Somone is Wrong
summary
Argues that persuasion shapes engineering decisions, not just tech: shows how Facebook’s “code wins the argument” idea fails in team design clashes; analyzes concrete fallacies (straw man, appeal to authority, sunk cost) with examples like the “nodejs is a cancer” post, Twitter vs Rails scaling, and feature requests for cucumber. Covers Aristotle’s ethos/pathos/logos, when to use past/present/future in debates, and practical fixes (face-to-face, escape routes, a fallacy poster).
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chapters (36)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:35What is Rhetoric
- 2:08Rhetoric vs Turd
- 4:03Greek Rhetoric
- 4:55Practicing Speaking
- 7:19Code vs Rhetoric
- 9:17Rhetoric Programming Language
- 10:15Hello World
- 13:20Aristotle
- 14:21Logic
- 14:40Logical fallacies
- 14:57JavaScript example
- 15:49A tiny tiny percentage
- 16:17The spotlight fallacy
- 18:19sunk cost fallacy
- 19:20mocks
- 20:02metaphors
- 21:02the big ball of earth
- 22:14testing private methods
- 23:03testing passion
- 23:58using emotion
- 24:59smells
- 25:48going too far
- 27:04character
- 27:32characteristics
- 28:26Matt
- 28:57Code Grooming
- 29:46Three Types of Argument
- 30:51Punishment
- 32:04Future
- 33:38The Medium
- 34:35Using Skype
- 35:07Summary
- 36:29List of logical fallacies
- 37:09Be persuasive
- 37:22Be wrong
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