(In)famous author and programmer John Sonmez (author of Soft Skills and The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide) has said some patently despicable things on Twitter lately, and faced a rightly-deserved backlash:
When events like this happen, whether it's an author, or a musician, or an actor, the conversation often ends up at the idea of separating the artist from their art. Can we enjoy John Sonmez's books while still thinking he's an awful person who has said some disgusting things? Is this cognitive dissonance? If someone else had written the same books, would they be any more useful?
Sonmez's publisher has dropped Soft Skills and his courses have been dropped from Pluralsight. I'm completely uncomfortable with financially supporting someone who's hurt people so flippantly, but should we avoid even secondhand (or library copies) of his books?
What do you think?
Photo by Viktoria Goda from Pexels
Latest comments (41)
Woah I can't believe all the comments from MEN in this thread! Can you share here just one specific racist/misogynist phrase in John's tweets? If someone calls me "pussy" I should tell him thanks as it will give more strength to come back stronger, no?. Really having read this history and John's statements just made me worry and feel like I'm in a parallel world… woahh!
Well I could be more contextualized over why He said that or just get a slice of the whole tweets is just enough to have this discussion?
By the way, someone did the service of documenting the entire disaster: medium.com/@cherp/propaganda-other... I'm putting this here because I've been asked for more info twice, and this author has the best summary.
That's an eternal question debated at length in all kinds of circles. The best answer I found so far is that there is no separation: "Art is not a moral force, is not something that exists separate of us. It's life itself." - Richard Flanagan.
I'm not familiar with Sonmez's books so I'm not sure if they're worth reading, but I guess if they are then you should read them, although I very much doubt that they are worth of anything. I watched one of his videos and he didn't strike me like the sharpest tool in the shed.
The ability to separate the art from the artist, IMHO, is an extremely important skill to have. To me, it is important that I approach a piece without biases, either positive or negative, stemming from anything external to the piece itself. This includes the marketing hype, recommendations from friends, and the author and his popularity, charm, history or familiarity, etc.
This mindset helps me, I think, give better and more constructive criticism to friends, and learn more from the piece that I'm studying. It also helps me avoid becoming a "die-hard fan", which more often than not is just a better term for sheep. After all, if you reject art because of the artist, then you also accept art because of the artist, which is necessarily a bad idea.
There are many things around us: inventions, ideas, books, paintings, which were created by people who have done "bad" things. Einstein wrote a letter to the president which (supposedly) caused the Manhattan project to be started. Richard Feynman's first instinct after the bomb dropped in Japan was to party. Edison electrocuted live animals to public to demonstrate why AC is bad. Should we reject everything they've given us? I say no. The light bulb is not Edison.
People are complex and multifaceted. Their creative output does not represent their entire worldview. Whether they are morally flawed or even criminal IRL shouldn't stop me from learning whatever I can from their best work. I'll continue to study, learn from, and criticise, Neruda's poems
This particular case is no exception. I didn't know about John Sonmez and I didn't follow the Twitter drama, but I don't see why I wouldn't read his book if it's any good. Also, this revenge driven mindset (he did so and so on Twitter so I'll avoid his books, even if secondhand) is really petty and not practical at all.
I'd say it's all situational.
Personally, I like reading H. P. Lovecraft's stories, but his racist leanings were horrible, to say the least. There is a bit of wiggle room, though, considering - his racism was comical viewed through the lens of the mythos he created, he lived his whole life fearing that he was truly his father's son (in other words, clinically insane), and he frequently remarked that anyone who believed the horrors he wrote about (metaphorically, hatred of others based on cultural differences) were real were clearly lunatics.
But Sonmez is a whole different case. Instead of questioning his own hate and vitriol, he doubled down on it. This seems like the absolute wrong way to go when you write books about soft skills. Surely, if you write about soft skills, you should demonstrate that you have soft skills yourself, right? It'd be like me writing a book about the greatest football strategies ever, even though I can't stand football.
Granted, I don't like SJWs any more than he does (SJAs are more my style), but his full support of the ideology of alpha male identitarians is inexcusable. Personally, I'd rather learn about soft skills from someone who actually has soft skills.
To clarify for those who don't know what I mean by SJAs being more my style, the general definitions I go by are:
I understand my definitions for these terms may differ from yours (and likely Sonmez, at least on the SJA bit), but it's less about the term and more about the attitude in my book. No offense to those who still call themselves SJWs when SJA might be a better fit - again, it's about what you do and not which 3 letters you go by.
I am utterly shocked!!
And although I agree that what he did is bad and harmful, not to mention his misogynistic attitude, I don't believe calling him out will come up with a desired output.
I am sure we have many Johns in the industry sadly and unless we have a healthy conversation and come up with practical solutions, we won't go anywhere.
We should deploy more empathy. For Instance, I am a man with a physical disability that doesn't necessarily match the classical "being a man" checklist.
Despite being discriminated and bullied in what's supposed to be a male dominated industry, I never called out any because I knew it's about the behaviour not the person.
Most People back their answers with numbers when they talk about inclusion. Numbers are meaningless if you have a toxic work environment or misogynistic coworkers.
We almost never question the defaults. But it's about time we do!
I saw this and immediately thought it would be a great place to talk about Wagner.
But this asshat Sonmez is neither artist nor art. He's an asshat.
A bigger problem is rms. I find it hard to disagree with him on many things, and he's been historically a great contributor the things I lpve and use. But he also turns out to be horrible and misogynistic.
