13 ms·

Stop Calling People Morons.

91 points by karanbhangui 14y ago

rmATinnovafy 14y ago
Well put.
Produce 14y ago
What a moron.
- josscrowcroft 14y ago
  Yeah I actually thought this was pretty funny, I was about to post the same thing myself. Maybe it's British humour.
  - Produce 14y ago
    I'm British too, definitely our humor.
- jstanley 14y ago
  The number of downvotes you received shows that this joke went way over most people's heads...
  - driverdan 14y ago
    No, this was downvoted because this is HN, not reddit. Comments are supposed to add to have quality content. This joke was not quality content.
draggnar 14y ago
this post reminded me a lot of the Dale Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Calling people morons and having a negative attitude won't make you many friends.
- googletron 14y ago
  Excellent point.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Depends. There are places where you can find friends quicker if you call somebody else a moron. Few groups will hate you for talking trash about their enemies.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- slantyyz 14y ago
  > Calling people morons and having a negative attitude won't make you many friends. This only matters if you want or need friends. While most people do, there are some that don't.
  - prophetjohn 14y ago
    It's also not likely to win people to your way of thinking, which is largely what the book is about.
    - slantyyz 14y ago
      The individuals referred to in the OP calling people morons probably aren't very concerned about that either. Some might argue that they don't need to be concerned about that.
- Marwy 14y ago
  How will you know if someone have read "How to Win Friends and Influence People"? They'll tell you.
  - draggnar 14y ago
    see, you didn't really garner my friendship with that comment. nothing lost, but nothing gained
13hours 14y ago
Stop jumping to conclusions. Linus reacted to a troll comment that was later deleted. Something along the lines of "What, your shit don't stink?". It deserved the moron reply. Stop jumping to conclusions rather.
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Or, it could be taken as a lesson: Even if you're Linus Torvalds reacting to a totally moronic comment, it still might not be wise to answer in kind.
  - roopeshv 14y ago
    he has no obligation to react to idiotic comments in kind. Would you answer a troll kindly? If you do, how long would you be willing to do it? Forever? 2 days? 10 comments? If not forever, why not forever? If Linus had the time you and I had discussing in hn comments, I would guess linux would not be what it is today.
    - kelnos 14y ago
      whatever happened to "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"? sure, that's absolutist and not always the best response, but not feeding trolls is a tenet of most successful online communities.
      - roopeshv 14y ago
        then what're the rules to figure out who's troll? I could be well intentioned and totally come off as a troll, if I disagree with majority. I could not be a troll, even if I am proposing the absolutely horrendous idea, to a majority which agrees. Not everything is black and white.
        kelnos 14y ago
        Then always err on the side of good faith. If you think something's blatantly a troll, ignore it. If you're not sure, engage politely. It should become clear pretty quickly if you're being trolled or not. There's no reason to start off being a dick, and people will respect you more for it. I have a ton of respect for Linus Torvalds' technical abilities, and for his way of succinctly and clearly explaining what can often be difficult concepts. However, his off-the-bat lack of civility -- hell, active hostility -- disgusts me sometimes. I'm sure he doesn't care, though: as he said, he's managed to accomplish his goals on the internet just fine how he is. So that's fine, I suppose. I just find it disappointing.
jstanley 14y ago
Poor grammar.
neutronicus 14y ago
Insults in general are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as something that speeds socialization. It's the "football coach" approach to managing new talent, a calculated gamble that the stick is more effective than the carrot and that little of value is lost when someone is pushed away from a community when they're socialized harshly. It'll be interesting to see whether kinder, gentler open source communities start obviously outproducing ones operating on the Torvalds/Drepper model.
- rsanchez1 14y ago
  It may be the norm for Torvalds, but more often than not, insults are just an easy cop-out from people who got in too far or realize that the other person had a point all along. Besides, I'm sure Torvalds doesn't throw around insults to people who have clearly articulated a point and demonstrated an understanding of the topic discussed, and were willing to listen.
- andos 14y ago
  The comparison to a football coach is very accurate, but I think it's unfair to put Linus Torvalds and Ulrich Drepper in the same bucket. While Drepper is pure asshole, Linus just uses insults in the same situations the rest of us would use bold text. I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of one such email, of course, but most of his tirades are actually very constructive.
  - neutronicus 14y ago
