Zed Shaw
Shaw in Montreal, 2008
Occupation	Software developer

Zed A. Shaw is a software developer best known for creating theLearn Code the Hard Way series of programming tutorials, as well as for creating theMongrel web server for Ruby web applications.^[1] He is also well known for his controversial views on programming languages and communities.

Shaw authored theMongrel web server forRuby web applications.^[2] Mongrel was the first web server used byTwitter, and inspiredNode.js, according to its creatorRyan Dahl.^[3]Mongrel2 is the language-agnostic successor to Mongrel.

He has also written aPython mail server called Lamson,^[4] on which the mailing list site LibreList is built.

Shaw is the author of learncodethehardway.org, which offers to teach users Python, Ruby, C, Regex, and SQL.^[5]

Shaw has been outspoken in his criticism of certain programming languages and technical communities.

His most famous and well-covered piece was the article "Rails is a Ghetto"^[6][7] which has since been removed from his site.^[8]

"There is a high probability thatPython 3 is such a failure it will kill Python." - Zed Shaw

Shaw has along-standing rant opposing Python 3, where he finds the new string type difficult to use, and as a result believes it should not be adopted. Nonetheless, in February 2017 he published a first draft of Learn Python 3 The Hard Way.^{[9][better source needed]}

He stated in November 2016 that "Python 3 is not Turing complete" due to claims from Python project developers that Python 2 code cannot be made to run in the Python 3 VM.^[10] This statement has drawn a lot of criticism.^[11]

Shaw has spoken about the amounts of vague and misleading information that is pervasive in the startup and entrepreneur culture, particularly concerning self-proclaimed startup advisors or entrepreneurship "gurus", having demonstrated publicly how some notable figures in the industry appear to speak and provide advice from a background of success that they never actually attained.^[12]

Shaw is also behind an initiative entitled "Programming, Motherfucker", whose manifesto claims that programmers are "tired of being told we're socially awkward idiots who need to be manipulated to work in a ForcedPair Programmingchain gang."^[13]

• Mongrel (Digital Shortcut): Serving, Deploying, and Extending Your Ruby Applications.Addison-Wesley Professional, 2006.ISBN 9780132701778
• Professional Ruby Collection: Mongrel, Rails Plugins, Rails Routing, Refactoring to REST, and Rubyisms CD1 (Ruby Series).Addison-Wesley Professional, 2007.ISBN 0132417995
• Learn Python the Hard Way. Self-published (1st and 2nd Editions), 2010 and 2011.ISBN 978-0321884916 andISBN 978-1257853212
• The Command Line Crash Course. Self-published, 2011.
• Learn Regex the Hard Way. Self-published, 2011.
• Learn SQL the Hard Way. Self-published, 2011.
• Learn Python the Hard Way: A Very Simple Introduction to the Terrifyingly Beautiful World of Computers and Code 3rd edition. Republished underAddison-Wesley Professional, 2013.ISBN 978-0321884916
• Learn Ruby the Hard Way: A Simple and Idiomatic Introduction to the Imaginative World Of Computational Thinking with Code.Addison-Wesley Professional, 2014ISBN 978-0321884992
• Learn C the Hard Way: Practical Exercises on the Computational Subjects You Keep Avoiding (Like C) (Zed Shaw's Hard Way Series).Addison-Wesley Professional, 2015.ISBN 978-0321884923
• Mongrel: Learn to Build the Greatest Ruby Web Server Ever.Addison-Wesley Professional, 2015.ISBN 978-0321503091
• Learn Python 3 the Hard Way: A Very Simple Introduction to the Terrifyingly Beautiful World of Computers and Code (Zed Shaw's Hard Way Series).Addison-Wesley Professional, 2017.ISBN 978-0134692883

• Zed Shaw's homepage
• Zed's Web Framework, Tir Web Framework
• LibreList, mailing list site built on Lamson
• Zed Shaw's GitHub page
• Learn Code the Hard Way Home Page

• Living people
• Computer programmers
• Web developers

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles with hCards
• All articles lacking reliable references
• Articles lacking reliable references from September 2017
• Year of birth missing (living people)