Comment by na85
4 years ago
>How are people still getting away with this kind of abuse? How?
It's quite simple, really.
You know that phenomenon you see here on HN with big names like Steve Jobs or RMS, or Elon Musk? The phenomenon where people give them a pass for being disgusting, abusive assholes because "he's a genius/luminary/visionary" or because "his contributions to $thing are so great"?
It's the same phenomenon with people like Jon Pretty.
Being quite involved in the Scala community myself, I can tell you that the impact of his technical contributions is basically zero.
None of the projects he developed along the years has had any momentum (save for one, called "magnolia", which has a modest userbase).
He was giving more talks than anyone else in the community, solely based on vague ideas he couldn't even make happen. He was always bluffing somehow, presenting himself as some kind of grand architect pursuing grand ideas, while his effective impact was close to zero.
I think he was tolerated just because he's been around since basically the language was created, and thus was friend with many people, and could tell stories about the early days of Scala.
With him (hopefully) going away, this will have no impact at all on the development of Scala or related projects, apart from saving slots at upcoming Scala conferences.
So it's definitely not the same phenomenon as RMS or Elon.
>Being quite involved in the Scala community myself, I can tell you that the impact of his technical contributions is basically zero.
>None of the projects he developed along the years has had any momentum (save for one, called "magnolia", which has a modest userbase).
>He was giving more talks than anyone else in the community, solely based on vague ideas he couldn't even make happen. He was always bluffing somehow, presenting himself as some kind of grand architect pursuing grand ideas, while his effective impact was close to zero.
>I think he was tolerated just because he's been around since basically the language was created, and thus was friend with many people, and could tell stories about the early days of Scala.
Change just a handful of words and this exactly describes Stallman. I think my description is more apt than you might think.
Unless you’re arguing that emacs has “a modest userbase”, you’re way off-base, mate. And GNU definitely “happened”.
Alternatively: people diluting the signal, where people bring up serious accusations of rape, and then others show up and compare it to people who are considered assholes by some.
See I can tell that you're snidely implying that I'm falsely equating rape with "being an asshole", which I explicitly did not do.
The phenomenon behind why these people get a pass is the same, even if their behavior is different.