    I think both of their demeanors have the same cultural lineage. I didn't want to cherrypick, so I threw Drepper in there, too.
vasco 14y ago
Insults drive people who can't handle them away. By experience, those people will worry about meaningless things and make a fuss about nothing. Insults are a filter, just deal with it. If you don't like someone because they talk harshly just don't deal with them, you're free to do as you please.
- tomp 14y ago
  My thoughts exactly. I'm so annoyed by these form over content discussions. Look, people, Linus gave us Linux, he's shown he is incredibly selfless through his actions, and you're judging him for his words?!?
  - autarch 14y ago
    Words are action. Linus wrote the words, then posted the comment (two actions write there). I hate to break it to you, but everything counts.
    - tomp 14y ago
      Sure. But some actions have more weight than others. Who is a more moral person, a nice guy who speeds on the highway, or a murderer who drives by the limits? Are you gonna judge someone who says he loves women, but kills them during the night, by his actions or by his words?
      - autarch 14y ago
        The "nice guy" who speeds does so in reckless disregard for the fact that his speeding can easily cause an accident that could kill people (depending on how fast he's going, obviously). Cars are freaking dangerous.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Does the action of insulting people really hold a light to his other actions?
michaelochurch 14y ago
Linus's persona aside, I think one of the issues with software is that what we do is intensely structurally cooperative (rather than competitive). What I mean is that we benefit immensely from other engineers being more competent, not less. Why are so many more jobs posted for Java than functional languages? Why do software engineers get little respect in most organizations? Because the average programmer just isn't very competent, and those of us who are a lot better (and over 10 times as effective, if given the right tools and environment) get held back by the culture the average ones create. The problem is that most of these mediocre developers aren't "morons". They're people of reasonable talent who, for whatever reason, did not improve as programmers but who remained in the industry. We suffer a lot because of them, but calling them idiots isn't going to make the situation better. It's just being a dickhead. It'd be much better to actually solve the problem, but that's a lot harder than calling people stupid.
- bane 14y ago
  To go to an analogy, architecture or civil engineering. Not everybody can be a Frank Lloyd Wright, and more importantly there are lots more schools, mass produced suburban houses apartment complexes, highway overpasses and public restrooms that need to be designed than world class museums. They don't need to be done with huge flourish or be terribly forward looking. They just need to be designed and built competently, not fall over and not have a leaky roof. There's nothing wrong with this state of affairs. Civilizations are largely built out of boring run-of-the-mill stuff. Likewise, average developers don't need to build operating systems, or complex thread schedulers. They need to build the 30 foot boring overpass or utility box of the software world. And in many ways that's more important.
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    I agree with what you're saying, but there's a crucial difference: in software, the "boring run-of-the-mill stuff" can be automated. There's an interesting problem there, even if the application is macroscopically boring. If someone has a genuinely boring job (as opposed to an ill-matched job, or possibly a job not worth doing) then that indicates a lack of automation-- perhaps the programmer's fault (he's not skilled or courageous enough to do it) and possibly a manager's fault (for not budgeting time to do things properly). That, I think, is the hardest thing about managing programmers, in which I include the increasingly important long-term job of managing one's own career. There are very few macroscopic indicators of what work is actually interesting (and more importantly, what projects fit which individuals). If you asked me, at age 19 when I knew very little about software, whether it'd be more interesting to work on a game or work on an OS or a compiler, I'd have said the game based on the project's macroscopic attractiveness. Of course, most experienced programmers would prefer to work on the OS. If you're trying to hammer some C++ legacy garbage from another project into usefulness, the fact that it's "for a game" doesn't mean very much. What I actually find is that there's only a very slight correlation between macroscopic and day-to-day "interestingness" in work (which is why it's so hard for managers to tell which projects are interesting). More important is the work environment-- whether you have the autonomy and creative control to solve problems in a decent way and make the work interesting.
CodeMage 14y ago
