ESR: Ego is for little people

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404

by jgrahamc • 17 years ago

30 45 17 years ago

esr.ibiblio.org

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

What's with the vendetta John ?

Your Alan Turing efforts put you in a class of your own, this ESR bashing is detrimental.

Let him stew, outcode him or ignore him, it's not worth it.

gonzo3• 17 years ago

I say outcode him.

I blew him up last time (a couple years ago). I also supported Leach's efforts (ELER, web-comic).

The 'E' in esr stands for Ego.

http://geekz.co.uk/esrfacts/fact/16

billswift4• 17 years ago

I checked out that esrfacts hoping it would be entertaining. That has got to be one of the lamest sites that I have ever seen, it is so lame that it has me actually using the term for the first time ever.

jgrahamc3• 17 years ago

I didn't post this because of a vendetta. I thought he had some good points about A-listers and it was interesting for HNers.

Clearly, I don't agree with his self-assessment as an A-lister, but the article has some interesting points. But that's partly because my evaluation of him is that he's not, and partly because I don't think self-assessment really counts.

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

After yesterdays post on that silly bit of python code (if it worked, that was good enough for me), and this piece today (which makes ESR look pretty weird) I hope you'll forgive me if I thought that you were focusing on him way too much.

I've looked at a whole bunch of code you wrote and without exception it is exemplary, that's the way to do it, lead by example, not by going after an individual, no matter how silly they are.

By singling out this one person I'm thinking that he got under your skin with his stupid remarks and this (hoisting him by his own petard) is your way of paying him back.

As far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter one bit what the guy wrote or how crappy his software is, there is no need for you to show him, the code speaks for you.

The piece indeed has some good points about A-listers, but for the most part it comes across to me as being written by someone who needs help of some sort.

wheels• 17 years ago

This is the frustrating thing with ESR: occasionally he has good points.

The problem is that they are often buried in narcissism, just like this essay, which is ironically claiming that he is not afflicted by such.

Basically it's the same thing that rubs me the wrong way with Timothy Ferriss -- sometimes there's useful stuff in there. His version, however, seems more playfully mischievous; he seems to be in on the joke.

csbrooks3• 17 years ago

It's my experience that most decent programmers, and even some crummy ones, think they are in the top 1%. It's a lot like poker - everyone thinks they're way above average at it.

csbrooks3• 17 years ago

It's mildly amusing (and telling) that posting a link to someone's writing could be seen as expressing a vendetta against the writer. :)

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

You missed yesterdays episode and the preceding salvos apparently.

tptacek5• 17 years ago

I like the idea that merely posting this essay is an act of ESR-bashing. I agree, but think it's warranted.

cortesi• 17 years ago

Eric S. Raymond has become such a ludicrous parody that it just seems cruel to make fun of him.

davi2• 17 years ago

On the one hand, I kind of know what he means. What he's calling "A-listers", I call "graceful overachievers". People who get an incredible amount done, but never seem to break a sweat; who are occasionally irked, but have taken the measure of their own capacities, and are well satisfied by them, and by using them.

On the other hand, this writing doesn't feel like the work of a graceful overachiever. It feels like a rationalization of the man's own loneliness. The graceful overachievers I know are warm people, who see the good in the people they're dealing with, warts and all, and who respect that good.

gvb• 17 years ago

Steve Yegge has an excellent blog post on "graceful overachievers." Steve makes a good point, but what makes his posting truly excellent is that he ripostes Joel Spolsky's old chestnut, "Smart, and Gets Things Done."

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things...

bmj• 17 years ago

I agree that his basic point is correct. If you spend time in any subculture that has some sort of skill stratification, you will notice that most of the people at the top lack an ego. It's typically the people that are trying to reach the top step that do.

dan_the_welder• 17 years ago

Yeah sure when you are on top but then there is the fall from grace. As you become less relevant or get superseded. That's when the ego comes out, tantrums, destructive behavior, etc.

danut• 17 years ago

There is no such thing as an A-list. If you think that you are in the A-list because you are a worldwide renown developer, you can always be better, and be one of the best developers of all times. Or one of the biggest people of all time. You can always be better.

So you think you are the best mathematician all around? You can still compete with Gauss.

