(In)famous author and programmer John Sonmez (author of Soft Skills and The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide) has said some patently despicable things on Twitter lately, and faced a rightly-deserved backlash:

When events like this happen, whether it's an author, or a musician, or an actor, the conversation often ends up at the idea of separating the artist from their art. Can we enjoy John Sonmez's books while still thinking he's an awful person who has said some disgusting things? Is this cognitive dissonance? If someone else had written the same books, would they be any more useful?

Sonmez's publisher has dropped Soft Skills and his courses have been dropped from Pluralsight. I'm completely uncomfortable with financially supporting someone who's hurt people so flippantly, but should we avoid even secondhand (or library copies) of his books?

What do you think?

Photo by Viktoria Goda from Pexels