So, there’s been some Internet Drama over the for-profit video release of a presentation from RubyConf 2008 by Gregg Pollack of Envycasts. Here are some reactions and comments collected from various sources over the last ~24 hours.
My own (highly negative) review:
Having watched the offending video yesterday, it is pretty easy to see why the guy can’t make money as a developer and so is trying to jump on the “screencast money train” a la Peepcode. I would question if it’s even worth downloading for free.
It’s nothing but a superficial high level tour of threads, messaging, and profiling, with some mildly interesting speed tips at the end which should really have been a single blog post. The “research” the guy did is evident all right – as in, it’s obvious he just looked it all up for the presentation and has never actually used any of this stuff. The “tips” he gives – when he gets around to giving any – are unremarkable at best and downright wrong at worst – he actually seems to recommend using RSS as an interprocess message queue, which is a really stupid idea.
He also includes a video overlay of himself giving the whole speech down the bottom of the screen, for that little “distracting touch of narcissm”. He pronounces “memoize” to rhyme with “turquoise”, and spends the first 3 minutes of a 40 minute paid presentation making an unfunny joke.
On the whole I think the guy might actually have done everyone a favour by making the video pay-only. The presentation is not even worth the 40 minutes it takes to watch, let alone $9, and the less people who think that RSS is a good way to implement distributed processing the better.
None of this excuses the presenter’s actions re. RubyConf but in this case, I think it will be a self-correcting problem. There is some expectation that someone demanding money for their training videos might at least have some experience working with the subject on which they present. I expect this video to destroy the clown’s professional reputation just as surely as his money-grubbing actions have destroyed his personal credibility.
I am hardly alone in this assessment. Let me quote several other people from a number of sources, anonymous because I have used them without permission. That said, if you have a problem with being quoted anonymously, let me know and I will remove your comment immediately.
Couldn’t even be bothered watching it for free:
Ugh…
Couldn’t get through it. The music was just too annoying. So I skimmed. Probably spent 4 minutes watching it.
Yes, all pretty superficial stuff and nothing really useful in there.
I don’t really like those tutorials which are just a tour of add-ons/plug-ins/gems etc written by other people (and as you know, Ruby people are all too ready to embrace other people’s code). I’m more interested in seeing interesting, original and innovative code.
Another prominent developer is unimpressed:
there is nothing in this talk which cannot be discovered in a couple of minutes using google, or by reading a couple of howtos
An IP sleuth points the finger …
The “speed tips” at the end are stolen directly from igvita.com, without attribution of course, and the ruby threading graphs look suspiciously similar too. This video is basically nothing but a visual presentation of the content from someone else’s blog – unpaid, of course. To pay for it would be to encourage this kind of blatant theft.
Tsk, tsk.
UPDATE: More:
I had a strange feeling of deja vu when I saw this talk. I felt like Id seen it before, somehow, and recently. later that day I logged on and was trying to find out where I’d read it before. Turns out the whole thing was lifted from Igvita.com, with minor changes. No credit given at all. If I was the guy from igvita.com, I would be pissed.
Storage space conscious:
Not only is this video not worth 40 minutes of my time or $9 of my money, it’s not even worth 200M of my hard disk space. Deleted.
A message of support:
I fully support Mr Polack’s actions in this matter. Anyone dumb enough to 1. buy this POS and 2. implement its suggestions (RSS? Are you fucking KIDDING me?) deserves to have their money stolen and their app grind to a messy halt. Polack is doing us all a favour, why so harsh?
A compelling argument there.
UPDATE 2:
Surprise!