But I don't think that means I stop using Emacs.
This Wagner?
When you look at the Mona Lisa do you spend much time thinking about the painter? When you use LibreOffice do you think much about the lives, times and ugly personal secrets of the army of developers who coded it? How about the people who designed and built your car? Or the staff of the company that sold you the car?
As Ruby Hamad of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper in Australia aptly points out, "All heroes have a dark side, no matter what side they're on". Both Martin Luther King, Jr. and his namesake Martin Luther had a dark side. Hey, even Charles Darwin!
Are we going to trash everything these people did because they weren't perfect? Is absolute perfection the standard? If so, then the only person worth listening to is Jesus Christ who not only claimed to teach truth, but also claimed to embody it.
I often pray to God asking for help and inspiration in my work. However, I don't look in the Bible for information on C#, JavaScript and the history of programming languages. For that I'm going to have to rely on human beings, flaws and all.
P.S. In my little backwater, the name John Sonmez was unknown until I read the article leading to this comment.
Not separating ideas, art etc. from who made it is a mistake.
It only leaves us more depraved and ignorant.
Even if it is a bad idea, art etc. then there is probably something to learn from it.
On a side note.
Is this guy not obviously frustrated?
Does he really deserve humiliation, or "being called out" and how will that help anyone?
Wont that just alienate him even more?
IMHO what he deserves is patience and help on how to deal with his frustration in an evolving world.
You would not call out a junior dev' for bad code, you would help them learn.
So why would you call out, or attack, an opinion on any other matter?
It's fruitless, and just comes of as self-serving to me when people "call others out".
Okay....what's happening?
Not trying to be offensive, but have no idea what's going on.
Your honesty just makes me so happy right now. Here's a video from John Sommez to explain some of it youtu.be/HvjQ3Mx-jWg
I didn't give much thoughts to this man before two days ago. I bought his book because it was recommended by several known people in this industry. If I had searched deeper into his blog or youtube channel, I wouldn't have bought this book.
Whenever you create something, I think you are always influenced by your beliefs and your ideals. Whatever those are, it will show in your creations. With that, I don't think it is possible to separate the artist from the art.
Anyway, whatever advice that man gave, you can find it in a lot of other artists, with a better, more inclusive and respectful language.
It is fascinating, and shocking, to see the reactions of people in cases like these. The Uncle Bob's reactions were incredibly disappointing. I know I won't be looking for his materials anymore.
I have been writing for Simple Programmer for a while now. The team is excellent, and they are great at supporting the writers to produce the best possible content. The editing process is excellent, and there has never been anything wrong or insulting. Neither from the content or the people I work with.
So as far as the blog Simple Programmer goes... it should not be correlated with him specifically.
While he has started it and has an insane amount of blogs on it, there is a lot you can get from the dozens of other writers that generate content on it. And the media is actually developed by a great team that moderates the blogs to be high-quality and high-value in content.
So, in that case, I do not think it is so much about separating the art from the artist... As the "art" that is Simple Programmer has evolved and is no longer his blog, but rather a media run by awesome people!
Had no idea who he was nor do I have any idea of what's going on right now nor do I want to Google it.
So I lived and workes, and hopefully will continue on without his books or that kind of knowledge.
As for Uncle Bob I have no intentions of reading his books. You can check out Jim Coplien to get some sens about what I think of TDD, forcing patterns and his styles.
As to what's this have to do with the article: USE YOUR HEAD. STOP JUMPING THE HYPE AND FOLLOWING AND LEARNING WHAT OTHERS FORCE UPON US.
No book or knoweledge was delivered by itself but by a human. Humans make mistakes but knoweledge stays regardles od who was the one that provided it. If it's usefull it stays that way. If not it evaporates as crypto, blockchain, and other stuff. All good ideas poorly used. Those are still out there but far less popular.
Example how to be yourself. I like Jim Copliens ideas but I still use Java. I like domain driven and some parts of the clean architecture but I hate TDD and it's idea. It not practical for me. Who actually cares? If you deliver good product it fine whatever practice you followed.
Bottom line if you don't know how to deal with the people it's not the art it's your mental issues.
// , This may just be my limited knowledge of networking, but perhaps you could start whitelisting technologies based on their source, rather than making a blacklist of art your set considers problematic, offensive, corruptive, et cetera. Some religions and media groups, in the past, have taken this approach. "Nihil obstat" or ESRB, anyone?
I take the pragmatic approach. For me, the consequence happens to be: Don't use Twitter.
I'm currently thinking pretty hard about my usage of any platform in which "Look who just called who a ____, screenshots attached!" or whatever is worthy of that platform's equivalent of a front page. I just do not have much Schadenfreude or righteous outrage left.
But the question has answers on what the artists can do. Not all the possible answers are on the side of the consumers.
Maybe the artists in question will take the Satoshi Nakamoto approach to software development. Will the artists begin separating themselves from their art? That's an option they have.
As Ben said, "things get unnecessarily dramatic", sometimes in cases where it's warranted (arguably in the subject of this post) but also in cases where it's not warranted: github.com/antirez/redis/issues/3185
This is a question that needs to be answered on a case by case basis, and in Sonmez's case, he deserved everything coming his way, and it was completely self-inflicted. Had he not jumped in threads and started throwing fire-bombs? Plus, I've read his books, you're not really missing anything.