As someone new to Python (at the time), I think he did aspiring programmers a great service by telling them to stay the hell away from DiP.
When you're new to something, and it seems insurmountably difficult, you are faced with the question of whether you are awful at something, or if the teacher - for the sake of politeness - didn't do a good job.
Feelings may have been hurt, but he's prevented some, if not a lot, of people from being scared away from Python and programming.
His style serves a purpose, and it lets him cut the bullshit and reach out to people.
The people who wanted to learn programming and Python were the recipients of Zed's soapbox speech, not Mark Pilgrim.
LPtHW was created in the context, and the story of that context was laid out.
I don't understand why it was neccessary to be an asshole though. It's not like Mark went around pitching his book to beginners. The jacket description is pretty clear about who it's aimed at.
I don't really care for Zed's style either, but his Debian rant was a real eye-opener. Not only was it full of the same old vitriol, but it also contained things that were just plain not true, which crosses a line in my book. I wonder if he does that, on purpose or not, in his other writings?
I mostly agree, but given where it was posted (oppugn.us, a site for "rants"), I would cut some slack. If it was posted on Zed's "real" blog, Shedding Bikes, then I would agree with you completely.
Zed, I wish you were more polite. I bought that the Rails Ghetto thing was an act, but now I'm not so sure. The Mark Pilgrim post was a big turn off.
I wonder how much more of a positive impact you would've made if you had refrained from flaming Mark and just written LPTHW.
You have a lot of valuable insight, and you do great work, that could be distributed a lot more effectively by simply being less offensive.