The BileBlog

For many years, I’ve longed to say something about Howard Lewis Ship. I’ve received much fanmail over the years regarding Howard, much of it anonymous, usually laced with pleas to expose this bearded wonder to the rest of the world as the uncaring insensitive naive fatboy that he is.

Sadly, I’ve never quite found something useful to pin on him. Yes, his project (Tapestry) is incredibly stupid. Sure, it has no users and is largely irrelevant as a freak evolutionary dead end (how can someone think that 5 artifacts per ejb2 bean is a bad idea, but 2-4 artifacts per tapestry page is a good one?) Thats not really enough to point out what a turd he is though. After all, it’s all harmless isnt it? So he likes pissing about with open sores and making a living by ensuring his project is impossible to use and keep up with, isnt that smart?

Much to my relief, Howard finally comes to the rescue with an absolute gem of a blog post. I had to read it twice to find the sarcasm and irony that so obviously must be there, but alas, I couldnt find any, so I’ll have to assume he’s being serious.

Howard, for those lucky enough not to be subscribed to JavaBlogs and thus exposed to his unique brand of insanity, has decided to switch to slf4j for his logging needs (from clogging).

What incredibly compelling logical reasons does he give for doing so? He doesnt like the fact that loggers are called ‘Logger’, and prefers ‘Category’ or ‘Log’ (perhaps a subconcious attempt to label all his code). He casualy flaps his michelin man arms about about how easy it’ll be for everyone to migrate, and how its no big deal to CHANGE EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SOURCE FILE YOU HAVE. Even more hilariously, he says that everyone uses clogging with log4j so the abstraction is pointless, yet proceeds to pick another logging framework abstraction. Huh? Its like there are two howards, both of whom enjoy debating with the other but are so set in their beliefs that won’t actually listen to what the other one has to say.

So ridiculous was this decision and its justification, that even the master of all thats inane, pointless, and shiny, Dion Almaer, pokes fun at Howard. I honestly think I’ve never ever found a project that Dion considers dumb or pointless, the man takes delight in a morning poo if it had rounded corners.

This latest pointless move from the bearded wonder highlights precisely why so many users have lost faith in him and his ability to deliver. Here’s a tip howie, a successful framework finds users and sucks and diddles their genitalia, it doesnt bend them over and make them squeel like stuck pigs.