5 ms·
You know what would be better than a blog post or Twitter apology? Go away for a little while. Don't Tweet. Don't Blog. Don't comment or talk. Go away...and cod
by jballanc 14y ago
You know what would be better than a blog post or Twitter apology? Go away for a little while. Don't Tweet. Don't Blog. Don't comment or talk. Go away...and code.
The programmer community likes to fancy itself a meritocracy. Presumably, that implies that you are judged on the merit of your programming ability. Ask yourself: of the people involved in this whole brouhaha, whose code have you read?
We are all very busy, and none among us has the time to read the code of every other individual. This is where the concept of "meritocracy" breaks down. At some point, reputations count. The proper way to do this is: I know Joe. Joe writes good code. Joe recommends Bob's code, and when I looked at Bob's code, it was also good. I now trust Joe when he recommends people and/or their code.
The wrong way to do this is: Jim's a celebrity. Everybody loves him. Everybody parrots what he says. He must write good code.
Celebrity culture is directly counter to a meritocracy. So, my challenge to the "celebrities" involved in this incident: if you fancy your high positions to be well and truly earned, remind us of that fact by going away...
...and writing some kick-ass code.
- Confusion 14y agoAsk yourself: of the people involved in this whole brouhaha, whose code have you read? Of most of them. It seems you are unaware who these people are and what projects they have contributed to. You're making a good point, but these are the wrong people to use as an example for that point.
- jballanc 14y agoThe point is not that no one has read the "celebrities" code. The point is that if you looked at the ratio of "people who have heard of <person>" to "people who have read the code produced by <person>" for the people involved, I suspect there would be one outlier. (as a simple post-script...I am very aware of these people and their projects, and made this comment in that context...)
- Tichy 14y agoPeople said something they regret, I don't understand why it would be wrong to apologize? Sorry, can't follow the logic of your comment at all?
- jballanc 14y agoYou should re-read what I wrote. I did not say apologizing would be wrong. I expressed my opinion on what would be an even better course of action.
- Tichy 14y agoYeah but I don't get it. How would ignoring the issue be a better apology? These people write code anyway, there is no way the victim could realize "ah, they are silently writing code, so they must be sorry". And the people following their example also wouldn't have that thought.
- benburton 14y ago> Ask yourself: of the people involved in this whole brouhaha, whose code have you read? I've definitely read Steve Klabnik's code. He's a Rails core team member, and when I work on a Rails app I frequently open stuff up to see what's going on under the hood. > Celebrity culture is directly counter to a meritocracy. So, my challenge to the "celebrities" involved in this incident: if you fancy your high positions to be well and truly earned, remind us of that fact by going away and writing some kick-ass code. I know that Steve's always writing code for one public open source thing or another... I've seen it. He also happens to tweet a lot. I don't think that the two things you're suggesting here have to be mutually exclusive.
- jballanc 14y agoI don't think I said they have to be mutually exclusive. But part of the problem, as outlined in the original post, is that these weren't anybodys disparaging an open source project...they were veritable celebrities! (Just look at their follower count!) At the same time, Steve (as he stated in his post), seems to be having a hard time expressing his remorse. My suggestion is that he should remember why he ever attained "celebrity" status in the first place... ...also, it's a lot harder to disparage other people's code when you're buried deep in your own code. Edit: I lost track of whose post was whose and originally wrote "as he stated in this post". Corrected.
- recursive 14y agoI have never heard of anyone involved. But at this point I would count that as a win.