pg wrote: I cannot understand why tech discussion should be suddenly turned into personal attacks.

pg, I can understand where you are coming from, but I do have to disagree with it. I've gotten to know merlyn rather well and while years ago I had your opinion of the situation, I realized that it simply wasn't accurate. Read carefully through the things that merlyn posts here. He does not make personal attacks. (though his criticism of code can be quite blunt.)

A personal attack is where someone takes issue with me. However, if someone takes issue with the quality of my work, that's not a personal attack. There's quite a distinction between criticizing a person and criticizing what that person produces. In reading through the thread you referenced, I see no indication of a personal attack. Further, you wrote that you didn't know why merlyn got mad, but I saw no indication of his getting mad.

I don't know, maybe I am just used to his style. I know him both through this site and on a personal level. He's not a bad guy, but he's quick to point out errors with code. Further, he is ridiculously prolific. He posts here, he posts to newsgroups, he writes articles, he helps people on IRC and he runs a Perl consulting company. There is simply no way I could keep up with his output. If he's terse in pointing out that there's a problem with something it's because there are so many problems that he's pointing out!

Admittedly, you do not know me, but I promise you that while merlyn may rub some people the wrong way, I've learned that I ignore what he says at my own peril. He is very, very good at what he does and he is usually not wrong. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and when I hear him say things that seem odd, I take the time to consider what he is saying and why he is saying it and I find that I have learned something new.

Cheers,
Ovid

Update: and borrowing a quote from a Sys Admin Magazine article: "If someone is trying to save your life, cooperate." :)

New address of my CGI Course.
Silence is Evil (feel free to copy and distribute widely - note copyright text)

As a supplement to Ovid's defense of merlyn, I offer the following perspective:

merlyn isn't your peer, or even your friend. He doesn't see a need to engage in inefficient ego-boosting to maintain a healthy(?) working relationship with you. He is a professional in his field and is both respected and honoured by many. He is offering his free time to offer you valuable criticism. His time is valuable. He is posting a terse critical opinion with which he hopes you can find useful, without substantial cost to him. (i.e. if he had to buy you flowers every time he hurt your ego, it would cost him)

From the outside looking in, this definately can look like a snotty pseudo-intellectual baring his chest and declaring that anybody who does other than he does is an incompetent fool. But -- it can also look like somebody avoiding the usual word mincing that occurs in order to get straight to the point. What you read into it is your own choice. Whether merlyn is an a$$ or not an a$$ is irrelevant. He is offering you value for free, that he normally charges big bucks for.

Personally I think merlyn *could* soften his tone, however, I do not believe that he *must* soften his tone. If this is the way that he chooses to give out professional value for free, there isn't much you or I can, or should do to argue. He didn't slight you. He slighted your decision.

So... enjoy life a little more... :-)

And on that same note, I'm sure if you hired him as a consultant and paid him to answer your questions, you would probably get much less terse answers, and he might even buy you flowers when he hurt your feelings. :)

merlyn isn't your peer, or even your friend.

To clarify: He is not your peer, but he is acting as if he were your friend: A good friend is someone who dares to tell you that your code is crap. :)

(That is a general statement, not related to the code in question)

I see no personal attack.

I don't know why you got so mad

I find that quite a conclusion you jumped to over there. I supposed it is possible that merlyn got "so mad" but I see no convincing evidence of that from what was written.

merlyn criticized the code and the posting of it. I didn't see him call the poster names or apply any adjectives to any person at all.

Please don't try to read emotion into text-only on-line communication. It is a very error-prone activity.

My feelings exactly. I see no personal attack. I do see a criticism of code.

If someone looks at my code and says "That's a stupid way to do it", they are probably not commenting on my intelligence.

If someone looks at my code and says "You're stupid and your code is ugly", then I might take that as a personal criticism. (But I'd still take a second (or more likely, third or fourth) peek at my code to see that it is OK)

• This is merlyn. I do not know the man personally, but his replies are often fairly strong worded. One thing to always keep in mind is that they are never meant as personal attacks: see his standard disclaimer. Of course, I might be presuming things about his character, but that's how he comes across to me. If I'm wrong, I'm sure he'll correct me :).
• This is an electronic medium. The combination of quick response times and lack of emotional context often leads to posts that sound harsher than they are. This is a common problem, so common that you should always keep it in the back of your head whenever you're dealing with opinions expressed in any sort of online forum.

CU
Robartes-

I suspect merlyn's real gripe was that the OP posted in Snippets rather than in SOPW. If PerlMonks isn't where to post your buggy code, I'm not sure where is.

That was definitely part of it. It was posted as a solution, and not a problem. And it's not a very good solution, for reasons that the thread revealed. Hence, my comment.

If it had been posted as "I wrote this, and I wonder if there's a way to do this better", then my comment would have been spot-on, and life would simply continue. I merely presumed that the question had somehow been forgotten.

I welcome such criticism of everything I write, be it code or text, and I think it's made me a better programmer in the long run. I would hope that budding new programmers would figure this out sooner rather than later, and not invest so much of their persona into each line of code.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

This is a pet peeve of mine. I don't intend it personally, but understand that it might sting anyway.

When someone says "Why can't we...", I usually want to say, "Why don't you?"

Respect goes both ways. Did you read merlyn's disclaimer? I really believe what he wrote there.

This is one of my favourite passages from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon:

Randy was forever telling people, without rancor, that they were full of shit. That was the only way to get anything done in hacking. No one took it personally.

It isn't at all true, but I wish it were. It would sure be nice if we could pretend that it was: I think we'd get a lot more done.

--
F o x t r o t U n i f o r m
Found a typo in this node? /msg me
The hell with paco, vote for Erudil!

Sure merlyn can be rather heavy handed when it comes to comments, but you should remember who he is. You will run into people that probably know a 10th of what he knows and will be the same way.

Look past what may sound like "you idiot!" and read what he is offering. Most of the time it's good stuff!

In time you will see he is not a bad guy. In fact, if you do something slick and he sees it, he will tell you!

thor

That post is not a flame. It isn't even close in my opinion. It is an example of a simple, direct criticism of what merlyn saw as a fault. Sure, he could have put it a bit more nicely, but it's hardly required. If his post had been as a response to a comment of mine I wouldn't have viewed it negatively at all.

You're going to run into far, far worse flames (if you haven't many times already). Take the positive from each comment, drop the negative. Not everything has to be sugar-coated.