RyanMcGreal• 17 years ago

> I’m going to use myself as an example now, mainly because I don’t know anyone else’s story well enough to make the point I want to with it. I’m the crippled kid who became a black-belt martial artist and teacher of martial artists. I’ve made the New York Times bestseller list as a writer. You can hardly use a browser, a cellphone, or a game console without relying on my code. I’ve been a session musician on two records. I’ve blown up the software industry once, reinvented the hacker culture twice, and am without doubt one of the dozen most famous geeks alive. Investment bankers pay me $300 an hour to yak at them because I have a track record as a shrewd business analyst. I don’t even have a BS, yet there’s been an entire academic cottage industry devoted to writing exegeses of my work. I could do nothing but speaking tours for the rest of my life and still be overbooked. Earnest people have struggled their whole lives to change the world less than I routinely do when I’m not even really trying.

[no audible dialogue]

jacquesm4• 17 years ago

Really makes you wonder who he's trying to impress with all that.

And at $300 / hour he's having a whole population of lawyers laugh at him to boot...

chasingsparks• 17 years ago

IMO, Ken Burnside's comment on ESR's post (#5) was better than the article.

zzkt2• 17 years ago

"It’s tempting to pigeon-hole Eric’s history as 'loud self display' and 'overinflation of accomplishments'" http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404#comment-242109

zzkt2• 17 years ago

ESR: What an Ego!

tptacek5• 17 years ago

You can hardly use a browser, a cellphone, or a game console without relying on my code.

Any guesses? I'm pretty sure this phone doesn't use fetchmail.

jgrahamc3• 17 years ago

I believe he's referring to the fact that he was at one time the maintainer of giflib (or libgif) and that he contributed some code to libpng. Since these are, he claims, vital to all those items you mention then we are all using his code.

tptacek5• 17 years ago

So, the guy who wrote libc strpbrk() then: an industry titan?

(Thanks for the answer though --- I think you're right).

davi2• 17 years ago

That's right. People asked about this in the comments on the post. His answers are here:

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404#comment-242133

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1404#comment-242156

Bottom line: libgif and libpng.

awolf• 17 years ago

This is one of the most egotistical and self centered writings I have (partially) read in a long time.

I quit reading when he started using himself "as an example". Talking about himself seemed to be the point of this post.

gaius• 17 years ago

Everything ESR has written about hacker culture boils down to "hey, people like me are really awesome!" and often not much to how things really are...

bayareaguy• 17 years ago

Although I've never met Mr. Raymond, since his own measures (self-display, insecurity, constant approval-seeking, overinflating one’s accomplishments, etc) would lead most to the obvious conclusion that the he is either a small person or a hypocrite, I think he may actually be attempting some kind of transcendent Andy Kaufman performance humor - the real joke being the predictability of everyone's reactions.

jordanb• 17 years ago

Raymond's point about people at the top not needing to to self-promote is something I've heard described many times before. I would call it trite, actually, but my googling is failing me so I can't find examples to back that up.

One very eloquent description I've seen is "The luxury of humility." Basically, a guy like Einstein had the luxury to declare himself horrible at math (for example) because his reputation as a physicist and mathematician was so solid that nothing he said could possibly dent it. Instead, any self-deprecation he did would simply bolster his reputation for humility.

An unproven physicist, on the other hand, would not be advised to mimic Einstein in declaring himself bad at math because people would be more likely to take it seriously and dismiss his work as probably containing errors.

That said, Eric Raymond used to annoy me, then he became this sort of perversely amusing thing (about the time ELER was running). Now I have to say that I can't read this kind of stuff without feeling sorry for him. He's a textbook example, or at least his writing is, of false bravado vainly trying to mask almost limitless amounts of insecurity.

l0stman• 17 years ago

Einstein was certainly a great physicist, but not a mathematician. He was really bad at math, it wasn't false modesty.

Gibbon• 17 years ago

If you have to declare yourself a member of the A-list, you aren't.

zby• 17 years ago

I would like to hear what Alan Kay has to say about that (or Terry Pratchett or ... ).

billswift4• 17 years ago

I think that the real reason the best of the best don't display much ego, is that they are primarily focused on whatever it is they do, rather than on themselves; that is how they got to be the best in the first place.

gonzo3• 17 years ago

Why does Eric Raymond remind me of Glenn Beck?

etherael• 17 years ago

it does seem faintly absurd that he's pushing satori whilst citing examples of the pursuit of boats and hoes.

Melchior_K• 17 years ago

I am redoubling my efforts to actually learn programming, for the sole purpose of outcoding this yahoo. Shouldn't be hard.

ESR: Ego is for little people

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