That message may have been inflammatory, based on my opinions concerning Stack Overflow, but I don't see where I called names; I called some systems stupid, but I can't name call a system as I would an individual.
Anyway, sure, I could've made the message a tad nicer, and I really shouldn't have bothered commenting in the overcrowded discussion anyway, but some of the points in the discussion, from this author I've read before, compelled me to write it as I did. There was value, I think, in countering this faux-niceness presented in the submitted writing with a more genuine and plainly-phrased critique of the ideas.
Your comment above makes the sweeping claim that broad chunks of the software engineering field aren’t “real” programmers, by your personal definition of “real” and “programmer”.
I’d suggest that any point whose initial premise defines your opposition out of the room is in bad taste. Having led by essentially saying “people who use StackOverflow in this way are not real programmers”, you’ve constructed an arbitrary high-ground from which to base the remainder of your case.
The fact that the comment is also not nice doesn’t help, but the discussion of what is and isn’t “real” programming by your personal definition is what made it inflammatory to me.
It was a flamewar-style comment. Those are not allowed here because of the degrading effect they have on discussion, and we ban accounts that persist in posting them. Edit: it looks like you've done it before as well, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20827595 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20660007. That's definitely not what we're going for here.
Would you please review the site guidelines and follow them from now on? They explain many things, including what I meant by calling names above.
Anyway, sure, I could've made the message a tad nicer, and I really shouldn't have bothered commenting in the overcrowded discussion anyway, but some of the points in the discussion, from this author I've read before, compelled me to write it as I did. There was value, I think, in countering this faux-niceness presented in the submitted writing with a more genuine and plainly-phrased critique of the ideas.
reply