I have a pretty negative opinion on ESR these days. I could find technical arguments about many aspects of his good pieces of writing, and much of his writing is not good. His abilities as a coder are not generally remarkable, either. But mostly I don't think he's a good person. I would probably not say "Don't read ESR", but I think it has to be "Read ESR* "
*but be aware that he's a polarizing figure and opinions of his merits differ
(and if you happen to have a differing opinion, please use the reply button instead of the downvote button)
> ESR's political views call much of his work into question.
Presumably this question, whatever it is, can be answered by looking at his work. Do you think ESR's technical work and technical writings fail to stand up to scrutiny?
I don't know why this is being downvoted. Whether you like ESR or not, he is notable for all of these things. Plus founding the Open Source Initiative. And he maintains GPSD.
One can debate whether these things are all valuable, and how any value they may have may fit into how to judge him as a person along with his flaws, but they are notable.
Sorry if you're getting downvoted a lot. We as a group need to start learning a little subtlety when it comes to condemning all of a person's contributions because we don't like their opinions or their actions. We are smart enough that we should be able to condemn ESR's idiotic words and actions and still praise his extremely important contribution to technology.
I don't really understand esr. I can't reconcile the elevated discourse of The Cathedral & the Bazaar and The Art of UNIX Programming with the constant self-praise and trolling in his blog and elsewhere. He's just too smart to be that way.
My instinct is to disagree with anyone who speaks in those tones, until I take time to really dissect what he said (and then disagree on better principles!).
Now, his attitudes on HIV denialism and IQ and race don't deal with engineering, but they're pretty objectionable. And, you know, we can get good engineering writing and thinking from a lot of places. ESR doesn't have a monopoly on writing about operating systems. I'd rather promote the writers who don't carry around a ton of wrong/distasteful baggage.
I dunno, I'm just surprised to see the lack of recognition apparent in a thread on Hacker News about someone who I think of as a notably important figure, a hacker elder. I'm not from that era, maybe I just read too much Slashdot back in the day.
I think a lot of people are turned off by esr because of his arrogance and ego.
I found CatB extremely useful. I've heard a lot of hate for esr's work, and I'm curious about it. Perhaps it's just backlash, from his previous very high popularity.
So, could you elaborate with specific criticisms of CatB?
I'm torn, because while ESR did add a lot of emphasis on Unix/C culture (which is very important in hacker history), the last five or ten years he's really taken it off the rails, adding terms from war blogging and other sources that really have nothing to do with hacking at all.
I have a hard time listening to him knowing how unsavory he tends to be in response to GitHub comments and issues. He has made some good tools for sure but his interpersonal comportment is quite off putting.
It's not just that his knowledge is outdated, it's also that his philosophical principles will always take precedence over everything else, which includes sound and/or pragmatic technological decisions.
I'm not fond of esr in general but he's spot on with this post.
Why? An assessment of technical competence/relevance seems to be a cornerstone of the upvote/downvote system on HN.
I find ESR to be ferociously overrated from a technical standpoint and resent the fact that he absorbs oxygen from people far more talented but far less "adept" at self-promotion. In addition, the "technical" ideas that he promulgates occasionally have to be actively undone by those with stronger technical chops.
His politics and his sense of business ethics are, in my view, extremely bad.
His views on technology are a breath of fresh air. He is one of the only SV figures who seems to care about building technologies with the next century in mind rather than the next three years.
I don't think that's a fair or charitable charictatization of his opinions and if you do feel that way, even after you've read his works, you can still email him about technical questions. I don't know how much of a help he'd be but you can always try and ask his opinion on how to do something.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about him and his ideas over the years but I really don't want to spend more time on him honestly.
A few thoughts:
* His view of UFOs is very unscientific and sensationalist
* His view of Cryptocurrency has always been extremely credulous and I never saw him confront the failures and problems honestly (IIRC he loved SBF)
* His tendency to post very cryptic items ("Straussian") that you would only understand if you've been following him religiously for years is very frustrating
I do think his fast grants program is a pretty cool idea though.
*but be aware that he's a polarizing figure and opinions of his merits differ
(and if you happen to have a differing opinion, please use the reply button instead of the downvote button)
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