This is fantastic advice for someone who wants to contribute to the open source community for the first time (I am fresh out of college and have zero contributions; most of my work, a long internship and school stuff, are all closed source). I have few ideas and I will try this method on them.
Shit. I'm taking a break from HN for a few days. Its unbearable after someone has died. Its people climbing over each other for attention. Let the man rest in peace.
I would humbly suggest you're entirely mis-understanding what's occurring. I don't for a moment think the submissions related to his suicide are people 'climbing' (or clamouring, or grasping) for attention. This is the organic and natural outpouring of shared experiences from a community that has lost an integral and important friend.
Reading all the different rememberances here moves me to a depth that I find surprising, considering I know next to nothing of this man. But I suspect it is because I have know this type of loss myself, and recognize the compassion and complexity of respect which engender such words, as well as the profundity of a person's efforts which would bring on that sort of response from so many different people.
If this sort of response bugs you, a few days is probably not enough. My uninformed guess is that this event won't go gently by in such a brief span of time.
Not true - this will pass within a week at most. This is the internet.
Also while there are definitely a large number of people who are genuinely compassionate and caring about the man himself, the majority are just people twisting his death to their own ends. It's a bit ugly, but understandable since this is likely the first time they have linked his name to any accomplishments or even knew about the trial.
It's similar to all the cars slowing down at an accident site - they don't really care who was in the accident, they just have a fascination.
Also read this related article on his blog - Rewriting Reddit (http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/rewritingreddit). He talks about why they chose web.py over other Python frameworks (and also over LISP)
Kudos! It's as if he read my mind regarding what I thought it's wrong with Django! ...and incredibly sad that I would probably not have come across and read this, but for Aaron's death ...this perverse causality brought tears to my eyes
