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People can say what they want about Zed Shaw, in the end, he built things. Things used by millions of people. And he does deserve respect for that.

jacquesm 11y ago
Building things is nice and will get you respect for building things. Attacking people and being abusive will typically undo some of that. The tech community has a couple of other examples of people that built things and that managed to lose a lot or even all of the respect they deserved for that because of other things they did.
- icebraining 11y ago
  There are direct and there are underhanded attacks. Unfortunately, only the former are really condemned.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Try directly criticizing anything Zed has written and see what you reap. For instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570694
    - csirac2 11y ago
      To be fair I just trawled through that thread and found your posts most obsessive, and Zed seemingly sticking to technical discussion with (for him) not all that much profanity. Now, not that I disagree with your assertions (epoll/poll overhead << actual I/O processing) but I don't know why there was so much traffic on this. I don't know zed of course but I used to follow him before the term follow was owned by social media. Trying weird/apparently-pointless shit like measuring how polling scales is Zed's thing. Trying it for the goal of making the absolute fastest http server seems positively sane. So it seems a bit weird that somebody posts zed's adventure to HN and then suddenly he has to defend this experiment like it's a billion dollar company. Perhaps I've missed the egregious thing you were referring to in that thread, but many of his responses to your (numerous!) replies asked for specific stats behind your assertions, and I think it's telling for our industry that you had none (I also have none, yet believe I'll never have to care), which for a person trying to write a fast server by deliberately doing things differently, you can see why he wouldn't be so quick to drop the question and defer to your unsolicited wisdom.
    - kragen 11y ago
      That's a great example of Zed going all macho and abusive when confronted with carefully reasoned criticism. Others have been pointed out in this thread.
- VeejayRampay 11y ago
  I would agree with that, definitely. But then I would expect both sides of the story to be expressed in a more balanced manner in the articles criticizing the contents of what has been produced. I've found that more often than not, people tend to be blindsided and go for blood because it's better shock value and helps create buzz and clicks. Something akin to: "Zed Shaw took on a complicated task, one that hasn't been fully mastered since K&R, but he still took a swing. The author knows what he's talking about, having produced software X/Y/Z. Yet, teaching C, a language that has known worldwide adoption in all layers of software for the past 30 years or so, is such a divisive and complicated matter that I feel that even a skilled programmer such as him somehow missed the mark. Here's my opinion about the good aspects and somewhat less perfect bits of Learn C the Hard Way, so that future readers will know where to exercise caution and where to relax while unleashing C's potential". This conveys the very same opinion, but in a way that is less polarizing and recognizes that writing a book about C programming is a touchy subject, where opinions are aplenty and often strongly engrained in a long-established mindset, making any potential author a target for criticism. But really, I absolutely agree that "You built something" is never an excuse for any behaviour, I would just like to think that it buys any person a wee bit more of the benefit of the doubt.
  - threatofrain 11y ago
    I agree with your opinion, but I also add: being accomplished gives you a microphone for both the insightful and the insulting things you have to say. It's unfortunate that sometimes smart people don't realize that not everyone's words are equally powerful.

jacquesm 11y ago

Building things is nice and will get you respect for building things. Attacking people and being abusive will typically undo some of that. The tech community has a couple of other examples of people that built things and that managed to lose a lot or even all of the respect they deserved for that because of other things they did.

icebraining 11y ago
There are direct and there are underhanded attacks. Unfortunately, only the former are really condemned.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Try directly criticizing anything Zed has written and see what you reap. For instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1570694
  - csirac2 11y ago
    To be fair I just trawled through that thread and found your posts most obsessive, and Zed seemingly sticking to technical discussion with (for him) not all that much profanity. Now, not that I disagree with your assertions (epoll/poll overhead << actual I/O processing) but I don't know why there was so much traffic on this. I don't know zed of course but I used to follow him before the term follow was owned by social media. Trying weird/apparently-pointless shit like measuring how polling scales is Zed's thing. Trying it for the goal of making the absolute fastest http server seems positively sane. So it seems a bit weird that somebody posts zed's adventure to HN and then suddenly he has to defend this experiment like it's a billion dollar company. Perhaps I've missed the egregious thing you were referring to in that thread, but many of his responses to your (numerous!) replies asked for specific stats behind your assertions, and I think it's telling for our industry that you had none (I also have none, yet believe I'll never have to care), which for a person trying to write a fast server by deliberately doing things differently, you can see why he wouldn't be so quick to drop the question and defer to your unsolicited wisdom.
  - kragen 11y ago
    That's a great example of Zed going all macho and abusive when confronted with carefully reasoned criticism. Others have been pointed out in this thread.
VeejayRampay 11y ago
I would agree with that, definitely. But then I would expect both sides of the story to be expressed in a more balanced manner in the articles criticizing the contents of what has been produced. I've found that more often than not, people tend to be blindsided and go for blood because it's better shock value and helps create buzz and clicks. Something akin to: "Zed Shaw took on a complicated task, one that hasn't been fully mastered since K&R, but he still took a swing. The author knows what he's talking about, having produced software X/Y/Z. Yet, teaching C, a language that has known worldwide adoption in all layers of software for the past 30 years or so, is such a divisive and complicated matter that I feel that even a skilled programmer such as him somehow missed the mark. Here's my opinion about the good aspects and somewhat less perfect bits of Learn C the Hard Way, so that future readers will know where to exercise caution and where to relax while unleashing C's potential". This conveys the very same opinion, but in a way that is less polarizing and recognizes that writing a book about C programming is a touchy subject, where opinions are aplenty and often strongly engrained in a long-established mindset, making any potential author a target for criticism. But really, I absolutely agree that "You built something" is never an excuse for any behaviour, I would just like to think that it buys any person a wee bit more of the benefit of the doubt.
- threatofrain 11y ago
  I agree with your opinion, but I also add: being accomplished gives you a microphone for both the insightful and the insulting things you have to say. It's unfortunate that sometimes smart people don't realize that not everyone's words are equally powerful.