--- title: Toxic experts (2017) | daily.dev description: A commenter named 'pyon' told Ned Batchelder he should be ashamed for leaving a detail out of his Big-O explainer. Batchelder calls this a case of a 'toxic... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/toxic-experts-2017--eb6d7crxk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Toxic experts (2017) | daily.dev og:description: A commenter named 'pyon' told Ned Batchelder he should be ashamed for leaving a detail out of his Big-O explainer. Batchelder calls this a case of a 'toxic... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/toxic-experts-2017--eb6d7crxk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/EB6D7crXk.png og:image:alt: Toxic experts (2017) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Toxic experts (2017) **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A commenter named 'pyon' told Ned Batchelder he should be ashamed for leaving a detail out of his Big-O explainer. Batchelder calls this a case of a 'toxic expert', someone who uses knowledge to separate themselves from newcomers instead of teaching them. He says he's had a 30-year career without knowing the detail pyon raised. Toxic experts fixate on one skill as a dividing line between those who know and those who don't, he argues, and the real skill gap in tech is empathy. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 80 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-29). **TL;DR:** Reactions are split: many sympathize with the 'toxic expert' framing and share similar experiences, while a vocal contingent argues the post is one-sided, that the anonymous critic was technically correct about amortized complexity, and that Batchelder's piece itself reads as a character assassination. **Sentiment:** 30% positive · 35% mixed · 35% skeptical **The case for** - Several people say the term 'toxic expert' usefully names people who gatekeep with knowledge instead of teaching. - Some share their own experience of toxic-expert-like gatekeeping behavior and find the framing validating. - One commenter frames it as good advice to argue for the benefit of the audience rather than the antagonist. **The pushback** - Multiple commenters note the original critique about amortized O(1) vector appends was technically valid and substantive, not just pedantry. - Several argue the post is one-sided since only Batchelder's account of the exchange is given, without the actual comment. - Some say naming and publicly shaming the anonymous commenter ('doxing') is itself a toxic/holier-than-thou act. - A few feel the piece is weirdly anti-intellectual or weak on technical substance. - One thread of comments brings up unrelated controversy, questioning Batchelder's own conduct in Python community moderation disputes. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): Opinions split between agreeing the 'toxic expert' concept is valuable and arguing the post unfairly vilifies a commenter who may have made a valid technical point. **Hottest debate:** Whether the anonymous commenter's nitpick about amortized O(1) was legitimate technical correction or mere toxic pedantry. **Open questions** - What exactly did the original anonymous commenter say, since the full exchange wasn't included in the post? - Was the amortized-complexity detail actually important enough to warrant inclusion in the original explainer? **Highlights** > Weirdly anti-intellectual. I'm not sure what the subtle nitpick the expert brought up, but from reading the comments I gathered that they correctly pointed out that appending to a vector is merely amortized O(1), not truly worst case constant time. This is actually kind of a big deal and is an important distinction to make. As a corollary, it means you can't just use a vector as a constant time sequence data structure in a real time application unless you preallocate it. > — [33a on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50292633) > >An anonymous coward named “pyon” said I should be ashamed. They pointed out a detail of algorithmic analysis that I had not mentioned. It’s a detail that I had never encountered before. I think it’s an interesting detail, but not one that needed to be included. on the one hand it's a nasty thing to say he should be "ashamed" for not mentioning it. on the other, it is a little strange he hadn't come across the "amortized O(whatever)" concept before. esp if doing a talk about it.. neither of them come across well here. > — [\_dain\_ on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50292857) > Interesting that the holier-than-thou people immediately try to dox the evil pyon. > — [rpkla on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293106) > If anything, this sounds like a toxic person trying to project or provoke. It reads like a character assassination piece superficially presented as nuanced philosophy, and we don't even have the actual exchange, only this person's account of it, which we are meant to trust in terms of both wording and demonstrated intent. "If you have nothing kind to say" as the quote goes ... > — [tpoacher on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50292974) > An important life lesson: Some people are assholes all of the time; All people are assholes some of the time. Is it really such a big deal? Maybe someone was having a bad day. Maybe this is an argument they had with a peer and it triggered a peeve. Whatever. Tangential, but if I had to rank toxicity, someone going overboard at being a pedant in the easily censored comments under a blog post ranks far below overreacting and clutching pearls to try to pillorize and rile a torch mob, hoping to put them on blast and make them pay for their transgression. The latter is significantly more toxic, and it is what absolutely destroys communities. > — [llm\_nerd on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50293089) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50291927) · 63 points · 80 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Your “10x Engineer” Is Probably Making Your Team Worse](https://daily.dev/posts/your-10x-engineer-is-probably-making-your-team-worse-q5mqf2bdm) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [A Seasoned Tester's Crystal Ball: Making teams awesome](https://daily.dev/posts/a-seasoned-tester-s-crystal-ball-making-teams-awesome-uh9jpvzia) · A Seasoned Tester's Crystal Ball · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Probably the realest thing I ever wrote](https://daily.dev/posts/probably-the-realest-thing-i-ever-wrote-tzd8bqgqw) · swizec.com · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why I Stopped Calling Myself a Full-Stack Developer](https://daily.dev/posts/why-i-stopped-calling-myself-a-full-stack-developer-asira3pjz) · Sergio Lema · 158 upvotes · 21 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/toxic-experts-2017--eb6d7crxk) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Toxic experts (2017)","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/toxic-experts-2017--eb6d7crxk","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/toxic-experts-2017--eb6d7crxk"},"datePublished":"2026-10-29T19:57:18.293Z","dateModified":"2026-10-29T20:05:40.780Z","description":"A commenter named 'pyon' told Ned Batchelder he should be ashamed for leaving a detail out of his Big-O explainer. 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