Being unstable and bitchy is all part of my mystique
I’ve been a rubyist for three weeks now and it’s my turn to rant.
Only a few years ago it was “fringy” and incredibly cool to be a rubyist. There was an underground camaraderie/elitism between fellow Ruby pioneers. They realized they were onto something so discreetly awesome that they would have an oportunity to claim fame and fortune as this language was introduced to the masses over the next few years. And claim their fame they did. But alas, now that the language has become significantly mainstream and generally accepted as legit, these expats (Java devs enjoying a more trendy and carefree life in ruby_land) are now hurriedly disclaiming it before anyone has a chance to notice that they are doing something mainstream.
The Rails community is just as bad. It has a larger market share of ranters and they are especially prissy. Shitting on Ruby and Rails is coder couture and everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon. What most of them fail to realize is that Zed Shaw beat them all to it. They aren’t the first to disown rails, though they proclaim their hatred with such shocking fervor that you’d think they were. The ranters that followed him are just callously ripping apart the very language that freed them from their boring (insert crappy language) jobs and offered them the beauty of a minimalist coding atmosphere. They are acting like petulant children that were spoiled for 18 years by adoring and forgiving parents, only to turn around and rebel for the sake of rebellion.
I understand there are shortcomings in both Ruby and Rails. Neither platform solves all problems nor do they claim to; sure, some of their frontmen would have you believe it does and it’s been marketed as such in many cases, but most programmers realize that Ruby isn’t the end-all of programming languages. Ruby isn’t the answer to all programming questions. There are plenty of great languages out there and more will inevitably be created. The most frustrating thing about this is that both Ruby and Rails are open source. Any one of these trendy haters could learn some C and make it all better. But who wants to spend time contributing when there’s no money to be made or fame left to be had?
In the Rails community I think the issue of elitism has been the cause of a lot of friction and lashing out. Those who have been unfairly excluded from the Rails lunch table seem to be especially vigorous in their attempts to bring down the popularity of the language. Then there are those that come to Ruby or Rails on the promise of the language being the universal remedy and they are disappointed, hurt, confused, even a bit ashamed once they realize that this is just another programming language/framework. They act as though they are waking up naked in cold shower after prison sex. First comes shame, then outright rage.
I don’t care if these assholes left decent paying java jobs for this “revolutionary” ride and were disillusioned. They should have had the foresight that there is no panacea of greatness. There is no single solution. What ruby does offer is a more intuitive way of coding. Its form is simple. It’s full of grace. Ruby is succinct. It’s not the messiah of languages though it attracts many messiah-figures and their fanboy prototypes. There is a market for it, there are people that love to code it, and that’s about it. I don’t want to hear you rant on about it like some burned lunatic just because you think we all need turn around and follow you on your way out the door.
There should be healthy discussion about the shortcomings of programming languages. It draws a landscape for new ideas and solutions. It gets a community thinking and working together. But what I am so annoyed with are the reformed evangelicals that are all of a sudden declaring that “this shit ain’t cool no more” and expect everyone to throw up their hands and say “Oh wow great leader, you’re right. Let’s just go learn [Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Whatever].”
I’m aware I’m just as uncool for ranting on the topic even though I’m ranting about the ranters. But I’m not attempting to be cool, no one reads my blog anyway, and I’m a mother of two babies who spends her time wiping poopy butts and scraping peanut butter out of carpets. The biggest decision I have to make on any given day is whether or not it’s ok to serve them a piece of chicken that’s not organic and then hope that the growth hormones won’t give my daughter porn-sized boobs three months from now. I play video games, I code a bit here and there, but I have no claim to fame. I’ve been writing Ruby code for three weeks. Seriously.
Ruby gave our family a launch pad for success. My husband was a quiet early adopter and he’s worked happily with the language for a few years. He’s been able to find a job with a sweet company that lets him work from home. Which means that he gets to work in his boxers and t-shirt, is able to have PB&J’s with us at lunchtime, and is always home for dinner at 5pm. I am quite enjoying the solace that comes from not being neck deep in the rat race.
