I'm not trying to defend Bryan Cantrill. Far from it.
I think people in silicon valley often forget how privileged they are. The application question is basically asking
What have you personally done in your life? Why should we give you a chance? I think Bryan Cantrill suffers from a lack of perspective. Like if you ask Taylor Swift about how to be a successful artist and she says just follow your dreams and everything will fall into place, I imagine Bryan hasn't had to justify his personal contributions anywhere in a long time likely because they are just obvious and do easy to see. Now compare that to someone like me who has only worked on line of business applications. I try to be honest which in my mind sounds like I'm being humble but from the other side it just sounds like I'm unaccomplished and have poor listening/comprehension skills.
In any case, I think this thread needs to be less about Bryan Cantrill and more about YC.
Bryan Cantrill's Wikipedia page says he asked a kernel developer if he had ever kissed a girl as a one line reply to a technical discussion. My instinct whenever I hear accusations like those by Valerie is to say maybe there's a different perspective but I don't think there is one in this case. Regardless of all this (and his association with a company that stupidly offers lifetime hosting to paying members and later yanks it which is essentially fraud), I think the arguments he makes stand on their own. These aren't arguments I could make because I'm a nobody but I'm glad someone is making regardless of how flawed they are.
> if you ask Taylor Swift about how to be a successful artist and she says
Just have your father buy a record label.
> I think Bryan Cantrill suffers from a lack of perspective.
I think it could be interpreted in a lot of ways, god forbid anyone criticize the language and connotations in YCs questions. The questions asked so broadly/abstractly open them up for this type of thing and if there are problems more people should speak up, until there are better questions being asked. This can all still happen while also still loving what YC can provide.
> These aren't arguments I could make because I'm a nobody
This is exactly why you should express how you feel about these things, as much as you also want the conversation to be less about Bryan and more about YC, you're basically saying you have the same passionate nature but choose to be silent. And if you did speak up, it would be without the bulk amount of negative attention if you were wrong, but all the benefit if you provide something of value and were right.
Misdirected, not over the top, it's very appropriate especially when it was a sponsored project and they were getting called out as if Ben was their employee and they were cosigning whatever Ben's views were.
Regardless how you feel on gendered pronouns, if you're writing documentation regarding all users it seems like a no brainier to actually involve all users in the language, something which Bryan puts great significance into. Bryan's talks[0] usually involve tone and messaging (as well as being triggered and raged) as key points.
But back to the drama issue. The problem about this whole thing isn't about the pronouns really, it was the actions that Ben took even after it was explained and the hard stance Joyent felt it needed to take on the issue in the aftermath.
Ben, if we're giving him the benefit of the doubt (because he isn't a native English speaker) to word something 'wrong', is a simple fix, who cares.
- The real part of this whole mess was because he tried reversing a commit that was made by the project lead after it was worded to include more users. Ben was the main agitator in this almost 6 year old mess regardless of his amount of contributions.
The acceptance of this declaring people as "horrible human beings" by mostly anonymous decree, and then creating a fashion where "the worst thing this did/said" is brought up by people who are X degrees removed from even that, every time the unperson does or say anything, I find much worse than being a caustic prick, which at least is hard limited to the actions of one person. Even if the person should be really bad every now and then, they're already sometimes just kinda-bad-mumble-mumble -- and the habit that is being formed here is just waiting on being used on all sorts of people.
That I know, the rest I can't speak on. I wasn't asked to work with him or be his friend, I find his talks valuable, very lucid and much surprisingly easy to follow even with subjects I don't know much about, and in that way they feel much more respectful to me as "the" audience than a lot of the material out there.
So because someone is privileging you over others, you find it easy to forgive harms they might have committed against others.
I see reasons why there might be value in a more nuanced approach then erasing all work of someone who unrepentantly behaves poorly, but this doesn't seem like it is the right reasoning.
I think people in silicon valley often forget how privileged they are. The application question is basically asking
What have you personally done in your life? Why should we give you a chance? I think Bryan Cantrill suffers from a lack of perspective. Like if you ask Taylor Swift about how to be a successful artist and she says just follow your dreams and everything will fall into place, I imagine Bryan hasn't had to justify his personal contributions anywhere in a long time likely because they are just obvious and do easy to see. Now compare that to someone like me who has only worked on line of business applications. I try to be honest which in my mind sounds like I'm being humble but from the other side it just sounds like I'm unaccomplished and have poor listening/comprehension skills.
In any case, I think this thread needs to be less about Bryan Cantrill and more about YC.
Bryan Cantrill's Wikipedia page says he asked a kernel developer if he had ever kissed a girl as a one line reply to a technical discussion. My instinct whenever I hear accusations like those by Valerie is to say maybe there's a different perspective but I don't think there is one in this case. Regardless of all this (and his association with a company that stupidly offers lifetime hosting to paying members and later yanks it which is essentially fraud), I think the arguments he makes stand on their own. These aren't arguments I could make because I'm a nobody but I'm glad someone is making regardless of how flawed they are.