What I found offensive was the tone of the opening sentence where he talks about Ruby.

"I asked around and learned that he wrote a book called "Clean code" and that he likes Ruby, which just makes no sense to me at all - How do you unify a tool as unstable, unpredictable, untamed as Ruby (second only to Perl) with Clean Code"

Ruby is an "untamed" "tool" that can't be associated with clean code? Yeah Right! Troll alert (in my world, YMMV).

Again This isn't a one off. He called Python a "collection of dull knives" in another article, while demonstrating conclusively he knew jack all of what he was talking about - as pointed out here on HN(see links), which is the real problem. Making an outrageous claim and supporting it with real data and arguments would be awesome.

Ignorance and offensiveness is what defines a troll. One without the other is at worst educational. Technical advice, no matter how good, mixed with ignorance of and snideness towards other languages is still trolling(imo, YMMV).

(And yeah The "Norwegian sense of humour" explanation doesn't hold. I have Norwegian and Swiss and Swedish friends and in my experience there is nothing inherently nasty about any of these nationalities or English speaking/writing styles.)

Just thought I should point out his history of "whoring for traffic" as another commenter said here on this thread.

If you think he is some kind of model of civilized discourse and a fount of Clojure programming wisdom, feel free to treat him that way. (No sarcasm intended. Different folks different strokes).

Let us look at some ultra sharp Clojurians like Rich Hickey. Rich has very strong opinions about technology and coding style, but has never denigrated other languages that I know of (I am willing to be corrected). As a matter of fact he pulled up someone on the Clojure mailing list recently for making snide (and uninformed, strange how those qualities go together) remarks on Haskell.

I quote Rich's message "Everyone, please refrain from language wars. Haskell is a tremendously ambitious and inspiring language, for which I have the highest respect. There is zero point in bashing it (or its users) in this forum. "

I don't even use Ruby and Ruby certainly has its flaws (like any other language) but considering it some kind of antithesis of clean code, while simultaneously proposing minor stylistic changes in another man's code to "take him to school" is ignorant (imo).

"Take to school" has connotations of beating someone badly with superior technique and completely outclassing them while showing them "how it is really done" if my understanding of English is correct (not a native speaker, glad to be corrected). What I see here is a series of minor refactorings of an admitted beginner's code. (I am no Clojure expert but if there were some absolutely mind bending insights on "the Clojure way" in this post, I missed it. Minor improvements are suggested but (imo) such things are best sent to the original programmer as email rather than as a loud flashy blog post claiming to "take him to school" and so on if he really wanted to help out with coding style.

In short, I consider Lau Jensen a troll, given his history. I pointed it out with links to previous articles and resulting discussion on HN (do read the linked articles and resulting comments on HN, even if you end up disagreeing with my conclusions). YMMV. I flipped the (troll) bit on for this guy a long time ago.

Again ,YMMV. And that is as it should be. Differing opinions make the world richer.

PS. If you think my ideas unsupported and the given links unconvincing evidence of this chap's continuing nastiness and ignorance, then downvote away! That's what the downvote button is for I guess

I don't intend to argue this any further (so no more followups, don't worry about this turning into an interminable argument). Thanks for listening.