[raganwald]

Sadly, the proggit comments are overwhelmed by debate as to whether a small error like this means the author is an idiot. What makes this happen? It's not just debating the color of the bikeshed, it's questioning the qualifications of the Nuclear Power Plant architect on the basis of the bike shed.

[timr]

Amen. This is a big reason that I can't see myself working as a developer for the rest of my life. I can't deal with the abundance of passive-aggressive personalities who will seize on tiny errors like this, and discount an individual's intelligence.

If you ask me, it comes from the fact that software geeks are primarily young men, many of whom were emotionally abused by their peers while growing up. When you think the world only values your intelligence, you go out of your way to prove that you're smarter than everyone else.

[davidw]

Hah! If you want abuse, you should see some of the frothing at the mouth that happens about LangPop.com, which, as clearly stated on the site, is never going to be more than an approximation. Man does it set people off when their favorite language doesn't do as well as they think:

http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/01/08/angry-perl-users

[acangiano]

> What makes this happen?

I'll answer the, perhaps rhetorical question, by defining a new law: "Any online community that doesn't actively encourage its users to be nice, and civil, to each other is bound to become a cesspool.".

[raganwald]

It wasn't meant to be rhetorical nor calling proggit out by name. The very same thing happens within development teams when people "flip the bozo bit" on team mates for the most trivial errors and are biased against anything they say or do forever afterwards.

It can be a very serious problem when this happens within a team, IMO.