I've spoken to him over email before. He comes across as a pretty good guy, unlike the perception I had of him from his writings. His article about understandin

I've spoken to him over email before. He comes across as a pretty good guy, unlike the perception I had of him from his writings. His article about understanding statistics should be required reading for any good programmer. It's a pity that he decided to focus his efforts elsewhere (e.g., not Ruby/Rails) about a year ago. I've worked with people before that have his "blog" personality (for lack of a better description) but in real life. Most of the time these are really smart people, and they are difficult on others because there are a lot of stupid ideas out there. One way of ensuring you filter out the crap is to shut the door on everything. The good stuff will knock again. I had a boss that called a lot of things I suggested stupid. So when I had to fight to implement an idea, and I was adamant about it, he knew that it probably wasn't stupid, and let me go ahead. Think of it as being skeptical, assertive, and intimidating. In the end, about half of my ideas got implemented. The other half I ended up being glad were not implemented, usually about a year after the decision. He'd been correct, and made me look better by keeping me from making a mistake. It's a lot like picking up girls at a bar. The good ones are hit on so many times that their gut instinct is to shut you down immediately if you approach them. You need to be persistent and stand your ground in order to win them over. Most guys will cower and retreat at the first sign of rejection. The ones that get a girl's number are the ones that know how to stay and do battle, so to speak. Zed shows that he's willing to think about issues long term. Most people would simply live with and forget about what they wrote in that rant. Zed goes and makes an update to it saying that he wants to retract what he said. I think that's an admirable trait.