I probably shouldn't say anything. As a longtime Usenet reader I've (mostly) learned better than to feed the trolls and get involved with online flamewars. But sometimes things get a little out of hand. Anyone can set up their own web site and start blogging these days, and it can sometimes be hard for a person searching Google to know who to believe.
Over the past week, a developer named Rick Downes has gone on a tear against a number of other Mac developers, posting a series of angry, insulting, and simply untrue statements about them. In most cases he uses technical arguments as the basis for the post, but rather than be content with this he instead layers on hateful, mean-spirited personal attacks on his targets. It's his blog, but I'd hate to think that an unsuspecting person might come across some of his statements and wonder if maybe they're true.
Worst has got to be his over-the-top attack on Daniel Jalkut. I know Daniel and respect him a lot, both as a person and as a developer. You don't have to like Daniel, though I don't know why you wouldn't, but not liking someone doesn't excuse outright lies that could damage a person's reputation. Rick repeatedly states that Daniel doesn't care about his customers, and makes it out that Daniel is somehow getting away with ripping people off. How you do that when your software has a downloadable free trial escapes me, but that's not really the point.
The point is: I've met a lot of developers in my career, and Daniel Jalkut is easily the most concerned for his customers of any developer I've ever met. He sets very high standards and lives up to them. If anyone has any issue with his software, he wants to know and wants to fix things as quickly as possible. Even now Daniel's probably considering whether there's anything valid in Rick's diatribe and making whatever fixes might be needed. Rick's statements regarding Daniel are totally at odds with reality.
It's hard to even know what motivates Rick. If I-- or, I believe, Daniel-- discovered what I thought was an embarrassing flaw in someone's application, my first inclination would be to contact that developer and let them know. Going public with a blog post is completely unwarranted unless the flaw in question somehow endangered people, and only then if the developer additionally failed to warn those people. Loading on personal insults is unwarranted, full stop. Criticism of another's work may be valid, but it's best to make such criticism as constructive and helpful as possible. Publicly lambasting another's work like this as the first step helps nobody.
Rick's attack on Jonathan Wight is similarly an over-the-top baseless rant. Among those who know Jonathan, he's earned a reputation as a technical whiz who always has time to help someone out. His technical chops are on public display at his public code repository. He runs the Iron Coder contest. Rick seems to hate him, apparently because Jonathan teaches kids about robots and doesn't have many applications listed at versiontracker.com (never mind his consulting work, I guess). And of course because he disagrees with Rick on a certain technical issue.
As for Rick's comments on Kenneth Ballenegger, well, I'm not even sure I understand what he's saying. The constant use of the word tool makes it apparent that Rick's not happy, but about what I'm not sure.
The community of Mac developers is, with very few exceptions, an enthusiastic group doing their best for those using their software and welcoming to anyone who shares their interest. There's a real sense of professional courtesy as well, with developers mostly willing to lend a hand to others and provide constructive criticism to each other when appropriate. In most cases if one Mac developer mentions flaws in another's application, they'll do so privately an in the spirit of helping a colleague do a better job. Please don't be misled by the few exceptions to this rule.
Sun, 11/25/2007 - 23:32
Well put Tom. Trust you to bring an objective and level-headed opinion to a touchy subject.
Mon, 11/26/2007 - 07:37
Isn't there anything we can do here? Rick is seriously sliding down a slanderous slide.
Mon, 11/26/2007 - 08:37
Wild! They've gone wild! Wild I tell you!
@CxT of course there is nothing we can do. This is the internet. It'll always be full of nut cases.
I did what I thought was appropriate and pointed my finger at Rick and called him a crazy. I've had some pretty good support through comments to my post, follow up posts like Ian and Tom's and via private email. I'm pretty sure most of the Mac developer community knows Rick Downes is a fruitloop.
That's the best we can hope for.
Tue, 11/27/2007 - 04:05
Don't take any of his comments personally. Rick Downes probably has mental issues. No sane person would write stuff like he does. I know this is very hard but I would really try to ignore him. Action probably only results in more reaction.
He probably needs professional help.
Tue, 11/27/2007 - 16:06
I don't take him seriously, I don't think any of the people I mentioned do, and in fact I would have preferred to just ignore it all. But it's not too hard to imagine someone who's never heard of Rick coming across those rants in a Google search and not knowing the truth of the situation. With any luck they might also come across this post and get a clearer picture of the situation.
Tue, 01/15/2008 - 09:54
Huh. I recognized the rixstep domain since I've read an article or few from there, but after glancing through those other articles, it just sounds like there is just a person or group of people who are just overly bitter or just enjoy complaining. And their biggest beef seems to be keeping programs as small as possible. It's not an entirely bad idea, and I've even shied away from adding additional frameworks to keep my program sizes down. However, I don't spend an entire critique complaining about the size of a program. Bloat is bad, yes, especially if it is unnecessary. Or if something is going to get bigger and more complex, try and optimize it (Windows Vista, we're looking at you!).
Sun, 03/02/2008 - 00:52
These stories are everywhere! I got a couple of full-page rix-rants taking pot shots at me, riffing on my last name. Like, at a level where responding "oh yeah? well you have cooties".
Why? Because Jalkut's software is awesome and I defended his works when rixstep went apeshit on everything-Jalkut. Why? because one of his releases of MarsEdit apparently had a couple of .DS_Store files in it.
Rixstep does have one purpose to the rest of us "Landed Gentry of Mac Development": to establish a low-end of the range of humanity.
It's a wonder those folks can output so much crass verbage (not a typo), not have opposable thumbs and all.
Thu, 05/01/2008 - 08:53
To be fair, the lunatic is correct - not optimizing your artwork is a pretty big oversight. Reading his rants did make me reconsider my own apps (if only to avoid that part of his ire) and I found that every one of them shrunk to roughly half their size. I'll give him that point; artwork optimization is now a standard 'Release' build step in each of my apps.
The rest of each of his rants are ... well ... entertaining. I agree, though, that I believe Rick has some real mental issues. Not the kind we attribute to those who are just ***holes, but the serious kind we attribute to people like the Simpsons cat lady ...
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