Is it just me, or does Ruby tend have these "personalities" more than other communities? Seems like the Ruby community focuses a lot on the "rockstar" mentality. I don't spend any time in it to know for sure, though.
By "rock star" I just meant the lone, dedicated, popular, and generally charismatic developer that has a lot of people talking about how great he/she is. A personality.
Again, I don't travel in Ruby circles, so I don't know of _why and can't speak about him personally. I just seem to hear about specific developers from the Ruby circle more than, say, C#.
Followed by: "Oh boo hoo, people know who you are. Fucking take Karate lessons and STFU."
Sometimes people ask why it is that a lot of us dislike Zed Shaw, despite his being bright and talented and sharp. Stuff like this is why: For all that's good about him, he remains a douche who likes making assumptions about people, sticking to said assumptions, and then acting like the mandate of heaven shines down on him.
I got into a flamewar with him once. Used to be I thought he was a great guy, albeit a blowhard, who exposed people who did dumb things. Sometimes he is. The problem with him is he still hasn't learned to calm the fuck down, look at other people's perspectives, and understand that knowing how to write an insult doesn't make you a wise badass no matter how many people online respond positively to such viciousness.
Yes. People like this are like double-edged swords. They cut both ways (for and against you). It's only a matter of time before the blade is coming in your direction. Zed reminds me of Erik Naggum.
People liked him because of the quality of the stuff he produced. I personally haven't seen rockstar qualities from him. Most of his work (code/blog) are to the point and of high quality.
Yeah it does. It's a bit like Linux-land has more interesting personalities than Microsoft-land or how skateboarders tend to be more exciting than WalMart workers.
Smalltalk had it's share of personalities. I am witness to drama at OOPSLA that would have made for some damn good movie scenes. But all of this predates YouTube, Blogs, Twitter, etc...
