Passion And Pragmatism

This page with a good name was last updated March2000. But...

 Unfortunately it discussed behavior of a person
 (Sam, who is Sam?, why should rest of us care now?)
 by person (e.g. SethGordon ) who may nolonger be here.
 Could either PhilGoodwin or RichardDrake explain whether
 this page is still useful, WhatHappened, and WhatCanWeLearnFromThis. 

I put this page to IsThisPageOk? for others to consider actions.

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Sam's emotional state -- or at least, the emotional state that I infer from his behavior on wiki -- seems tied up with MicrosoftCorporation's reputation on wiki. The stereotypical SlashDot Microsoft-basher also ties his (it usually is his) emotions to MicrosoftCorporation, but in the opposite direction: anything that makes MicrosoftCorporation look bad makes the basher feel good, and vice versa. Both of these, I suggest, are instances of an AntiPattern: NationalIsm. --SethGordon

You may be on to something there Seth. I once emailed Sam asking for input on a project I'm working on (I work at Sun). He emailed me back and asked why he should help the enemy. That spoke volumes to me. Nationalism seems like a good label for it: the idea that if it comes from over there it's bad and if it comes from over here it's good. --PhilGoodwin

One of the things that has interested me is whether someone other than such a passionate advocate (nationalist if you like) could have or would have bothered to contribute as much to Wiki as Sam? Most people would surely have just left, as JimCoplien did long ago because of the sheer boredom of being a refusenik towards XP in those days.

I think Wiki should have found a way to celebrate Sam more, for its own good. Even if we disagreed with him. Even if he didn't ever want to help the "enemy". And we shouldn't mock his passion, especially given how many people he has been moving towards XP in a highly commercial context using Microsoft stuff.

There's some truth in what you say though. --RichardDrake

When I look for something to read, I look for quality of thought (or at least, quantity of accurate information), not intensity of passion. Passion is easy. Thought is hard.

The authors of the Talk.Origins Archive[1], for example, put a lot of thought into their writing. As a result, their defense of evolutionary theory is based on the best logical and empirical evidence that one can muster, and it's presented in a well-organized and easy-to-read manner. Someone who posts to talk.origins saying "all you creationists are sheep who think the Earth is flat too" might be even more passionate about evolutionary theory, but would not be doing any service to the Net.

See NationalIsm (or, better yet, the whole "Notes on Nationalism" essay) for Orwell's distinction between nationalism and patriotism.

--SethGordon

Now I love Orwell on nationalism and patriotism Seth and although I've never visited Talk.Origins I'd give them very good marks if what you say is true.

The thing that puzzles me about Sam though is the strange mixture of PassionAndPragmatism. From what I can tell he came to Wiki to check out if XP could ever be effective for his very Microsoft-centric company. Initially he thought not and said so in what you might call a typically forceful way. But after a while, the patience and skill of the XP advocates he encountered on Wiki made him have second thoughts.

To his great credit he admitted that he'd changed his mind. Then having learnt some truth he went merrily singing on his way huh? No, he seems to have been the key person in around 100 Microsoft developers taking XP very seriously and benefiting a great deal. That's what I call passion and pragmatism. It's a rare combination.

Who knows, there may have been some defects in Sam's approach on Wiki as well, especially for those whose concern is for "the truth" without reference to pragmatism, without reference to improving the way people write software in the big, bad ugly world. We may never know for sure about Sam's defects now though, because the man's moved on and taken the evidence with him. There was passion and pragmatism in that too!

--RichardDrake