Articles like this keep reminding me of Billy Connolly's exclamation of "Fuck political correctness!" Sometimes you should be free to call a spade a spade. Recently I have been seeing leaders in software communities regardless of being correct or not, basically blowing up on other software developers on the internet because of something _stupid_ they have done or said. That's only because you've started paying attention recently and that is only because you, like so many people (myself included), get your dose of interesting news from places like Hacker News, instead of participating directly in, say, kernel development. Let's face it, it has become trendy to criticize outstanding people with outstanding accomplishments for being rude. Yeah, okay, I get it: nobody likes being humiliated. Plus, everyone has been humiliated at some point in their life and isn't it just incredible how, after all that time, it still smarts to remember it? It's easy to jump to conclusions and on the bandwagon, easy and righteous to join the mob with pitchforks and torches. It's a lot harder to put yourself in the shoes of "the rude dude" and wonder whether you have all the context you need in order to judge him or her. REALLY?! Just because you were fortunate to work on something that is widely used and appreciated does that give you the right to openly belittle people's efforts and work. The short answer? Yes. The long answer is a bit more complicated, but since you and so many others seem to like simplifying things, I thought I would offer the short answer first. The long answer is that I've seen that kind of reaction firsthand from people who have built something incredibly complex from scratch, know it inside out and get the same well-intentioned but poorly thought-out suggestions all the freaking time. It doesn't stop there, unfortunately. Those kinds of things tend to get debated to death, because bikeshedding is so alluring. More often than not, the person who offered the suggestion in the first place will get offended when their suggestion gets tossed out summarily, without realizing that they're far from first to come up with that idea. And some of those who get offended will react badly and even abusively. So in the end, the guy who built the damn thing decides that maybe they don't have to take that shit anymore. Yeah, I know, Mom and Dad taught me to be polite to everyone and never be rude and say "please" and "thank you" and two wrongs don't make a right and I shouldn't sink down to "their" level and all that. You know what? I can't imagine being as accomplished as Linus or Crockford and turning the other cheek all the time, not when there are people who will write stuff like "Just because you were fortunate to work on something that is widely used and appreciated". Nope, they were not fortunate. If you think that's luck, you should spend your time playing lottery. And then there's the assumption that every time we see the kind of reaction Linus is famous for, it's because someone feels entitled to "belittle people's efforts and work". Never mind that it might be a situation in which no effort or actual work took place. Never mind that it might have been something truly dumb and a little research would have revealed it to be a staggeringly bad idea. Hell, never mind that it could have been a troll and that seeing a reply for which there is no original message should have indicated to you, as a reader, that there's a missing piece and that you simply don't have enough information. No, let's all be self-righteous instead, because -- to paraphrase xkcd -- someone was rude on the Internet.
RJF 14y ago
Douglas Crockford wrote "that is insanely stupid code", he did not call anyone a moron for having written it. "Criticize the code, not the developer"
tptacek 14y ago
Crockford didn't call anyone a moron. He called a piece of code stupid. There's simply no reasonable way to connect the dots from that to Crockford thinking that the person who wrote the code is mentally deficient. He just objects strongly to a particular coding style. Leave it alone.
- staunch 14y ago
  This is an important distinction. Randal Schwartz had similar complaints and at some point years ago even added a disclaimer to his posts. Attention! The following comment is never meant personally. You are not your code. I most likely do not even know you personally, and don't make presumptions about your character or habits based on a single posting. I'm only commenting on the ability for the code you posted to do its stated task, with particular attention being paid to: * Security * Maintainability * Avoiding needless reimplementation * Contribution to the community If I sound like I'm flaming, please re-read the message a few more times until you see that it's about the code and the Perl community, and not about you personally. That is all. Thank you. http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=205373 http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=205373
- michaelcampbell 14y ago
  C'mon; short of Skynet code doesn't have the capability of intelligence so calling code stupid is calling the person that wrote it stupid for having done it. When one says "this code is stupid", there is absolutely no express nor implied caveat of "...but of course I totally separate you from it". (I suppose someone further along the autistic or sociopathic continuum than most might genuinely make that distinction.) Of course you are correct in the absolute that Crockford doesn't think the author has an actual mental deficiency, but that's not what calling someone stupid means, either.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I reject this analysis entirely.
