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[flagged]

tester756 5y ago
> Imagine needing to announce your "departure" from a community. Nothing weird about this.
spyremeown 5y ago
Yep. The whole "if you wanted to know why I was an ass to your, it's bc of OCD" argument is bullshit. That's not an apology, that's an excuse, and there aren't many of those to justify treating people badly.
blitz_skull 5y ago
- hobo_mark 5y ago
  I routinely follow cppcon videos and the only ones I cannot make it through are those from the author of this post, exactly because of this attitude.
- jonway 5y ago
  this is just from wikipedia for context: "Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is a cluster C personality disorder marked by an excessive need for orderliness, neatness, and perfectionism." Comports with this in my opinion. Having known some people who were called "Type A personalities" who tend to be great at metrics and goals but not always so great emotional intelligence. Narcissism is common etc. This is the kind of person who will fixate on an uncleaned toilet or rattle in their car for weeks, losing sleep. Recalling one person I've known with these traits, she sounds a lot like this person. After a couple of decades and seeing her raise a family has convinced me she is indeed Human, if she had gotten therapy things would be a lot different. She's much more pro-social, though she also didnt really maintain her friendships but she definitley never had a career with walls of compiler warnings to ignore. That might have killed her. Closing her blog, Izzy expresses a deep frustration and lack of any derived meaning from what she had viewed as her purpose (c++ I suppose) as well as a general feeling of isolation. If you are feeling some shadenfreud about this for some reason, its clear she is very unhappy. It doesnt seem particularly rational to view languages this way. My impression is that this person is probably in distress and depressed. If this were my friend I would be making phone calls. Izzy: Good luck, lady. C++ is hard, but so is life. Keep looking for that purpose. If you happen to read here, I suggest volunteering at an animal shelter. Just working on something less demanding and quite possibly more rewarding is a great therapy break, as you've found from your Ops position. You are well positioned to tackle this. [] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_personality_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_p...
- defaultprimate 5y ago
ch_123 5y ago
> Imagine needing to announce your "departure" from a community. The exact same thing jumped out at me. Does anyone know if the author is a particularly well known or influential member of the C++ community?
- its_bbq 5y ago
  They were around. I remember that Izzy was a part of the conversation around modules for example.
- Jare 5y ago
  I haven't done any C++ in nearly a decade and I know who she is, I have read some of her articles and listened to her in a podcast or two.
- chrsig 5y ago
  I can't speak to their well-known-ness or influence, but they're definitely one of my favorite cppcon speakers[0] The community is lessened by their departure [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7THzO-D0ta4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7THzO-D0ta4
  - secondcoming 5y ago
    Maybe Strousoup was showing disgust at the words written on the t-shirt?
    - chrsig 5y ago
      What makes you suggest that?
      - secondcoming 5y ago
        There is at least one profanity written on it.
        chrsig 5y ago
rashkov 5y ago
Imagine realizing you wasted a decade of your life in the false hope of making a difference, but couldn’t because of a dysfunctional community dynamic… I can’t because I haven’t done that, and perhaps you can’t either. It may read this way to you but that’s the nature of blogs. They’re public diaries. Narcissism is often part of the medium itself.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  I don't usually see many blogs like that. The best authors with the most knowledge and experience also tend to be the most humble.
  - rashkov 5y ago
    Completely agreed, but sometimes blog posts by ordinary writers end up on the front page here, and it’d be good to consider that maybe they weren’t expecting tens of thousands of people would read it. In this case I think it pays to cut the author some slack and sympathize a bit. The author has clearly had a rough time, and there’s no need for an internet pile-on. At the very least it’s not constructive and needlessly personal to label the author a narcissist as in the top level comment I’m responding to.
- TheCondor 5y ago
  Maybe the ability to “make a difference” while being disconnected from the community enough to not see the dysfunction is the dysfunction. I’ve never fully understood the languagism stuff and I have openly mocked “… considered harmful” but maybe languagism should be considered harmful. Seriously, if you like writing software, isn’t the tooling a medium? Bad tools is no fun but you can still make software, you can solve problems, you can see it work, that’s what it’s about, right?
- bluGill 5y ago
  The problem is she had specific ideas of what would make C++ better, and when 500 smart people are in the room there will be people who disagree. I've seen a lot of what I thought were good ideas get shot down when someone else brought out an objection I hadn't though of. Sometimes someone listens to the objection, spends a couple years of rework, and the process repeats a few times until the objections are satisfied, or at least the majority agree they are worth ignoring. This is not easy, but it is a required part of making them useful. Anything else just adds more inconsistencies until C++ is completely unusable. Many people cannot handle it and think it is the C++ community being obstructionist when in fact it is just that we all have different needs, the only thing in common is we need a language that we can use for our problem so you better not mess that up.
armchairperson 5y ago
Sounds like the author is getting help already. Starting with the diagnosis. Receiving a diagnosis that you have a personality disorder is not an easy pill to swallow. It also doesn't fix anything, but it helps explain past behavior. Narcissism may also play a role but as a personality disorder it is incredibly difficult to manage and find support for. Saying "drop your pride" to someone that you suspect of having NPD doesn't seem any more helpful to me than saying "just stop having obsessive thoughts" to someone with OCD. Besides sounding harsh, this attitude is probably not very useful or effective.
taneq 5y ago
> Imagine needing to announce your "departure" from a community. If you're active enough in a community that you'd need to explain something multiple times to multiple close contacts then isn't it the most efficient way to do it?
dang 5y ago
Please do not cross into personal attack on HN, and especially please don't do internet psychiatric diagnosis here. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22internet%20psychiatric%20diagnosis%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a... Perhaps you don't feel you owe article authors better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[flagged]

> Imagine needing to announce your "departure" from a community. Nothing weird about this.

