Austin Ziegler
4/5/2005 2:16:00 PM
On Apr 5, 2005 10:04 AM, James Britt <james_b@neurogami.com> wrote:
> B. K. Oxley (binkley) wrote:
>> I'm new to ruby-talk. Why the pile-on for this fellow? I looked
>> through some of the material linked, and his most recent posts
>> since I joined, and he seems "mostly harmless" (in the words of
>> Douglas Adams).
> Exactly true. Nothing a decent bozofilter can't handle better than
> a thousand snarky comments (ironically decrying the state of the
> newsgroup).
True enough. I generally hit 'y' when I get one of Ilias's threads,
although I do look at the participation of some of the smart people
who respond, because it's interesting.
They have more patience than I.
>> I thought Ruby was the language for nice people. Why all the
>> snippy remarks?
> Good question. Please don't take this rash of churlishness as the
> norm for ruby-talk. There may be subsets of the Ruby community for
> whom insults and flamefests are acceptable, but I believe they are
> in the minority.
To try to explain why the remarks are so snippy: Ilias is an
annoying twit. While he is finally *really* starting to try to
understand Ruby, he's still not doing the single thing that will
help him understand Ruby most: writing a substantive program.
Ilias's writing is haughty, arrogant, and excessively verbose.
(Quoting Inigo Montoya from _The Princess Bride_: "You keep using
that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.") His
formatting in his posts is difficult to read, and his misuse of the
English language (which may be a non-native speaker issue). He has
apparently decided that he's going to do this his way -- and
everyone else in the world has to revolve around him; any attempt to
try to get him to look at the real issues, in my experience, leads
him to state that the discussion is "off-topic."
Ilias may not be a troll, but he has certainly acted like one; if
he's not a troll, his style and people-skills certainly need work,
as he *is* wearing on the patience of some people. For all that,
though, he is asking interesting questions from which people can
learn -- if he'd only bother to listen to the answers provided. This
is more than can be said for some past denizens of ruby-talk.
-austin
--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
* Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca