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Domain: zedshaw.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to zedshaw.com.
Stories · 5
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Why Programmers Need To Learn Statistics
David Gerard writes "Zed Shaw writes an impassioned plea to programmers: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All. Quoting: 'I go insane when I hear programmers talking about statistics like they know s*** when it's clearly obvious they do not. I've been studying it for years and years and still don't think I know anything. ... I have taken a bunch of math classes, studied statistics in grad school, learned the R language, and read tons of books on the subject. Despite all of this I'm not at all confident in my understanding of such a vast topic. What I can do is apply the techniques to common problems I encounter at work. My favorite problem to attack with the statistics wolverine is performance measurement and tuning. All of this leads to a curse since none of my colleagues have any clue about what they don't understand. I'll propose a measurement technique and they'll scoff at it. I try to show them how to properly graph a run chart and they're indignant. I question their metrics and they try to back it up with lame attempts at statistical reasoning. I really can't blame them since they were probably told in college that logic and reason are superior to evidence and observation.'" -
6 Reasons To License Software Under the (A/L)GPL
Henry V .009 writes with a link to Zed Shaw's "newest rant," which gives a cogent description of his reasons for choosing the not-always-popular GPL for his own code: "Honestly, how many of you people who use open source tell your boss what you're using? How many of you tell investors that your entire operation is based on something one guy wrote in a few months? How many of you out there go to management and say, 'Hey, you know there's this guy Zed who wrote the software I'm using, why don't we hire him as a consultant?' You don't. None of you. You take the software, and use it like Excalibur to slay your dragon and then take the credit for it. You don't give out any credit, and in fact, I've ran into a vast majority of you who constantly try to say that I can't code as a way of covering your ass." -
Rails May Not Suck
KDan writes "With astonishing regularity, articles or posts come out claiming that the popular Ruby on Rails framework sucks in some way or another. People complain that Rails isn't as easy to deploy as PHP, that Rails just didn't do it for project XYZ. They range from the articulate and well thought out to the frankly inane and stupid (and wrong). Recently, there's also of course been the spectacular nuclear rant by Zed Shaw, which was more a rant against random elements of the community than against Rails, but was still presented as a rant against Rails. Here's an article that tries to put some perspective on why these opinions are irrelevant to whether or not Rails sucks." -
Rails Bigwig Rails on Rails Community
Zed Shaw, creator of the popular Mongrel HTTP daemon / library, has decided it was high time to tear into the Ruby/Rails community for many different complaints that he has been collecting over the last few years. "Rails is a Ghetto" is Shaw's self-proclaimed exit strategy from the Rails community. "This is that rant. It is part of my grand exit strategy from the Ruby and Rails community. I don't want to be a 'Ruby guy' anymore, and will probably start getting into more Python, Factor, and Lua in the coming months. I've got about three or four more projects in the works that will use all of those and not much Ruby planned. This rant is full of stories about companies and people who've either pissed in my cheerios somehow or screwed over friends. I can back all of them up from emails, IRC chat logs, or with witnesses. Nothing in here is a lie unless it's really obviously a lie through exaggeration, and there's a lot of my opinion as well." -
A Rubric for IT Analysis
Aredridel writes "Zed A. Shaw has an insightful article on how analyses of software systems should be performed, and how they're often done wrong. It should be required reading for all IT journalists, and all readers of IT journals."