There is no reason to not listen his views on software, if he has weird views on homos.
He is a horrible bigot when it comes to gays. We as logical rationalists should stop labeling someone as 'Insert some hateful word' and ignore everything what he says.
This is occurring more and more these days, if we dont like someone's economic views we label him as communist and completely stop hearing him.
Few days back someone mentioned; Zed shaw is too cocky, so whatever he says is shit.
The article isn't about software; its about people who happen to working in the software industry. And the problem with people like Card is that their prejudices are a sign that their understanding of other people, and their capability for basic human empathy, is just fundamentally broken. Hence the lazy, stereotyped description of "coders", "players", etc. in the piece.
I do agree that we shouldn't ignore everything he says because of this. He might still have something useful to say about things that don't involve people. Trees, for example.
He may have better understanding of people who make software. His understanding of gays doesnt have a problem, his perception of gays has. According to his twisted value system they are bad people. However his understanding of software people is not clouded by his values.
In any case I am only trying to defend him because I saw people just read his name from article title and decided they should not read it full.
So please go ahead read what he has to say, then decide if he is correct or not instead of judging article beforehand.
My 2 cents.
"He may have better understanding of people who make software. His understanding of gays doesnt have a problem, his perception of gays has."
There is no such thing as "software people". Just as there is no such thing "farmer people", "construction people", or "aeroplane people". They are all just people. And I don't understand your understanding/perception distinction.
"So please go ahead read what he has to say, then decide if he is correct or not instead of judging article beforehand."
My comment was posted over ninety minutes after reading the article. I really don't know on what basis you assumed otherwise.
> Zed shaw is too cocky, so whatever he says is shit.
I don't find Zed's views on programming to be terribly insightful either. I have a hunch that one directly leads to the other. I watched a talk he did about Javascript, several times, making sure I understood what he was saying when he was calling it a pile of shit, and walked away with the realization that Zed either didn't understand basic OOP, or did at some point then decided that it wasn't sexy anymore. Because all the problems he found could be easily fixed with basic SOLID techniques.
I have a hunch that his "Learn XXX the hard way" books wouldn't be very helpful either, the tone set in the title indicates to me that instead of translating good principles to code, he's going to beat us over the head with a bottom-up approach to learning a language rather than the saner way.
All of this points to Zed as someone trying to fit the world to his personality, rather than trying to truly understand the world as it is. His first response to some programming thing not fitting in with the way he thinks it should is to lambast it as stupid, this goes with languages, other developers, pretty much anything.
Now, that's not exactly "Zed's cocky, so everything he says sucks," but what it does mean is that unless you have Zed's personality, you're not going to get much out of what he has to say. Because you won't approach problems the same way he does.
Personally I prefer Giles Bowkett, whose tone and personality doesn't get in the way of his ideas. When something gets in his way, he works around it (with a small amount of cursing) rather than call it shit for 30 minutes. His books solve problems rather than creates them.
So while criticizing a person's personality isn't, by itself, the way to enlightenment, you shouldn't completely ignore such things, either. Because if you look closely enough, these traits will point to the deeper problems with their ideas that you do need to come to a fuller understanding.
He is a horrible bigot when it comes to gays. We as logical rationalists should stop labeling someone as 'Insert some hateful word' and ignore everything what he says.
This is occurring more and more these days, if we dont like someone's economic views we label him as communist and completely stop hearing him.
Few days back someone mentioned; Zed shaw is too cocky, so whatever he says is shit.