one thing going for it), no single project is complete crap, keep the good things and learn from the criticism. All this boils down to basically 'surround yourself with good people.'" This is the kind of thinking that lets people write bad code. "Unreasonable" is subjective here and lets people be very thin-skinned and defensive about their code. There is code which is complete crap and serves only as a warning to others to pay heed, lest they write code just as bad. (Feel free to consider that hyperbolic and point out that "complete" and "serves only as" are contradictory.) It's fine to surround yourself with "good people," who I presume are people that are Good-aligned, but that's never going to reveal systemic weaknesses or flaws in your code; you're just going to end up as another group of people that relies on black hats to point out where your code was flawed. In other words, this entire post feels like thinly veiled positive thinking in excess. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo for a much better summary of the problem.
- billswift 15y ago
  >This is the kind of thinking that lets people write bad code. "Unreasonable" is subjective here and lets people be very thin-skinned and defensive about their code. Indeed, in my experience the very best producers are those who are toughest on themselves. No one is ever likely to be as insulting to me as I am to myself when I catch a mistake. Which is part of the reason for what neilk wrote above: "Some of the biggest jerks are also the best contributors." Because they are tough on themselves and their own work and are less willing to help others lie to themselves about what they have produced.

by fedd 15y ago

MostAwesomeDude 15y ago

My issue wasn't with the "retarded" line, actually; I was more concerned by this: "If someone says something negative about your project in an unreasonable way, don’t take it to heart. There’s something good in every project (it’s open source, it already has one thing going for it), no single project is complete crap, keep the good things and learn from the criticism. All this boils down to basically 'surround yourself with good people.'" This is the kind of thinking that lets people write bad code. "Unreasonable" is subjective here and lets people be very thin-skinned and defensive about their code. There is code which is complete crap and serves only as a warning to others to pay heed, lest they write code just as bad. (Feel free to consider that hyperbolic and point out that "complete" and "serves only as" are contradictory.) It's fine to surround yourself with "good people," who I presume are people that are Good-aligned, but that's never going to reveal systemic weaknesses or flaws in your code; you're just going to end up as another group of people that relies on black hats to point out where your code was flawed. In other words, this entire post feels like thinly veiled positive thinking in excess. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo for a much better summary of the problem.

billswift 15y ago
>This is the kind of thinking that lets people write bad code. "Unreasonable" is subjective here and lets people be very thin-skinned and defensive about their code. Indeed, in my experience the very best producers are those who are toughest on themselves. No one is ever likely to be as insulting to me as I am to myself when I catch a mistake. Which is part of the reason for what neilk wrote above: "Some of the biggest jerks are also the best contributors." Because they are tough on themselves and their own work and are less willing to help others lie to themselves about what they have produced.