droithomme 14y ago
I am relieved the author gave specific examples of what he was talking about. Both cases, in my opinion, seemed to be reasonable responses.
sandis 14y ago
Stop being so oversensitive.
rmATinnovafy 14y ago
I don't believe anyone is an idiot. For I have seen many people do incredibly smart things. People who work at fast food restaurants. Security guards. Pizza delivery drivers. If you saw [1] Hawkins strolling down in his electric wheelchair you would not even think they guy is one of the smartest minds to ever challenge the world. Everyone is capable of amazing things. There are no morons. [1] Thank you eblade for pointing out that I wrote Dawkins (the biologist), instead of Hawkins.
- eblade 14y ago
  It's professor Hawking that's wheelchair bound.
  - rmATinnovafy 14y ago
    Yes, thank you. I'm always confusing them both. Also, thank you for not calling me a moron.
fennecfoxen 14y ago
As long as we're ranting about coworkers' and acquaintances' word choices last week, can we stop calling our political opponents "literally horrible terrible people" and suggesting that they ought to be disenfranchised and maybe sterilized? Also, the word "backwards": it just means "someone who doesn't agree with my preferred narrative of social progress". It's really good at making you feel good about yourself, and for looking down on people, but it doesn't actually mean anything.
kabdib 14y ago
A couple years ago our team had a really bad relationship with another team at work. They were morons. They did everything wrong, and made LOTS of work for us. One day I found I was sick of it -- I stopped calling them idiots. I told my immediate cow-orkers, "I'm tired of calling them shitty names. I'm just not going to do that any more." The embarrassing thing that people around me said was, "Good!" In a few weeks, interesting things began to happen. First, they started listening to my team and me. With a little guidance they stopped making decisions that made life tough for everyone. Now they're not doing /great/, but it's sure a lot better. There is another team I'm going to tackle next. This one is harder, it's been entrenched for years, and it's costing us money. But I have to turn things around, and the easiest thing to start doing is to stop calling people fucking morons. Calling someone a moron is the first step down a slippery path, even if you /know/ they're a moron.
bitwize 14y ago
I am NOT! A! MORON! Could a moron do this? Huh? Could a moron PUNCH! YOU! INTO! THIS! PIT?
readme 14y ago
Contributing to an open source project is a privilege, not a right. If you don't like the way someone treats you you are free to fork it and shrug them off. As a human being you should be as nice as possible to others. However that does not mean you have an entitlement to be treated nicely. It is your duty as an individual to take appropriate action when you perceive injustice.
mwsherman 14y ago
Harder than resisting the urge to call people stupid is resisting the urge to think of them as stupid.
djt 14y ago
Create something awesome over years of your own life and have people make offhand comments with no depth of knowledge and then waste your time arguing about it. See how you feel then.
djt 14y ago
Create something awesome over years of your own life and have people make offhand comments with no depth of knowledge and then waste your time arguing about it. See how you feel then.
kamaal 14y ago
Its difficult to understand the attitude of people blatantly supporting hubris and arrogance in this thread. There is a very big difference between telling 'This is where you are wrong, you may need to do x and y to correct it' and 'Your work is stupid, and you are stupid to have worked on it'. Sure you might have achieved something in life, what makes you believe somebody else can't? Using your fame to make others look like idiots just to prove your point is never good behavior, no matter who you are. Your fame is no free pass to ridicule, belittle and abuse other. Whoever you might be. Another thing you must never do is humiliate and ridicule other just because he looks weak at the moment. Never ever ever underestimate any one. That guy can work his way out of the problem and may be even beat you, while you day dream how weak he is. Also when you work hard, win and become famous you must be content and be happy that your efforts were well rewarded, instead of assuming that somehow you are special and have godly powers. And nobody can ever reach your level of fame and success. This is hubris.
makecheck 14y ago
While raw communication can be hard to hear, I've found it lets me grow the most and it is far superior to no communication. There is nothing quite as motivational as deciding that you're going to prove naysayers wrong. If they say that what you did sucks, you work really hard to make them liars. Anger is good for this. Hearing nothing but praise just keeps you from trying to do better, and sugar-coated problems never seem severe enough to invest time in. It's also a clue (albeit one lacking social graces) when people speak strongly about something: the topic is important to them. Don't allow bad language to keep you from parsing a good point out of an argument; you might not hear that same argument from anyone else.

