It's because he's frequently right, and has little patience for people that can't hack it. He expects a higher level of coding maturity and complexity than mos

It's because he's frequently right, and has little patience for people that can't hack it. He expects a higher level of coding maturity and complexity than most people do. Zed's attitude results in a less welcoming image but a higher level of technical expertise. Whether that is a good thing or not in the long run is an open question in my mind. I usually can't stand people like that, but there are two reasons why I like him. First, if someone finds a bug in his code or shows (with proof) that he did something wrong, he takes it just as well as he gives it. And second, he actually writes some pretty damn good code. I think we need more people like him. There are too many ex PHP turned Rails developers who assume just because they can deploy a decent web app that they know everything. Hell, some of Zed's most vocal disagreements have been about performance. Zed actually knows his stuff and can back up his point of view with statistics. Most Rails developers on the other hand have no idea about some of the computer science concepts needed to talk about performance in an informed way. Zed's got a lot of public opinion against him. Just watch some of his keynotes to get a better idea of what he is actually like.