[gaiusparx]

Anyone can enlighten me why I keep seeing Zed Shaw being mentioned on HN compare to other star programmers? He appears to be the superstar among all star programmers. But I checked his wiki, and I thought not many are using mongrels nowadays.

[zedshaw]

I'm not quite sure myself. I'm finding that I seem to be in some sweet spot where my opinion and views are odd enough to be interesting, but also close enough to what everyone else is already thinking but can't articulate. It probably won't last forever, but it's been that way for about 4 of 5 years now so I just keep doing my thing and having fun.

I mostly don't have an agenda other than I don't take this internet stuff nearly as seriously as everyone else, and just want to use it as a medium of expression before it becomes too hard to do it. Whether that's writing, music, code, or just making funny sites poking fun at obnoxious blowhards, I'm enjoying it while I can.

[petercooper]

He did a good job of promoting himself through controversy. There are a lot of women out there who are smarter and more attractive than Paris Hilton, but she knows how to play the game and stay in the spotlight.

[zedshaw]

No, I promoted myself by writing insightful pieces and voicing my opinion in an interesting way which got lots of people talking while also creating either interesting or useful projects at a faster rate than most people.

People like you however seem to like to only focus on my humrous rants as if that's all I've done, but whatever, I'm having fun and making awesome shit while getting to play guitar so if it pisses of a whiner like you then rock on.

<devil horns>

[petercooper]

This is getting weird, so I'll lay my cards on the table.

People like you however seem to like to only focus on my humrous rants as if that's all I've done, but whatever, I'm having fun and making awesome shit while getting to play guitar so if it pisses of a whiner like you then rock on.

That's a bilious response to "He did a good job of promoting himself through controversy." People like me? I made a neutral statement (even if it's incorrect), not anything malicious like "Zed's a loser because of X." This reminds me of the last time you thought I was attacking your character after a similarly neutral comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1292335

Several months ago, you had a similar response on Twitter that involved a "quit talking smack or let's meet up and 'sort it out' in person" response after I made a casual quip in response to your then-latest rant. I e-mailed you an apology as a gesture of good will, to which I got no response.

You appear to interpret neutral comments as attacks or passive aggression. They aren't - at least from me. Or perhaps you're having the same back and forth with 1001 other people, I don't know :-)

Are these reactions because a page on my site ranks #4 for your name on Google and is packed with negative third-party comments about you? http://www.rubyinside.com/zed-shaw-goes-nuclear-on-our-commu... .. You've mentioned online comments affecting your job prospects before, so it's just a wild guess. If it is, I'll delete the negative comments and change the headline or something, because these responses are worrying and sure, I'd rather focus on the cool things you're up to than have this old "stuff" bubble up every few months.

[natrius]

It's easy to misinterpret being compared to Paris Hilton as an insult. It's also easy to see how it wasn't intended as an insult, but it could've gone either way.

[josefresco]

You compared him to Paris Hilton ... in my world that's a pretty big f u regardless of her perceived skill level at 'being famous'.

[steveklabnik]

Zed is not only controversial, but prolific. There are lots of opportunities to talk about him.

Not only that, but lots of his projects are relevant to HN... mongrel2 seemingly started out as a fun little "how can I put these things together" project, MulletDB is similar, etc.