Do Douglas Crockford's Words/Actions Undermine the Validity of his "Good Parts" Knowledge/Advice/Experience ?

[nelsonic]

Last week @douglascrockford (DC) got "un-invited" from speaking at nodevember because of his words/actions: http://nodevember.org/statement.html
I have not had enough time to read all the blog posts, tweets and forum comments ... so this is just an initial post to open the discussion, collect more information and get people's views on the topic. I tried to read through the pastebin transcript of nodevember's slack (link shared by Naracion on HN) but I am none the wiser ... 😕

Here's what I/we know:

@nodebotanist (who's talk we loved at NodeConf London!) wrote this Medium post: https://medium.com/@nodebotanist/why-i-won-t-be-speaking-at-conferences-with-douglas-crockford-anymore-61bc29f028c8#.nh9pg4l37

Kas described DC as:

"rude, unrepentant, and completely (one could argue willingly) oblivious to the meaning of his statements."

I've always thought of DC as my "Technology Grandfather" (really looking up to his wisdom/experience) ... so I'm really disappointed that DC is insensitive & offensive to nice people like Kas ... I had no idea! 😞

It is not anyone's place to question how someone felt about what DC said.
If he said something (even if not intended to be offensive) and someone took offence, DC should just apologize and learn from it...

I watched DC's "(JavaScript) The Better Parts from Forward 2 Web Summit where he describes "weak maps" and also watched his Seif Project talk where he uses the word "Promiscuity" and proceeds to explain what he means ... and don't understand why people are offended by that description of "The Old Web"...

But what I do know is that sometimes I/we don't/won't understand why certain words/actions offend people because we don't listen through their ears or see through their eyes (i.e. we don't have their life experience, culture or perspective).

For people who have not been the victim of bullying it's difficult (impossible?) to empathise with those of us who were bullied for what ever reason. While I cannot claim to "understand" what it's like to be bullied for my gender (or non-binary-gender ) or discriminated for my religion, I do know what it's like to be beat up (both physically and psychologically) for being the "poor foreign kid" in a school so I can empathise with being treated as an "outsider" and I know many people are made to feel like they "don't belong" in the tech community; a sad fact we need to strive/work to eliminate. As Kas eloquently put it:

"If you are sitting out there thinking well I don't need a code-of-conduct guess what, it's not for you" - https://youtu.be/edYnouynBxg?t=15m17s

"We are merely trying to create a safe space for people who aren't here but we want them to be here" ~ https://youtu.be/edYnouynBxg?t=16m5s

@atom-morgan wrote this post: http://atom-morgan.github.io/in-defense-of-douglas-crockford
PDF: In-Defense-of-Douglas-Crockford.pdf (in case it disappears) which got a lot of "points" and comments on HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12422420 shows lack of empathy for the people who have been offended by DC's words/actions and mixes facts with (his) opinion ... but it is quite well-written and synthesises many of the other posts.

Adam concludes with:

"But let's not turn around and demand conferences like LambdaConf remove speakers with opinions you don't like"

Adam seems like a nice chap, but he does not appear to want to appreciate that a speaker's "Opinion" is not the same as their condescension to others (describing things as "Stupid").
DC should know better. If he does not appreciate someone else's talk he should just keep quiet and focus on his own message.

Kas' post concludes with:

“we do not need to choose between good people and good code; if we foster a good community, good code will follow.”

We agree whole-heartedly with Kas.

Our goal/plan with DWYL ❤️ ✅ has always been to be community-focussed.
So, the _Question_ is: does anyone have any objection to us continuing to use "The Good Parts" as our reference for which parts of the ECMAScript language are "good" to use.

[iteles]

Crockford is undoubtedly someone who's coding ability and ideas I respect very much. The Good Parts is a book that not only makes a lot of sense but is a fantastic resource, opening the eyes of many to both the pitfalls and the correct uses of JS.

However, as a man, there are some open questions about his behaviour as you've mentioned above. They are concerning if at times over-reactionary.

I would suggest that the solution here is to stick with what we believe: we move the emphasis in the readme away from [Crockford the man] and move it towards the seminal text that is the Good Parts.

[howardroark]

I'd say the medium article in question doesn't give me a chance to formulate my views on the events, but instead just hands me those of the author. That's not very fair. I certainly don't see how it helps people better empathize with others.

Also, it's fair to say that "bad" people can have "good" ideas. If you cast aside a "good" idea because it came from someone you deem a "bad" person... I'm not sure what "good" comes from that. It kind of just promotes the notion that appearing "good" is "good".

100% agree... go with what you believe in.

[jedwards1211]

Crockford told twitter devs who stopped using semicolons that it was "extremely stupid code" and he wouldn't dumb down his linter to support them. With semicolon-less style being fairly widespread now and well-supported by eslint, I'd say he lost that argument.

[jedwards1211]

I've been a huge jerk in the past with my coding opinions. But I've always regretted it, and I've mostly learned my lesson by now. I try to avoid thinking that any coding practice is objectively "good" or "bad" these days...all you can say truthfully is whether something is helpful to someone's goals, or might cause them unwanted trouble.

[nodebotanist]

Fwiw, I don't care if you like/recommend his book or not. That's up to you. All I was saying was I don't wanna speak at the same places he does. Gonna mute the thread, for sanity's sake.

[atom-morgan]

To answer OP's question: No.

[howardroark]

I think it may just be that Crockford thinks calling things stupid is the best way to make things better. Sort of the idea that if you mock ways of doing things, people will change and start doing it the "right" way. I'm talking strictly code here, no idea about personal interactions.

I just started using jslint and it has a /* stupid: true */ comment option which allows you to do things like run synchronous functions. I must say that I almost put the comment in, but then went ahead and started updating with async. I was offended a little bit, haha... but I'm also pretty sure dude isn't looking to make friends through code standards. I can't say if way the stupid part, or the requirement for a new comment in the code, but I did it!

Perhaps you say that you look to carry on the ideas behind "good parts", but in a less jerky way.