Zed Shaw
Programmer, writer and musician; author of the Learn Code the Hard Way books and of Mongrel, the Ruby web server.
Zed Shaw did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsJust like the Robber Barons before, these are fabulously wealthy companies that built their empires by (directly or indirectly) begging for free labor from open source developers.
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Their wordsThey can get the project's labor for free, so why would they want to buy it?
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Their wordsI predict there will be many, many more in the future, because it's so lucrative and that's the era we live in now.
- 16 months earlier
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Their wordsIt's my belief that authoritarianism is so ingrained in the fabric of software development that it has been internalized to such a degree that even the most anti-authoritarian people cannot avoid being authoritarian.
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Their wordsIn short, I believe there is no such thing as a Benevolent Dictator for Life, and that by learning why that's true you can better decide to for yourself how you want to spend your free time.
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Their wordsWith that covered I can now devise a straightforward definition of authoritarianism: Any deference to authority given or taken without the enthusiastic informed consent of everyone involved.
- 4 years earlier
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Their wordsI believe that the influence of the previous generation of programmers is largely gone.
↗The End Of Coder Influencezedshaw.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsI also believe the newer generation of programmers are more well rounded and have a general distaste of this kind of tribal fascist bullshit we have in open source.
↗The End Of Coder Influencezedshaw.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsI now think the actual influence of the hive mind on anything outside of the tiny little set of Silicon Valley Programmers Who Read HN bubble is nothing.
↗The End Of Coder Influencezedshaw.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 20 months earlier
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Their wordsNegativity and criticism are an important part of creating anything of quality. You have to be critical of what you make or else you end up making total crap and never improve.
↗And Then You Have No Tastezedshaw.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Attempting to eliminate criticism of ideas is a sign of immaturity and an abuse of power.
Their wordsTaking criticism in stride is just part of quality, and trying to eliminate any criticism of your ideas is a sign of both immaturity and abuse of power.
↗And Then You Have No Tastezedshaw.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Our reading
Teams work better when individuals create ideas first and then the team produces the good ideas.
Their wordsWhat I believe works better is if individuals come up with ideas and create in the beginning, and then teams produce the good ideas.
↗And Then You Have No Tastezedshaw.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
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Our reading
Companies often allow employees unrestricted access to user accounts until they face legal action.
Their wordsThey always allow their employees unrestricted access until they get their ass sued off over it.
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Their wordsIf I were honest, I would say that privacy and security have been so fully eroded in internet culture that even when given this information consumers wouldn't care.
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Their wordsI'm just proposing a total fantasy here, and the chance that some company will have the ethics necessary to do this is incredibly low.