Wednesday, January 10, 2007

postgres mindset

Interesting, today I poked my head into #postgres on freenode, and told the guys that there is no bugtracker for pgadmin (because I had a bug). There was some civilized back and fro which amounted to:
  • stfu if you don't want to setup the bugtracker yourself.
  • apologize for suggesting a butracker or be kicked, you're insulting us.
A-hum. Yes, that was a productive conversation. I was kicked by David Fetter (david@fetter.org)

Funny, that really reminds me of one or the other episode on #zope, wonder why that is. Must be the postgres mindset then. I really like the "stfu or be kicked" mentality when you say something inconvinient. I just see David is a Perl programmer, well that would explain one or the other thing.

/me adds #postgres to the trollop list

Good Job David, rock on!

Saturday, January 06, 2007

PJE the immature pest

PJE wrote a post praising zope in a fashion (well it's the foreword for a zope book). Inevitably he attracted some flak, and by the followup post you can see that he clearly couldn't deal with it.

I expected the article to be a bit controversial, but I was surpised to find that it was even more controversial than my series of articles about women in IT. The amount of flaming hatred, profanity, and sheer vitriol leveled against both Zope and me was such that I soon found it prudent to remove the comment thread altogether.
I was one of those voicing my opinion about zope passionately, there are many like me. I and the others commenting didn't insult PJE and apart from calling zope what it is, namely an unworkable, unfinished, broken, horrid and bloated consultware there was no big profanity.
Case in point he makes his reasons for closing the comments up.

Clearly if it was after PJE we should just shut up and stop criticize zope, he made sure by closing the comments that this won't happen on his site on any account.

But PJE doesn't leave it at that.

I had a policy of not hiring a**holes when I had Python jobs available, or I might have accidentally hired one of these dimwits! (Nobody sane wants to work in a toxic mental environment, and women are slightly more likely to be sane than men.)

... if you can't do anything but spew hatred at someone who has the temerity to find praiseworthy things in a tool you dislike, you are not learning anything.

... you're being a dimwit. ... also being an a**hole.

if you want more women in IT, don't hire a**holes. ... I would now have a new weapon in my arsenal for screening out a**holes quickly...

... a bright light in the Python community said, "You know, Python has gained a lot of things from Zope," ...

Because that's what professionals do. They are always learning. Always.
I have a few comments on this kind of posting:

  1. PJE it reflects poorly on you when you go about calling people dimwits and a**holes publicly on your blog. You might intend to insult those who entered the discussion with you, but a casual visitor doesn't care, all he sees is you who behaves like an immature pest.
  2. You go at great lengths to point out how you would never hire such a**holes and dimwits as you describe them. If their crime is to be passionate about what they do and voicing their opinion, that's a poor testament to your sense of judgment. Also have you considered that people might think you're one of these aforementioned a**holes and dimwits by behaving like this on your own blog?
  3. You also drag this debate down into a chauvinist/macho deprecation of these who said something that happen not to suit you. You insult them personally, you question their professionalism and you're being a pest. Have you considered that there could be women among those you're insulting? Have you considered you've just become a reason why women don't work in the IT? I hope you like your own medicine.
  4. The comments coming in until you shut them down where not to your liking, and you felt threatened. Thus in the next logical step you personally insult those who didn't like Zope and say so. That's not only childish, it's outright immature, it's a trap so common to fall in you should know it. Perhaps you should work harder on moving to "You revision 3.0" because sure as hell 2.0 still has serious flaws.
  5. If all this swearing and being childish is the kind of professionalism you talk about you can keep it, we can live well without that.
  6. I for sure wouldn't hire such a bloatware advocatist who goes to lengths to insult other people just because he doesn't like what they don't like.
PJE rock on dude!