91 points by karanbhangui 14y ago

rmATinnovafy 14y ago

Well put.

Produce 14y ago

What a moron.

josscrowcroft 14y ago
Yeah I actually thought this was pretty funny, I was about to post the same thing myself. Maybe it's British humour.
- Produce 14y ago
  I'm British too, definitely our humor.
jstanley 14y ago
The number of downvotes you received shows that this joke went way over most people's heads...
- driverdan 14y ago
  No, this was downvoted because this is HN, not reddit. Comments are supposed to add to have quality content. This joke was not quality content.

draggnar 14y ago

this post reminded me a lot of the Dale Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Calling people morons and having a negative attitude won't make you many friends.

googletron 14y ago
Excellent point.
tomjen3 14y ago
Depends. There are places where you can find friends quicker if you call somebody else a moron. Few groups will hate you for talking trash about their enemies.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
slantyyz 14y ago
> Calling people morons and having a negative attitude won't make you many friends. This only matters if you want or need friends. While most people do, there are some that don't.
- prophetjohn 14y ago
  It's also not likely to win people to your way of thinking, which is largely what the book is about.
  - slantyyz 14y ago
    The individuals referred to in the OP calling people morons probably aren't very concerned about that either. Some might argue that they don't need to be concerned about that.
Marwy 14y ago
How will you know if someone have read "How to Win Friends and Influence People"? They'll tell you.
- draggnar 14y ago
  see, you didn't really garner my friendship with that comment. nothing lost, but nothing gained

13hours 14y ago

Stop jumping to conclusions. Linus reacted to a troll comment that was later deleted. Something along the lines of "What, your shit don't stink?". It deserved the moron reply. Stop jumping to conclusions rather.

stcredzero 14y ago
Or, it could be taken as a lesson: Even if you're Linus Torvalds reacting to a totally moronic comment, it still might not be wise to answer in kind.
- roopeshv 14y ago
  he has no obligation to react to idiotic comments in kind. Would you answer a troll kindly? If you do, how long would you be willing to do it? Forever? 2 days? 10 comments? If not forever, why not forever? If Linus had the time you and I had discussing in hn comments, I would guess linux would not be what it is today.
  - kelnos 14y ago
    whatever happened to "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all"? sure, that's absolutist and not always the best response, but not feeding trolls is a tenet of most successful online communities.
    - roopeshv 14y ago
      then what're the rules to figure out who's troll? I could be well intentioned and totally come off as a troll, if I disagree with majority. I could not be a troll, even if I am proposing the absolutely horrendous idea, to a majority which agrees. Not everything is black and white.
      - kelnos 14y ago
        Then always err on the side of good faith. If you think something's blatantly a troll, ignore it. If you're not sure, engage politely. It should become clear pretty quickly if you're being trolled or not. There's no reason to start off being a dick, and people will respect you more for it. I have a ton of respect for Linus Torvalds' technical abilities, and for his way of succinctly and clearly explaining what can often be difficult concepts. However, his off-the-bat lack of civility -- hell, active hostility -- disgusts me sometimes. I'm sure he doesn't care, though: as he said, he's managed to accomplish his goals on the internet just fine how he is. So that's fine, I suppose. I just find it disappointing.

jstanley 14y ago

Poor grammar.

neutronicus 14y ago

Insults in general are perceived, rightly or wrongly, as something that speeds socialization. It's the "football coach" approach to managing new talent, a calculated gamble that the stick is more effective than the carrot and that little of value is lost when someone is pushed away from a community when they're socialized harshly. It'll be interesting to see whether kinder, gentler open source communities start obviously outproducing ones operating on the Torvalds/Drepper model.

rsanchez1 14y ago
It may be the norm for Torvalds, but more often than not, insults are just an easy cop-out from people who got in too far or realize that the other person had a point all along. Besides, I'm sure Torvalds doesn't throw around insults to people who have clearly articulated a point and demonstrated an understanding of the topic discussed, and were willing to listen.
andos 14y ago
The comparison to a football coach is very accurate, but I think it's unfair to put Linus Torvalds and Ulrich Drepper in the same bucket. While Drepper is pure asshole, Linus just uses insults in the same situations the rest of us would use bold text. I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end of one such email, of course, but most of his tirades are actually very constructive.
- neutronicus 14y ago
  I think both of their demeanors have the same cultural lineage. I didn't want to cherrypick, so I threw Drepper in there, too.

