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(rurban is the author of cperl and technically brilliant)

I did, indeed, have a couple of slides in my talks where I said "if you think somebody's an asshole, you could be wrong, maybe they're actually just german" - referencing the direct german style of communication, which I personally rather like.

Taking this exactly backwards and then calling it "immature racism" is ... precisely the sort of thing I was referring to, as is deriding everybody you've had technical disagreements with as "unsuccessful culture warriors".

I find this a shame, but we've discussed it more than once over the years and given I haven't convinced you yet, I find it unlikely I ever will.




I'm German and I find that funny.

It's not that I cannot be offended by stupid stereotyping and attacks on Germans (Erik Naggum had some really vile posts in that regard), but the above is not even on my top ten list of things bothering me today.

Number one is cooking quinces to death, because I just wanted to blanch them a bit and forgot to turn the stove lower), so still pretty inconsequential.


The aggravating thing to me is it wasn't even an attack, it was part of a talk about "assholes, idiots, whiners and trolls" that basically said "none of these people are necessarily that, here's how to look at things differently and maybe end up getting on with them instead".

Every other german who rendered a comment on said talk thought it was hilarious and clearly got that I sympathised due to being pretty blunt myself (oh gods east coast american middle managers, how easy they are to offend ...)

My commiserations on the unplanned demise of your quinces.


Why is that even a YAPC talk?

I've heard points similar rurban makes from mlehmann, who also got tired of p5p and maintains his own perl5 fork.

http://schplog.schmorp.de/2015-06-06-a-stable-perl.html


It was a keynote because open source is made of people and encouraging helpers and contributors is how open source projects prosper.


Points taken! Thanks for adding some insight.


Your slide was simply:

    GERMAN
    ASSHOLES
We were not amused but didn't cry wolf as it would happen nowadays with a CoC. I would never use such terms, but perl5 leaders are very keen to throw such accusations around all the time because it conveniently distracts from the technical arguments you need to avoid. You kept with this slide for several years, but since then deleted all youtube instances.

I'm not a german btw. but my mother was born there, so I felt with them.


Actual slides: https://shadow.cat/resources/slides/matt-s-trout/2011/yapc-n... - and I did use part of these slides once more, but that's not exactly "several years".

If anybody's confused why there's a downwards arrow on one of the slides it was so I could stand underneath it to proclaim myself loud, blunt and obnoxious at the start of the 'assholes' section because this was a community hacking talk and I was identifying myself as part of the group I was about to talk about.

I don't even have access to any of the relevant bits of youtube.

This is just getting silly now :(


I've met plenty of direct-talking Germans who wouldn't be mistaken for assholes.


Well, yes.

"Some people who initially appear to be in group X may turn out to actually be in group Y" does not, at all, require that all of group Y may appear to be in group X. Logic doesn't work that way :)




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