I received the following e-mail today:
gençlerin türkçe bilgiye ihtiyacı var. türkçe yazsanıza!
Translation: Young people need Turkish articles. Why don’t you write in Turkish!
Let’s ask this as a question, or a more relevant question of why I am writing my blog in English, at the end of this post.
People Who Just Can’t Admit They’re Wrong
I am always shopping for new blogs for my RSS reader. Especially blogs written in Turkish. Not only because of Turkish is my mother tongue. But mainly because there are so few, you have to keep searching all the time. So far I’ve followed many blogs only to find out they’re by far and large not for me. Except for FZ Blogs of course, FZ rocks.
Then I’ve found this other blog, with FZ’s suggestion. It is in Turkish, check! tech/internet/programming related, check! Then I subscribed it happily. An article published today led to that e-mail in the beginning. It looked like an innocent article about Google Ventures until the final part.
Bir takım ahmakların dayattıkları genel fikir, halihazırda yurtdışında mevcut bir sistemi ne kadar çabuk kopyalayarak bir “.com” şirketi açarsanız o kadar başarılı olabileceğiniz yönünde. Bu senaryoda ileri teknoloji kullanımı, yaratıcılık, tasarım, özgünlük gibi unsurlar geri plana atılmış durumda.
Translation: Some fools are spreading the idea that the quicker you can duplicate an existing dotcom business the more successful you become. Advanced technologies, creativity, design and originality are neglected in this scenario.
Belli başlı, az sayıda ve sistemin çarpıklığından palazlanmış büyük oyuncu, etraflarına bazı çığırtkan ve spekülatif insanları toplayarak, kendi aralarında bir birlik oluşturmuşlar ve kendi aralarındaki rekabete rağmen, dışardan oyuna katılmak isteyenlere karşı düşmanca ve dışlayıcı bir tavır içindeler. Aslında bu primitif bir oyun, sektör var, oyuncular ve oyuncu olmayanlar var, oyuncular oyuna yeni oyuncu girmesini engellemek için işbirliği yaparken kendi aralarında da rekabet ediyorlar. Durum kabaca bundan ibaret.
Translation: Some big players, who had grown rich out of deformities of the system, gathering speculators and barkers around, formed an alliance, despite competition amongst themselves, to cast newcomers out. This is actually a simple game, there is the industry, players and non players, players are competing with each other while they cooperate to obstruct new players. This is roughly the situation
Naturally I asked if they could back that claim up. Are big players really trying to crush new startups? How exactly are they doing that?
I got no response to that comment, no big surprise. Instead I received the e-mail I mentioned in the beginning. Why? Because we love throwing mud at successful and not-so-successful1. Of course there’s no such secret allience between big players of Internet industry in Türkiye. At the very most they are (naturaly) protecting their investment. This is neither illegal nor immoral. If you actually have anything to support you claim Mr Consultant I’d be happy to read. Otherwise you should just admit you were wrong and fix that post.
Guilty Conscience
Just trying to move the conversation into private, shows that you have nothing meaningful to say about the evil secret cult of Internet companies. That’s not even an e-mail you have sent me. It is more like an IM message pasted in an e-mail composer.
gençlerin türkçe bilgiye ihtiyacı var. türkçe yazsanıza!
Why don’t we pay the minimum attention to aviod being a situation where we end up being wrong. And more importantly why do we still insist even after we realize we are wrong. Say, if you give crack/warez links in your blog and then claim the software/media in question is public domain. And then when presentented with link to its official site where it is being sold (ie. not abandonware) you are supposed to try to make fun of people who did the warning? This is why I don’t, I can’t follow any Turkish bloggers.
Justification of stealing is bad for the person and bad for the community. Same is true with needless feces throwing and flaming corporate hatred.
Mr Consultant, I liked your blog. I want to follow it, I want to refer it to my friends, I want to learn something from it. So, please put some effort in when writing. I also like your web application yazboz.com a lot. It may be another duplicate of a well known class of applications you were bashing in your post2. But I like it. And I hope it becomes a big success.
Why Am I Torturing You With My Broken English?
The young needs Turkish information sources, eh? No! The young need to drag his sorry ass and learn English first. And then he should go read something of substance. And then if he has some time to kill he can read my blog. I am not an expert or guru or anything like that. I don’t have a mission or inclination to educate the young.
Trying to translate all the knowledge (written in English) on the Internet is absurdly, disproportionally more work than individually learning English, that it is plain stupid to even think about suggesting it.
I am writing in English for the following reasons:
- It is a nice filter. If you are too lazy to learn enough English, I have nothing to say to you3.
- Internet language is English4, insist on ignoring this fact and you will stay under-developed. On the contrary the more nationalistic you behave the more marginalized you get. If you are truly for technological advancement you can do nothing but to be pragmatic. Also I love and respect my languge. That is why I don’t butcher it trying to write technical stuff half English half Turkish.
- In support of the first point; writing in English allows me to connect to a larger and better equipped community. So yes, instead of script kiddes who’ll never get past LAMP, I prefer a pythonista visiting my blog to at least get an idea of what kind of person I am.
If, for some odd reason, a young person were to listen to my advice, I’d like to repeat; learn decent English. Especially if you are a programmer. Get a book, a real book not one of those educational materials, and read it. It’s simple as that. Or all you’ll will be have to read is Mr. Consultant’s blog.
EDIT:
Author of mentioned post removed the second quote, about Internet investors, along with my comment there.
1: …and we love pissing contests. Just reply a question with another question, try to find the weak spot. look, I can piss further!
2: See the first quote.
3: This is of course in context of this Blog; mainly programming and programmers.
