Zed A. Shaw is a software developer most commonly known for creating the Mongrel web server for Rubyweb applications, as well as his articles on technology, business, and technical communities. His most famous and well-covered piece was his article called "Rails is a Ghetto" which has since been removed from his site. Shaw is also behind an initiative entitled "Programming, Motherfucker", whose manifesto claims that programmers are "tired of being told we're socially awkward idiots who need to be manipulated to work in a Forced Pair Programmingchain gang."
Software
Shaw authored the Mongrel web server for Ruby web applications. Mongrel was the first web server used by Twitter, and inspired Node.js, according to its creator Ryan Dahl. Mongrel2 is the language-agnostic successor to Mongrel. He has also written a Pythonmail server called Lamson, on which the mailing list site LibreList is built.
"There is a high probability that Python 3 is such a failure it will kill Python." - Zed Shaw Shaw has a opposing Python 3, where he finds the new string type difficult to use, and as a result believes it should not be adopted. Nonetheless, in February 2017 he published a first draft of Learn Python 3 The Hard Way. He stated in November 2016 that "Python 3 is not Turing complete" due to claims from Python project developers that Python 2 code cannot be made to run in the Python 3 VM. This statement has drawn a lot of criticism.
Criticism of certain behaviours within startup culture
Shaw has spoken about the amounts of vague and misleading information that is pervasive on the startup and entrepreneur culture, particularly concerning self-proclaimed startup advisors or entrepreneurship "gurus", having demonstrated publicly how some notable figures in the industry appear to speak and provide advice from a background of success that they never actually attained.
Learn Python the Hard Way: A Very Simple Introduction to the Terrifyingly Beautiful World of Computers and Code 3rd edition. Republished under Addison-Wesley Professional, 2013.
Learn Ruby the Hard Way: A Simple and Idiomatic Introduction to the Imaginative World Of Computational Thinking with Code. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2014
Learn C the Hard Way: Practical Exercises on the Computational Subjects You Keep Avoiding . Addison-Wesley Professional, 2015.
Mongrel: Learn to Build the Greatest Ruby Web Server Ever. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2015.
Learn Python 3 the Hard Way: A Very Simple Introduction to the Terrifyingly Beautiful World of Computers and Code. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2017.
