This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Python Buzz
by Ben Last.
Original Post: All Sweeping Generalizations Are Wrong
Feed Title: The Law Of Unintended Consequences
Feed URL: http://benlast.livejournal.com/data/rss
Feed Description: The Law Of Unintended Consequences
There are, I have decided, three types of enthusiast.
The first is the Passionate, a lover of their subject, brimming with a desire to impart that same appreciation to any and all who listen. They approach their topic with love and derive enjoyment from learning all about it. These are Good People; often, even though I have no interest myself in that which they appreciate, it's worth listening to them to catch the wave of their enthusiasm, to be borne up by the joy they take in it. Many such people occupy Python mailing lists, oddly enough.
The second is the Keeper Of Hidden Knowledge. This beast likes to guard information, to keep it secret and concealed to maximize its value. As long as you're willing to pay the price (which may be simply to acknowledge their tremendous authority), what you need may be vouchsafed to you. These are... a Mixed Blessing at best, but probably inevitable, like taxes or Kylie Minogue.
And then there's the third type, the Hierarch; the sort of person who, when encountering another aficionado of his (or, rarely, her) area of expertise, enters into the sort of dance tomcats do on first meeting. It may sometimes appear overtly friendly, yet the purpose is not to bond but to establish superiority. The possessor of the most profound and deep knowledge wins and gains (at least in his own eyes) higher status. Unfortunately, this sort of animal is all too frequently encountered online. Recently, I've been following a discussion (that I shall not dignify here with a link) on the subject of guitars. Guitars are dear to me; I delight in their playing and (to a lesser extent) in the pleasure of owning such beautiful, elegant and well-crafted instruments. Into this discussion (on the correct methods of setting up for best playability), enters a new subscriber, keen to discover hints as to the best way to adjust his Floyd-Rose II floating bridge. Within a few hours of his initial post, the Hierarchs descend, each attempting to out-do the other in arcane and increasingly irrelevant references to finer and yet finer points of string-related detail, mixed with slighting comments on the low status of the "newbie" who dares to enter their hallowed grounds in search of advice.
Not to put too fine a point on it, it's cretins like this who hang out on Linux-related IRC channels and laugh at those who don't yet grok the deeper mysteries of hdparm. You can also find them in builder's merchants, where they'll attempt to compensate for being paid pitiful wages by sneering gently at anyone who's a little unsure of the exact difference between grades of nail, or possibly bolt. A pox upon them all, I say.
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