Own Your Shit
When I said "Scala is garbage" or "Gerrit is a mistake", it wasn't "l33th4x0r" who said that; it was Julio Biason. 'Cause I do believe that putting your face to be slapped is the way we grow.
I do understand -- and you must have realized reading some of the previous points when I talk about it -- that privacy is important. For some people, hiding their real name is important for lots of reasons.
But I also personally believe that using some weird name and some face that isn't yours on your avatar may give you a false sense of "that person is the guilty one, not me" when it comes to criticism.
I mean, yes, I hate Scala with a passion. I do understand why the language developers decided to come with some options about it, and I still think those decisions were stupid and you should never sacrifice readability for ease-to-use.
But it wasn't some random person using a weird name full of numbers and an avatar of some anime saying Scala is garbage. My name is even in this blog name, in the URL and in every social network I use there is a picture of me.
So yeah, Julio said Scala is garbage.
There is another thing about using your real name and real face: I'm not just saying "Scala is garbage", I have to back that up with some facts -- or, in this case, personal opinions -- about it. It's not simply an attack to Scala, is a somewhat thought out attack on Scala.
And, on top of that, someone will one day come to me and say "Yeah Julio, that thing you said about Scala: It is that way because of this, this and this". And I'll probably have to say "You know, you're right: I was wrong." Because I can't simply move my mistake to some other personality; who was wrong was me. And unless I own my shit up, I'd never get the understanding I'd need to see my mistake about Scala in the first place.