vasco 14y ago

Insults drive people who can't handle them away. By experience, those people will worry about meaningless things and make a fuss about nothing. Insults are a filter, just deal with it. If you don't like someone because they talk harshly just don't deal with them, you're free to do as you please.

tomp 14y ago
My thoughts exactly. I'm so annoyed by these form over content discussions. Look, people, Linus gave us Linux, he's shown he is incredibly selfless through his actions, and you're judging him for his words?!?
- autarch 14y ago
  Words are action. Linus wrote the words, then posted the comment (two actions write there). I hate to break it to you, but everything counts.
  - tomp 14y ago
    Sure. But some actions have more weight than others. Who is a more moral person, a nice guy who speeds on the highway, or a murderer who drives by the limits? Are you gonna judge someone who says he loves women, but kills them during the night, by his actions or by his words?
    - autarch 14y ago
      The "nice guy" who speeds does so in reckless disregard for the fact that his speeding can easily cause an accident that could kill people (depending on how fast he's going, obviously). Cars are freaking dangerous.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Does the action of insulting people really hold a light to his other actions?

michaelochurch 14y ago

Linus's persona aside, I think one of the issues with software is that what we do is intensely structurally cooperative (rather than competitive). What I mean is that we benefit immensely from other engineers being more competent, not less. Why are so many more jobs posted for Java than functional languages? Why do software engineers get little respect in most organizations? Because the average programmer just isn't very competent, and those of us who are a lot better (and over 10 times as effective, if given the right tools and environment) get held back by the culture the average ones create. The problem is that most of these mediocre developers aren't "morons". They're people of reasonable talent who, for whatever reason, did not improve as programmers but who remained in the industry. We suffer a lot because of them, but calling them idiots isn't going to make the situation better. It's just being a dickhead. It'd be much better to actually solve the problem, but that's a lot harder than calling people stupid.

bane 14y ago
To go to an analogy, architecture or civil engineering. Not everybody can be a Frank Lloyd Wright, and more importantly there are lots more schools, mass produced suburban houses apartment complexes, highway overpasses and public restrooms that need to be designed than world class museums. They don't need to be done with huge flourish or be terribly forward looking. They just need to be designed and built competently, not fall over and not have a leaky roof. There's nothing wrong with this state of affairs. Civilizations are largely built out of boring run-of-the-mill stuff. Likewise, average developers don't need to build operating systems, or complex thread schedulers. They need to build the 30 foot boring overpass or utility box of the software world. And in many ways that's more important.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  I agree with what you're saying, but there's a crucial difference: in software, the "boring run-of-the-mill stuff" can be automated. There's an interesting problem there, even if the application is macroscopically boring. If someone has a genuinely boring job (as opposed to an ill-matched job, or possibly a job not worth doing) then that indicates a lack of automation-- perhaps the programmer's fault (he's not skilled or courageous enough to do it) and possibly a manager's fault (for not budgeting time to do things properly). That, I think, is the hardest thing about managing programmers, in which I include the increasingly important long-term job of managing one's own career. There are very few macroscopic indicators of what work is actually interesting (and more importantly, what projects fit which individuals). If you asked me, at age 19 when I knew very little about software, whether it'd be more interesting to work on a game or work on an OS or a compiler, I'd have said the game based on the project's macroscopic attractiveness. Of course, most experienced programmers would prefer to work on the OS. If you're trying to hammer some C++ legacy garbage from another project into usefulness, the fact that it's "for a game" doesn't mean very much. What I actually find is that there's only a very slight correlation between macroscopic and day-to-day "interestingness" in work (which is why it's so hard for managers to tell which projects are interesting). More important is the work environment-- whether you have the autonomy and creative control to solve problems in a decent way and make the work interesting.