Yep. The whole "if you wanted to know why I was an ass to your, it's bc of OCD" argument is bullshit. That's not an apology, that's an excuse, and there aren't many of those to justify treating people badly.

blitz_skull 5y ago

hobo_mark 5y ago
I routinely follow cppcon videos and the only ones I cannot make it through are those from the author of this post, exactly because of this attitude.
jonway 5y ago
this is just from wikipedia for context: "Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is a cluster C personality disorder marked by an excessive need for orderliness, neatness, and perfectionism." Comports with this in my opinion. Having known some people who were called "Type A personalities" who tend to be great at metrics and goals but not always so great emotional intelligence. Narcissism is common etc. This is the kind of person who will fixate on an uncleaned toilet or rattle in their car for weeks, losing sleep. Recalling one person I've known with these traits, she sounds a lot like this person. After a couple of decades and seeing her raise a family has convinced me she is indeed Human, if she had gotten therapy things would be a lot different. She's much more pro-social, though she also didnt really maintain her friendships but she definitley never had a career with walls of compiler warnings to ignore. That might have killed her. Closing her blog, Izzy expresses a deep frustration and lack of any derived meaning from what she had viewed as her purpose (c++ I suppose) as well as a general feeling of isolation. If you are feeling some shadenfreud about this for some reason, its clear she is very unhappy. It doesnt seem particularly rational to view languages this way. My impression is that this person is probably in distress and depressed. If this were my friend I would be making phone calls. Izzy: Good luck, lady. C++ is hard, but so is life. Keep looking for that purpose. If you happen to read here, I suggest volunteering at an animal shelter. Just working on something less demanding and quite possibly more rewarding is a great therapy break, as you've found from your Ops position. You are well positioned to tackle this. [] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_personality_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive%E2%80%93compulsive_p...
defaultprimate 5y ago

ch_123 5y ago

> Imagine needing to announce your "departure" from a community. The exact same thing jumped out at me. Does anyone know if the author is a particularly well known or influential member of the C++ community?

its_bbq 5y ago
They were around. I remember that Izzy was a part of the conversation around modules for example.
Jare 5y ago
I haven't done any C++ in nearly a decade and I know who she is, I have read some of her articles and listened to her in a podcast or two.
chrsig 5y ago
I can't speak to their well-known-ness or influence, but they're definitely one of my favorite cppcon speakers[0] The community is lessened by their departure [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7THzO-D0ta4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7THzO-D0ta4
- secondcoming 5y ago
  Maybe Strousoup was showing disgust at the words written on the t-shirt?
  - chrsig 5y ago
    What makes you suggest that?
    - secondcoming 5y ago
      There is at least one profanity written on it.
      - chrsig 5y ago

rashkov 5y ago

Imagine realizing you wasted a decade of your life in the false hope of making a difference, but couldn’t because of a dysfunctional community dynamic… I can’t because I haven’t done that, and perhaps you can’t either. It may read this way to you but that’s the nature of blogs. They’re public diaries. Narcissism is often part of the medium itself.

5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
I don't usually see many blogs like that. The best authors with the most knowledge and experience also tend to be the most humble.
- rashkov 5y ago
  Completely agreed, but sometimes blog posts by ordinary writers end up on the front page here, and it’d be good to consider that maybe they weren’t expecting tens of thousands of people would read it. In this case I think it pays to cut the author some slack and sympathize a bit. The author has clearly had a rough time, and there’s no need for an internet pile-on. At the very least it’s not constructive and needlessly personal to label the author a narcissist as in the top level comment I’m responding to.
TheCondor 5y ago
Maybe the ability to “make a difference” while being disconnected from the community enough to not see the dysfunction is the dysfunction. I’ve never fully understood the languagism stuff and I have openly mocked “… considered harmful” but maybe languagism should be considered harmful. Seriously, if you like writing software, isn’t the tooling a medium? Bad tools is no fun but you can still make software, you can solve problems, you can see it work, that’s what it’s about, right?
bluGill 5y ago
The problem is she had specific ideas of what would make C++ better, and when 500 smart people are in the room there will be people who disagree. I've seen a lot of what I thought were good ideas get shot down when someone else brought out an objection I hadn't though of. Sometimes someone listens to the objection, spends a couple years of rework, and the process repeats a few times until the objections are satisfied, or at least the majority agree they are worth ignoring. This is not easy, but it is a required part of making them useful. Anything else just adds more inconsistencies until C++ is completely unusable. Many people cannot handle it and think it is the C++ community being obstructionist when in fact it is just that we all have different needs, the only thing in common is we need a language that we can use for our problem so you better not mess that up.

armchairperson 5y ago

Sounds like the author is getting help already. Starting with the diagnosis. Receiving a diagnosis that you have a personality disorder is not an easy pill to swallow. It also doesn't fix anything, but it helps explain past behavior. Narcissism may also play a role but as a personality disorder it is incredibly difficult to manage and find support for. Saying "drop your pride" to someone that you suspect of having NPD doesn't seem any more helpful to me than saying "just stop having obsessive thoughts" to someone with OCD. Besides sounding harsh, this attitude is probably not very useful or effective.

taneq 5y ago

> Imagine needing to announce your "departure" from a community. If you're active enough in a community that you'd need to explain something multiple times to multiple close contacts then isn't it the most efficient way to do it?

dang 5y ago

Please do not cross into personal attack on HN, and especially please don't do internet psychiatric diagnosis here. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22internet%20psychiatric%20diagnosis%22 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a... Perhaps you don't feel you owe article authors better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html