of Sock Puppets and Straw Men

[David B. Held]

Kris wrote:
> "David B. Held" <dheld at codelogicconsulting.com> wrote in message 
> [...]
> Which obvious reading? Can you be more specific about that?

I believe I spelled it out in my last response to Jeff.  Since you seem 
to be following the thread, I don't really feel it's worth my while to 
repeat the argument in full.

> [...]
>> On the contrary, the puppeteer was most likely insulting Janice as well, 
>> which means that you two were feigning stupidity, adding insult to injury, 
>> and then making light of it by dismissing your claims as "speculation". 
>> Well,
> 
> You say "most likely", and then draw an extensive conclusion from that. I 
> didn't read the post in the manner you have suggested at all, so can happily 
> and honestly disagree with your "assertions" in full.

Then I would say that either A) you didn't stop and think very carefully 
about the implications, or B) you wrote the posts and they didn't work 
out the way you had hoped.

>> obviously, you haven't been a victim of such tricks yet, so it is easy for 
>> you to blame the victim (which is what you did, let's not mince
> 
> Victim? Surely you're making a rather grand assumption that the person you 
> call the 'victim' could never have made that post at all? How do you 
> actually know that, Dave? The only way you could be /so/ sure is if you'd 
> posted it yourself. Right?
> 
> Let me ask you: Did you make that post, David? Be honest about it.

Ok, ok, I admit it!  I did all of it!!!  I just wanted to stir the pot, 
so first, I wrote an anonymous post that I knew would bait people like 
you into responding in exactly the way I predicted.  Then, to avert 
suspicion, I tried it again, but this time, did it in a clumsy way that 
was easily traceable!  You figured it all out!  You are so brilliant!  A 
sincere question deserves a sincere answer.

> [...]
>> Good library authors can disarm their critics with a good explanation of 
>> the design decisions, while authors outside of that set don't feel that 
>> justification is necessary, because they are the ones who put their hard 
>> work into it.
> 
> The connotation here is that perhaps those who do not "disarm their critics" 
> are not "good library authors". Thus, since you're implying elsewhere that 
> Tango has at least some such people, then the library itself is somehow not 
> "good".

Well, that's a non-sequitur.  Someone who isn't a diplomatic 
representative of a library does not force the library itself to somehow 
be bad.  And yet, that person can cause harm to the library by 
influencing the opinions of prospective users.  However, if the author 
*is* the library, then I agree that bad author == bad library.  Are you 
a D library?

> It's a silly, groundless, and vague accusation.

What's silly is the line of reasoning used to arrive at this putative 
"accusation".

> [...]
>> Not all criticism is justified, and some of it is simply bad, but the way 
>> it's responded to makes all the difference in the world.
> 
> You're using the term 'criticism' as though we don't deal with it every 
> single day. Perhaps you should hang out on IRC sometimes, and watch 
> carefully how criticism is most often responded to ...

Whether you like it or not, the NG is not some kind of static IRC 
channel.  What you say on IRC is not recorded and archived and made 
public in the way this newsgroup is.  It may well be that people who 
talk to you on IRC have a completely different experience than those who 
read this NG.  Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, I'll let you 
decide.

> [...]
> Tango does not rest upon all of us being diplomats (at all, or all the 
> time), so let's stop pretending it matters nearly as much as you've been 
> trying to make out.

I wonder if you've ever tried to commercialize anything you've written. 
  I've sold software I wrote to put bread on the table, and the way you 
treat your customers, whether they are programmers or businesspeople, 
makes all the difference in the world.  I can especially tell you that 
it makes a difference to companies like Borland, where I saw people 
complain about their products every day (because I was often one of 
them).  Maybe Tango will always be a free product, and that would be 
great.  But if you ever decide that you should get paid for your hard 
work (say, through a dual-licensing scheme, which seems rather popular 
these days), you might find that diplomacy hits the bottom line rather 
directly.

> [...]
> Again, Tango very quickly gave up on all notion of full phobos compatability 
> in the early stages.

There's a difference between full compatibility and gratuitous 
incompatibility.  C++ isn't fully compatible with C, and obviously had 
to do things differently to do them better.  On the other hand, Bjarne 
always had a good reason for doing things differently, and wasn't afraid 
to share it with users (and, I might add, he managed to do so without 
calling them idiots).

> [...]
> p.s. Just out of interest, have you written or designed a library on a scale 
> similar to Tango?

No, Kris, I haven't.  I'm not a brilliant programmer who only writes 
amazing code like you are.  I doubt I could write a 10 line program 
without introducing more than one bug per line.  My judgment and opinion 
are absolutely worthless next to your shining intellect.  May your 
wisdom bless the D community for all of its days!  I've only ever worked 
on toy codebases of a few hundred lines, and never on something that was 
  actually used by other people.  Every night when I go to bed, I think 
to myself: "If only I could one day be as great a h at X0r as Kris...that 
would be swell!"  I feel stupid even replying to you, as if I have the 
right to challenge a man who has so profoundly changed the face of D! 
I'm sorry, I won't ever let it happen again.

Dave