CodeMage 14y ago

Articles like this keep reminding me of Billy Connolly's exclamation of "Fuck political correctness!" Sometimes you should be free to call a spade a spade. Recently I have been seeing leaders in software communities regardless of being correct or not, basically blowing up on other software developers on the internet because of something _stupid_ they have done or said. That's only because you've started paying attention recently and that is only because you, like so many people (myself included), get your dose of interesting news from places like Hacker News, instead of participating directly in, say, kernel development. Let's face it, it has become trendy to criticize outstanding people with outstanding accomplishments for being rude. Yeah, okay, I get it: nobody likes being humiliated. Plus, everyone has been humiliated at some point in their life and isn't it just incredible how, after all that time, it still smarts to remember it? It's easy to jump to conclusions and on the bandwagon, easy and righteous to join the mob with pitchforks and torches. It's a lot harder to put yourself in the shoes of "the rude dude" and wonder whether you have all the context you need in order to judge him or her. REALLY?! Just because you were fortunate to work on something that is widely used and appreciated does that give you the right to openly belittle people's efforts and work. The short answer? Yes. The long answer is a bit more complicated, but since you and so many others seem to like simplifying things, I thought I would offer the short answer first. The long answer is that I've seen that kind of reaction firsthand from people who have built something incredibly complex from scratch, know it inside out and get the same well-intentioned but poorly thought-out suggestions all the freaking time. It doesn't stop there, unfortunately. Those kinds of things tend to get debated to death, because bikeshedding is so alluring. More often than not, the person who offered the suggestion in the first place will get offended when their suggestion gets tossed out summarily, without realizing that they're far from first to come up with that idea. And some of those who get offended will react badly and even abusively. So in the end, the guy who built the damn thing decides that maybe they don't have to take that shit anymore. Yeah, I know, Mom and Dad taught me to be polite to everyone and never be rude and say "please" and "thank you" and two wrongs don't make a right and I shouldn't sink down to "their" level and all that. You know what? I can't imagine being as accomplished as Linus or Crockford and turning the other cheek all the time, not when there are people who will write stuff like "Just because you were fortunate to work on something that is widely used and appreciated". Nope, they were not fortunate. If you think that's luck, you should spend your time playing lottery. And then there's the assumption that every time we see the kind of reaction Linus is famous for, it's because someone feels entitled to "belittle people's efforts and work". Never mind that it might be a situation in which no effort or actual work took place. Never mind that it might have been something truly dumb and a little research would have revealed it to be a staggeringly bad idea. Hell, never mind that it could have been a troll and that seeing a reply for which there is no original message should have indicated to you, as a reader, that there's a missing piece and that you simply don't have enough information. No, let's all be self-righteous instead, because -- to paraphrase xkcd -- someone was rude on the Internet.

RJF 14y ago

Douglas Crockford wrote "that is insanely stupid code", he did not call anyone a moron for having written it. "Criticize the code, not the developer"

tptacek 14y ago

Crockford didn't call anyone a moron. He called a piece of code stupid. There's simply no reasonable way to connect the dots from that to Crockford thinking that the person who wrote the code is mentally deficient. He just objects strongly to a particular coding style. Leave it alone.

staunch 14y ago
This is an important distinction. Randal Schwartz had similar complaints and at some point years ago even added a disclaimer to his posts. Attention! The following comment is never meant personally. You are not your code. I most likely do not even know you personally, and don't make presumptions about your character or habits based on a single posting. I'm only commenting on the ability for the code you posted to do its stated task, with particular attention being paid to: * Security * Maintainability * Avoiding needless reimplementation * Contribution to the community If I sound like I'm flaming, please re-read the message a few more times until you see that it's about the code and the Perl community, and not about you personally. That is all. Thank you. http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=205373 http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=205373
michaelcampbell 14y ago
C'mon; short of Skynet code doesn't have the capability of intelligence so calling code stupid is calling the person that wrote it stupid for having done it. When one says "this code is stupid", there is absolutely no express nor implied caveat of "...but of course I totally separate you from it". (I suppose someone further along the autistic or sociopathic continuum than most might genuinely make that distinction.) Of course you are correct in the absolute that Crockford doesn't think the author has an actual mental deficiency, but that's not what calling someone stupid means, either.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I reject this analysis entirely.

droithomme 14y ago

I am relieved the author gave specific examples of what he was talking about. Both cases, in my opinion, seemed to be reasonable responses.

