Why "troll"? (was Re: What's better about Ruby than Python?)

[Aahz]

In article <bhrk91$2d28f$1 at ID-203719.news.uni-berlin.de>,
Brandon J. Van Every <vanevery at 3DProgrammer.com> wrote:
>
>Well, I'll freely own up to being rude and intellectually violent.
>I don't feel like being "PC" about certain basic questions, I'm a
>pragmatic programmer and I call a spade a spade.  But that doesn't make
>me a troll.  It's annoying when people can't/won't tell the difference.
>The sheer volume of questions I've asked about Python should indicate
>to any impartial observer that I actually do care about the answers.
>And if that isn't sufficiently convincing, you might try checking the
>marketing-python archives.

Speaking as someone with a well-deserved reputation for abrasiveness
(nothing approaching yours, but established over more than a decade
on-line), when someone as obviously intelligent as you persists in
writing in ways that piss people off, the only likely answers for "why?"
are "troll" or "insane".

Since "troll" implies volition, it's actually less pejorative than the
alternative.  One definition of insanity: performing the same action
over and over again, expecting a different result each time.

You're the one who has to decide, in the end, how much effort you're
willing to put into maintaining the social contract versus continuing to
get ostracized.  I've made my decision to alienate a fair number of
people, but I also got on well enough with others.

I actually used to be more abrasive and annoying, but some people were
kind enough to whack me with a clue-by-four.  Here's your free clue as
part of my pay-forward; I don't have the energy to give you more.
-- 
Aahz (aahz at pythoncraft.com)           <*>         http://www.pythoncraft.com/

This is Python.  We don't care much about theory, except where it intersects 
with useful practice.  --Aahz