For myself, I’ve been learning to program with a language that doesn’t make me want to cry. I remember doing C++ and Java homework in CS classes in college; I do believe I have post-traumatic Java syndrome. It’s unbelievable even to me that I have dared to get into programming again. But Ruby is making it easy; even fun. I’m happy to code with it, and I’m happy to be enjoying the amenities of the lifestyle it has provided for us. I’m sure I’ll have qualms with some aspects of it someday. And it will be ok to voice them. It’s ok to bite the hand that feeds you. Just don’t bite it off.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Awesome thoughts! thanks.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Renae,
Thanks for your thoughts and welcome to the community. I share your frustrations about the rash of early adopters who feel the need to bash Ruby and Rails on their way out (or even while still working with Ruby).
The right, but unglamorous solution is to get down to the business of improving the things that are frustrating. I won’t always defend everything about Ruby, but I have trouble tolerating the luminary-turned-bashers that seem to dominate the Ruby-sphere these days.
I say kudos to the Evan Phoenixs and Charlie Nutters of the world who are toiling day in and day out to try and make Ruby better. These are the guys who know most about Ruby’s warts, and they’ll defend it any day of the week!
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Renae,
Welcome to the community, and well put. The community will continue to grow and strengthen with the addition of folks like you.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Thanks for your thoughts !
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
This is exactly what I figured out as well. All you did is stuffed it together in a way far better I could do. I am with Ruby for just two month now. And I have to say, after PHP and pages full of complicated inner and outer, left and right and whatever joins with SQL, I am really happy with Rails. Because it does what its supposed to do. Neither more nor less. Thanks for your comment, Renae
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Renae, WELCOME. I loved your rant and you are absolutely right.
Also, bonus points for the poopy butts content — I mean, context. Telling it like it is puts it all in perspective.
(Anyone else notice that the language snobs are almost exclusively young men? Anyone?)
Looking forward to many rants to come!
Cheers,
Amy Hoy
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
I share your experience with Ruby on Rails, I have been working as a designer/Art Director for over 13 years and I have picked up RoR about a month ago and to me the real value is that it will give me and my family more freedom (or at least thats the plan
since I can be more flexible in the client-work I do and also quite easy create income through web-services that I create.
We have three kids aged 5 to 0 so the flexibility and freedom is really valuable, and as you say, beeing able to be home at 5 for dinner all of us, taking a day off now and then is a blessing.
I really love RoR after just a few weeks cos it’s fast and simple for me as a total newbie to learn. I could have gone with php, .net or any other platform/language but with RoR I can get results almost instantly.
You now have one more subscriber to your blog!
Take care!
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Spoken like a true soccer mom.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Those who seek silver bullets are destined to be disappointed. Those who don’t learn this, will continue to be disappointed.
Marvelous post.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Loved the rant! Spot on.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Well said. And welcome!
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Very good post Renae, nice that Ruby’s got you back into programming, its certainly made it more fun for me.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Brilliant post! The recent rant posts have been very annoying and like you I can’t help feeling if you’re not happy just leave, quietly.
I put it down to ego. They all want to be the big fish and after a while they realise there are plenty of big fish already here who are big fishes because they’ve done most of the hard work for us and made the platform what it is now. And we respect them for the work they’ve done.
So these wannabe big fishes find themselves like a rebel without a cause and throw their toys out of the pram and stomp off in search of a smaller pond with no big fish in it yet.
Ruby and/or Rails might not be the pond they are looking for anymore but it’s a good place for the rest of us.
Cheers
Anton
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Renae, I really appreciate your words about Ruby and Rails. The tough job is to be a mother or a father, and if only Ruby could help to provide you some gratifying moments, then the community has reached its goal.
Keep ranting on ranters
Massimo Sgrelli
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Awesome post!
This’ll all blow over soon and what’s left will be… people who still love Rails. What a disaster that will be for us!
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
This is the best anti-ranters rant ever.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
3 whole weeks and you’ve got the pulse of the whole RoR/Ruby community down, huh?
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Great post! I didn’t understand the meaning at the beginning, but at the end, ok! (I’m French, sorry, your language is a bit complex to me, but it helps me to improve my English, thanks in that way too ;))
So welcome, from France!
(I have to confess too, Rails give me moments of incredible joy! :P)
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
There’s a personality defect, concentrated among geeks, that causes the sufferer to become distressed when their pet technology achieves the widespread adoption that they were demanding for it. A case of “be careful what you wish for” perhaps?