sandis 14y ago

Stop being so oversensitive.

rmATinnovafy 14y ago

I don't believe anyone is an idiot. For I have seen many people do incredibly smart things. People who work at fast food restaurants. Security guards. Pizza delivery drivers. If you saw [1] Hawkins strolling down in his electric wheelchair you would not even think they guy is one of the smartest minds to ever challenge the world. Everyone is capable of amazing things. There are no morons. [1] Thank you eblade for pointing out that I wrote Dawkins (the biologist), instead of Hawkins.

eblade 14y ago
It's professor Hawking that's wheelchair bound.
- rmATinnovafy 14y ago
  Yes, thank you. I'm always confusing them both. Also, thank you for not calling me a moron.

fennecfoxen 14y ago

As long as we're ranting about coworkers' and acquaintances' word choices last week, can we stop calling our political opponents "literally horrible terrible people" and suggesting that they ought to be disenfranchised and maybe sterilized? Also, the word "backwards": it just means "someone who doesn't agree with my preferred narrative of social progress". It's really good at making you feel good about yourself, and for looking down on people, but it doesn't actually mean anything.

kabdib 14y ago

A couple years ago our team had a really bad relationship with another team at work. They were morons. They did everything wrong, and made LOTS of work for us. One day I found I was sick of it -- I stopped calling them idiots. I told my immediate cow-orkers, "I'm tired of calling them shitty names. I'm just not going to do that any more." The embarrassing thing that people around me said was, "Good!" In a few weeks, interesting things began to happen. First, they started listening to my team and me. With a little guidance they stopped making decisions that made life tough for everyone. Now they're not doing /great/, but it's sure a lot better. There is another team I'm going to tackle next. This one is harder, it's been entrenched for years, and it's costing us money. But I have to turn things around, and the easiest thing to start doing is to stop calling people fucking morons. Calling someone a moron is the first step down a slippery path, even if you /know/ they're a moron.

bitwize 14y ago

I am NOT! A! MORON! Could a moron do this? Huh? Could a moron PUNCH! YOU! INTO! THIS! PIT?

readme 14y ago

Contributing to an open source project is a privilege, not a right. If you don't like the way someone treats you you are free to fork it and shrug them off. As a human being you should be as nice as possible to others. However that does not mean you have an entitlement to be treated nicely. It is your duty as an individual to take appropriate action when you perceive injustice.

mwsherman 14y ago

Harder than resisting the urge to call people stupid is resisting the urge to think of them as stupid.

djt 14y ago

Create something awesome over years of your own life and have people make offhand comments with no depth of knowledge and then waste your time arguing about it. See how you feel then.

djt 14y ago

Create something awesome over years of your own life and have people make offhand comments with no depth of knowledge and then waste your time arguing about it. See how you feel then.

kamaal 14y ago

Its difficult to understand the attitude of people blatantly supporting hubris and arrogance in this thread. There is a very big difference between telling 'This is where you are wrong, you may need to do x and y to correct it' and 'Your work is stupid, and you are stupid to have worked on it'. Sure you might have achieved something in life, what makes you believe somebody else can't? Using your fame to make others look like idiots just to prove your point is never good behavior, no matter who you are. Your fame is no free pass to ridicule, belittle and abuse other. Whoever you might be. Another thing you must never do is humiliate and ridicule other just because he looks weak at the moment. Never ever ever underestimate any one. That guy can work his way out of the problem and may be even beat you, while you day dream how weak he is. Also when you work hard, win and become famous you must be content and be happy that your efforts were well rewarded, instead of assuming that somehow you are special and have godly powers. And nobody can ever reach your level of fame and success. This is hubris.

makecheck 14y ago

While raw communication can be hard to hear, I've found it lets me grow the most and it is far superior to no communication. There is nothing quite as motivational as deciding that you're going to prove naysayers wrong. If they say that what you did sucks, you work really hard to make them liars. Anger is good for this. Hearing nothing but praise just keeps you from trying to do better, and sugar-coated problems never seem severe enough to invest time in. It's also a clue (albeit one lacking social graces) when people speak strongly about something: the topic is important to them. Don't allow bad language to keep you from parsing a good point out of an argument; you might not hear that same argument from anyone else.