David Heinemeier Hansson step aside, Paul Graham is next to be voted off the island(weblog.raganwald.com)
weblog.raganwald.com
David Heinemeier Hansson step aside, Paul Graham is next to be voted off the island
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/01/david-heinemeier-hansson-step-aside.html
9 comments
Wait, I'm confused. What's the point of this post? A meta-discussion about fallout from unmet expectations compared to koolaid-drinking trends? Don't you people have stuff to do?
The point of the post is to point out some basic psychology and human nature. And I think it is quite accurate too.
Note that PG and DHH could just as easily have been anyone else, the article just uses them as examples to prove a point.
And frankly I think that a lot of readers of YC news could do good with some insight into psychology and what makes people tick. It is a large part of a startups success.
(note: I don't intend to offend anyone, it is simply humble advice which you may of course ignore at your own discretion)
Note that PG and DHH could just as easily have been anyone else, the article just uses them as examples to prove a point.
And frankly I think that a lot of readers of YC news could do good with some insight into psychology and what makes people tick. It is a large part of a startups success.
(note: I don't intend to offend anyone, it is simply humble advice which you may of course ignore at your own discretion)
I guess I can see that. I'm just put off a bit by the way it's worded. I suppose that's the point, though.
What has more impact on the adoption of technologies: its technical merits or social behaviour?
I think technical people believe in the free market too much without understanding all of the requirements. One of them is that everyone has perfect knowledge of all options. If someone doesn't know about you, they can't choose you. This is why marketing adds so much value - you become an option and your technical merits have a chance to shine. If you market something crappy, you'll only succeed if no one knows about the better alternative.
I'd like to think it's a good combination of both. New technology with technical merit arrives, smart people latch on and build things with it, improving the knowledge base and library depth. Then, more people flock on as they follow the leaders.
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Totally social behavior (out of those 2). History shows technical merits ALWAYS lose out. Its almost a law, I have no idea why.
I think many people mistakenly thought Arc was supposed to be some new kind of framework like Ruby on Rails. I'll bet few of them read the stuff over at http://paulgraham.com/arc.html ahead of time.
I wonder how many people just jumped to the download announcement compared to the number who read the Arc essays.
I wonder how many people just jumped to the download announcement compared to the number who read the Arc essays.
> I think many people mistakenly thought Arc was supposed to be some new kind of framework like Ruby on Rails.
- Didn't you hear? Arc, the language, uses tables in its HTML!
(My god, I would never use a programming language that was ever used to generate tables!)
- The zeroth release of Arc only supports ASCII! What about us EBCDIC users?!
- Arc didn't cure my unsightly dandruff, like I hoped and prayed it would!
- Arc is out and Jesus didn't come back!
- I downloaded Arc and the tarball just sat there in the directory, doing nothing!
- Arc doesn't completely integrate itself with its temporary host language!
- Arc killed my entire village, just as we were about to start our annual Unicode Festival!
- Arc is just a bunch of library functions and syntactic transformations on a parse tree that ultimately compiles to machine code. There is NOTHING new here!
(Did I miss any? ;-)
- Didn't you hear? Arc, the language, uses tables in its HTML!
(My god, I would never use a programming language that was ever used to generate tables!)
- The zeroth release of Arc only supports ASCII! What about us EBCDIC users?!
- Arc didn't cure my unsightly dandruff, like I hoped and prayed it would!
- Arc is out and Jesus didn't come back!
- I downloaded Arc and the tarball just sat there in the directory, doing nothing!
- Arc doesn't completely integrate itself with its temporary host language!
- Arc killed my entire village, just as we were about to start our annual Unicode Festival!
- Arc is just a bunch of library functions and syntactic transformations on a parse tree that ultimately compiles to machine code. There is NOTHING new here!
(Did I miss any? ;-)
I don't know what you're talking about. I downloaded Arc and it immediately became sentient on my machine. It started writing it's own macros and evolving while I slept, and I'm pretty sure we all woke up this morning inside the Matrix.
Personally, I'm suprised this train has generated as much steam as it has. The emotional intensity of the commentary wars between the "Arc Sucks" camp and the "You suck for thinking that Arc Sucks" camp is perhaps higher than the situation warrents. Those who like it will use it even in the absence of some important features, those who don't certainly don't have to (I daresay there are plenty of other programming languages for them to use). :-)
>promotes the language extensively
>relentless self-promotion
When and how did that happen?
>relentless self-promotion
When and how did that happen?
Seriously, what self-promotion?
I was thinking that too. I can't think of any cases recently where I've engaged in relentless self-promotion.
