Taking "expert" "advice" with a grain of salt

(tags advocacy, programming, Lisp, Ruby)

Ever get to that point where your opinion on a person changes from "knows his stuff" to "can't trust what he's saying"? Seems like a normal thing on the blog-o-sphere, though. Surely everybody doesn't read a blog post in the same way.

I mentioned my nascent idolatry of Steve Yagge in previous programming post. I started reading his long-winded rants because they were right up my alley with Ruby, Lisp and Emacs. But ever since he started his with-comment blog, well-sounded critique comments reminded me to vigilant for accepting intellectual dishonesty. I heard Stevey's shocker "Lisp is not an Acceptable Lisp" through Jochen Schmidt's "Steve is Not an Acceptable Lisper" on the Planet Lisp feed. I unfortuately don't have the breadth of knowledge like Steve or these critics, so its hard to know who is right. But definately there are some really good links here to follow up. Even the author of the recently acclaimed programming book Practical Common Lisp, Peter Seibel, fires a shot across the bow with this tasty quote from the comment section:

Peter Seibel said...
I was trying to figure out why on earth you spent so much time writing about something that you apparently don't like. Then it hit me: HCGS [Helpful Critical Guy Syndrome]. So thanks for your help.

Stevey then goes on the defend himself with the next post "Software Needs Philosophers", since he himself says that he is not cut out to create the next "Lisp". So he's a philosopher now. Okay, I gotta fix up my internal categorizing system, because I seem to be really naive believing that Kool-Aid isn't Kool-Aid. What with him saying: "Let's call it [the previous post] a troll, then, because it was poorly researched", you gotta be wary of the posting for blog masterbation in place of the intention of being informative. Am I at fault for expecting the stuff he makes off the cuff to be the same quality as a [insert some publication you trust] article? Evidently yes, I left my thinking on auto-pilot.

But this reminds me that having comments on blog balance the posts out. For me, not having comments on my own posts means I'm missing out on the people who want to quickly correct me on my misinformation (calling any HCGS-ers?). Oh boy do I have plenty. But I still lean to the no-comment on my blogs because I don't want the hassle of being responsible for what they say. Perhaps he does have the same intention of being informative as I do. I certainly am not an expert at video gaming creating or even consumption, so how can I know when wholly ignorant about a subject. There it is, the answer was always waiting for me: Enable comments.