[Chicago-talk] Introducing Myself

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi Jonathan!

Thanks for your email. See below for my response.

On Wednesday 30 May 2007, Jonathan T. Rockway wrote:
> On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 09:30:30PM +0300, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > I'm asking because I already got burned twice in London.pm where I
> > discovered that their everything-is-on-topic policy is actually
> > "everything-is-on-topic-except-some-things-that-aren't". They used to
> > discuss Buffy a lot, but frowned upon me London.pm-ing a Star Trek
> > episode I started writing (even thought it had some Buffyism). Then I
> > posted an email with some Perl jokes I generated and collected, and was
> > banned from the mailing list. Maybe it was annoying, but it was amusing,
> > and was certainly on-topic. So I'd like to make it clear.
>
> Here's the thing.  Most of the off-topic stuff on london.pm is from
> members of london.pm -- people that go to meetings together, people
> that drink together, etc.  They know each other in real life, and
> hence know what's on topic or off topic.  When the guy down the hall
> from you posts something stupid, you go over to his office and make
> fun of him in person.  When some random Internet troll does something
> stupid, you ban him from the mailing list.  Keep that in mind.
>

I see. I disagree that banning some random Internet "troll" is the best 
policy. Even though I often wrote something bad in public in other mailing 
lists, what happened was that I was gently instructed that I did something 
wrong and how to best mend my ways. Sometimes a few people filtered out my 
messages into a separate folder (or completely dropped them, without 
informing me - which I considered bad form). As a result, I've gained a large 
amount of intuition of what's good and what's bad.

Everybody makes mistakes, but you'll lose or frustrate many people, if you 
just immediately pull the trigger on them. Not only will you gain a bad 
reputation, but you'll lose many potential contributors and make the 
remaining people much more elitists.

> In general, chicago-talk tends to be lowish traffic.  It's not a
> requirement, but it happens to be that way right now.  I would
> recommend sticking to answering people's questions instead of starting
> threads.  

OK, I will. :-) I'll start my new threads in Israel.pm or whatever.

> Once you get an idea of what's acceptable by actually 
> observing, feel free to post.  (Also, when you answer people's
> questions, try to give them a real answer.  The answer to "how do I
> run .t files" is not Test::Run, it's "prove".  Sorry.)

Sure. Of course, if someone wants to have nice colours, I can point him to 
Test::Run and TAP::Parser/TAP::Harness. Or if someone wants to be able to 
extend and customise Test::Harness, then these are also valid choices due to 
the fact that T::H is very inextensible, procedural and unmodular. 

>
> But I have to admit, it's kind of weird that you're here.  If you want
> to adopt a PM that doesn't have anyone "famous", you are welcome to do
> so, but keep in mind that chicago.pm has Andy, Pete, Josh, brian d
> foy, etc.  Your time might be better spent elsewhere.  That said, it's
> not really up to me to decide how to spend your time.

Actually, I'm here for the action. :-) I was told Chicago.pm is very active, 
and since I'd like to receive interesting email (about Perl or Linux or 
whatever), I decided to join. I'm also lurking on other less active Perl 
Mongers groups, and on my local PM group - Israel.pm. 

>
> > Some of the more critical articles I wrote about what I perceived as
> > unfortunate trends in the Perl world, and my general tendency
> > towards tactlessness got me a somewhat bad reputation. This prompted
> > me to keep introducing myself as the Perl Black Sheep to people who
> > don't know me.
>
> I think you are misreading people's impressions.  "Shut up and write
> some code" comes to mind.  

Well, as I noted I have already written a lot of code. I admit that the first 
serious essay I wrote about Perl ( 
http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/perl-newcomers/ ) was written when I had 
relatively little to show for in past contributions, and was probably too 
blunt and emotional for my own good. Since then, however, I have been writing 
a lot of code.

As I note here:

http://www.shlomifish.org/philosophy/computers/software-management/end-of-it-slavery/

There's nothing unproductive about writing essays. Sometimes I found many 
important insights from essays other people wrote, that have made me more 
productive. And I hope that would be the case for my essays as well.

> Nobody in the OSS community apprecites 
> "essayists" that whine about bugs.  Fix them!
>

I have been reporting, often isolating or even fixing, and definitely not 
whining about bugs for a long time, in perl5, CPAN modules, and many 
not-particularly-Perl-related projects. My essays, OTOH, criticise or instead 
encourage some negative or positive trends. They aim to be enlightening, give 
a lot of food for thought, and often cause you to reach useful insights.

None of my essays whined about trivial technical bugs. 

As for "Nobody in the OSS community appreciates 'essayists' that whine about 
bugs" - are you sure? The word "essayist" is in quotes so I don't know what 
you mean, by that, but here is some essayists, who are appreciated:

1. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/ (highly recommended)

2. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ (very enlightening)

3. http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/philosophy.html (mostly by Richard M. 
Stallman).

4. http://www.dwheeler.com/ (Sometimes a bit misled, IMHO, but still very well 
researched).

5. http://www.paulgraham.com/ (excellent stuff)

All of them are highly respected, and they are not particularly well-known for 
their code. Some people say: "Who are they, and what did they do for us, that 
we should listen to them?". Regardless of how accurate the fact that they did 
not contribute code, their essays by themselves are a notable contribution.

I agree that writing code is a necessary pre-requisite for writing essays 
about software. But no-one remembers ESR for fetchmail or whatever. They 
remember him for "the Cathedral and the Bazaar" series.

Like them, I consider myself a philosopher and an essayists. I cannot testify 
that my essays are as good as theirs, but other people seem to have enjoyed 
them and agreed or disagreed about what I said there.

> > Plus, I'm not optimising for being loved.
>
> Are you really sure that's not what you want?  Being hated gets old
> fast.

There are a few people who I love and care for being loved by. But in "The 
Prince" Machiavelli (sp?) specifically say (or so I heard, as I have yet to 
read the original) that a ruler should optimise for being respected by his 
citizens not loved by them. Ayn Rand, for example, was heavily criticised and 
attacked, in her time, and gained many enemies. But it was because she spoke 
her mind and told what I believe to be an accurate representation of reality. 
A "truth" that was so right that it hurted many people.

Like I often said, if I had to choose between being loved for saying what 
people want to hear, to being hated for being honest, then I would take the 
second alternative. I'm not saying everything I said while being sincere, and 
was criticised for, is something I still believe in. (I often change my mind, 
and even believe that philosophy is dynamic and will and must change in 
time.) However, I still think it is a better idea to express one's 
well-thought, sincere and honest opinion, then it is to optimise for 
the "love" of the masses.

===================

I apologise for this email being very long.

Best Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif at iglu.org.il
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

If it's not in my E-mail it doesn't happen. And if my E-mail is saying
one thing, and everything else says something else - E-mail will conquer.
    -- An Israeli Linuxer