I mean, I write essays, and since I believe the things I say in them, I am in a technical sense writing things that promote my own ideas, and thus me. But that's true of anyone who writes.
He can't have meant anything so complicated. Here's my theory of what he meant, based on his use of Matz as an example: relentlessly skipping the self-effacing remarks that most people surround their ideas with to help make the medicine go down.
If that's what he means, he's right. I don't do it out of arrogance, though. I skip that kind of stuff partly because it seems too much like a deliberate trick, and partly because it makes sentences longer than they need to be.
I mean, I write essays, and since I believe the things I say in them, I am in a technical sense writing things that promote my own ideas, and thus me. But that's true of anyone who writes.
He can't have meant anything so complicated. Here's my theory of what he meant, based on his use of Matz as an example: relentlessly skipping the self-effacing remarks that most people surround their ideas with to help make the medicine go down.
If that's what he means, he's right. I don't do it out of arrogance, though. I skip that kind of stuff partly because it seems too much like a deliberate trick, and partly because it makes sentences longer than they need to be.
I was actually quoting what several people have said, which perhaps is a description of their perception and not of reality.
I will edit the post, a clarification would strengthen the argument, thanks.
I will edit the post, a clarification would strengthen the argument, thanks.
A lot of your essays praise "hackers" relentlessly, with the understanding that you are talking largely about yourself and your circle.
And herein lies the grudge.
by praising hackers to the point of being demi-gods capable of feats that mere mortals can only dream of you put yourself (and all hackers) on a piedestal. As the parent states this will de facto also include yourself.
most people, being rather small-minded, don't like someone on a piedestal and naturally want to bring them down.
It is very hard to avoid if you are (semi)famous. Especially so if you are also smart.
Tragic but true.
by praising hackers to the point of being demi-gods capable of feats that mere mortals can only dream of you put yourself (and all hackers) on a piedestal. As the parent states this will de facto also include yourself.
most people, being rather small-minded, don't like someone on a piedestal and naturally want to bring them down.
It is very hard to avoid if you are (semi)famous. Especially so if you are also smart.
Tragic but true.
I don't know about this argument. What I'm praising is a way of approaching life. It seems natural that one would oneself approach life in a way one praised.
That seems different from praising something one is merely born with, like being English or white or male. You don't find me doing that.
That seems different from praising something one is merely born with, like being English or white or male. You don't find me doing that.
This is exactly the way I've always taken your description of hacking. And your praise for the YCombinator startups usually talks about how hard they work, for example talking about how much code they write in a short period of time while living on Ramen noodles.
>self-effacing remarks
In Matz' case that may be due to him being Japanese. That's the way they generally speak, a kind of etiquette.
In Matz' case that may be due to him being Japanese. That's the way they generally speak, a kind of etiquette.
> Seriously, what self-promotion?
Well, he did write about it on paulgraham.com, the #1 site for anything, ever.
Well, he did write about it on paulgraham.com, the #1 site for anything, ever.
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huh?
I don't have a dog in the fight. I wasn't looking forward to Arc, and I am not going to try it.
But it seems kind of weird to say that people who were disappointed had dubious psychological motives. What if, perhaps, they expected the first released to be stand-alone and that's not what happened? I mean, aren't there lots of ways to be disappointed that don't involve some kind of psychoanalysis and therapy?
I'm sure people are petty and small mammals. But I don't watch Dr. Phill for a reason -- you can make various psycho arguments all day and not really have a lot of anything when you are done. Perhaps the author of _this_ piece is really just a suck-up? There's simply no basis for evaluating one opinion over another. I guess I could say the article is crap, but that would take less words. :)
I don't have a dog in the fight. I wasn't looking forward to Arc, and I am not going to try it.
But it seems kind of weird to say that people who were disappointed had dubious psychological motives. What if, perhaps, they expected the first released to be stand-alone and that's not what happened? I mean, aren't there lots of ways to be disappointed that don't involve some kind of psychoanalysis and therapy?
I'm sure people are petty and small mammals. But I don't watch Dr. Phill for a reason -- you can make various psycho arguments all day and not really have a lot of anything when you are done. Perhaps the author of _this_ piece is really just a suck-up? There's simply no basis for evaluating one opinion over another. I guess I could say the article is crap, but that would take less words. :)
Elbowing? Ladder-climbing? Good grief. This is the sort of crap that makes me happy not to be any kind of celebrity.
The only statement here that seems accurate to me is that many people are motivated by envy. Even "Schadenfreude" is the wrong term to use; releasing Arc is hardly any kind of misfortune. And I don't see what Paul Graham and David Hansson have in common, other than that they get mentioned in contentless techfan wordfluff.