I like Zed, and his contributions and writing are a credit to the community. But yeah, this attack seems off-base for him. From what I can tell, this was sparked by a submission [1] and subsequent upvoting of a critique of his book, a critique that is months old. That it got upvotes means that, well, it got upvotes, from 50 or so of the thousands of HN users who might be reading the site at any given hour. It doesn't mean there's a high conspiracy to shit on his work. If there were, would his books be so highly upvoted as they've been over the years?

I would love to see Zed critique the "Don't Learn C the Wrong Way"...it seems like a better use of his energy than ripping on Paul and the HN mods who don't seem to care directly either way.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9636605