For the rest of us, there’s the excitement of an increased chance to get paid for working with something that we really enjoy - I started playing with Ruby about 5 years ago (golly, how time flies) and I now get paid - handsomely - for using it to build intranet sites within the large bank where I work. How cool is that, for us normals?
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
DHH made you famous!
http://twitter.com/d2h/status/1022383331
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Well said. There’s not much to add to this post.
Oh, and welcome to the Ruby community! We also have nice people (somewhere :)).
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
At least you have a comment field.
People who rant about ruby but do not even have a comment field should simply be ignored.
I want to add however only to one aspect - creating a new language is not easy. It requires A LOT OF EFFORT AND WORK.
I still think that ruby’s documentation should be improved (even though it has improved a lot).
If you want another language that has difficulties growing look at the Io language. It has some great ideas, but from my perception it has big difficulties to grow. And maybe growing a language is a really difficult - matz must have made a LOT of effort into ruby.
I guess the situation with python was similar, however both languages (ruby and python) have come a long way and from the “scripting languages” I think these two are on the top of the mountain. The other contenders need to climb that mountain first before being serious competitors.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
*LOL* Love ruby or hate it, your post is top-notch. Well written, and I loved reading it.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
“Being unstable and bitchy is how some Rubyists try to be Purple Cows.”
Nice post. Now “stop watching Sophie’s Choice” (see Yehuda’s post) and go back to writing good Ruby code. Welcome to the community or whatever we call it these days.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
I started coding when I was 12. I gave it up at 30 after trying to use Java to build web apps and went into project management, which I was reasonably good at but hated emphatically. A few years ago I discovered Ruby and Rails. Suddenly coding didn’t suck anymore. I could parse a log file in just a few minutes. I could prototype a whole web app in a day. I didn’t have to spend weeks getting a bunch of stupid frameworks to work together anymore. It took a few years, but I was finally able to become a professional developer again just a month ago. I walked away from project management (and my cubicle) and now I too work at home, building a web app on Ruby on Rails. Thanks Ruby! Check out TriSano.org - it’s going to be a significant app in the public health arena, and it’s ruby on rails.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Thank you so much for your post, and welcome to the community. I’ve been writing Ruby code for 8 years and still enjoy it. I code in lots of languages and enjoy them all for what they are and what they enable, but I really view Ruby as my “home” language. I think you’ve nailed what what many of haters must be motivated by.
My wife is teaching herself Ruby as well, and she is enjoying it. I’ve passed your post on to her. Enjoy yourself!
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Thank you for the post, and I agree with pretty much everything you’ve posted. I’m a married college student with a child on the way trying to teach myself programming because I find Ruby and Rails absolutely wonderful and enjoy working in it day-in-and-day-out.
Keep up the rants, and keep up the poopy butts.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Renae, fantastic post! You beat me to the punch (I literally have part of this rant drafted on my blog as we speak) but I’m glad because coming from you I think it means all the more.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Well said, Renae. Excellent post.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Renae, you mention your husband’s fondness for eating peanut butter and jelly at lunchtime. And you also mention earlier that peanut butter can be found in the carpet.
Now, I don’t want to cause any more turmoil for you, since you’re already dealing with The Ranting Rubyists, but could he be the one smearing sandwiches on the floor? I just put two and two together. I’m sorry I didn’t come to you earlier.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Most people in the Ruby/Rails community are great. There’s just a handful of unstable people who unfortunately get the attention they seek.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Renae, awesome post! I am one of those Java refugees who can identify with any pain the language may have caused you. And as far as the ranters, I am with you - they can all go on out the door and hang with Zed, for all I care. Good riddance!
_why may be onto something about the peanut butter, though. I would install hidden cameras immediately to see if you can catch hubby in the act. Perhaps he secretly wants salami, and this is his passive aggressive way of fighting back…
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Look, my previous post is right next to _why and I’m feeling his warmth!
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Thanks for taking time to write out what many must be thinking of the prissy BS that’s been floating around lately. I can’t wait till they move on to something else so interesting reads are actually bubbled up in the Ruby world.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Awesome that finally someone not-chatting-with-DHH-every-day-while-patching-Ruby1.9edge-and-migrating-to-clojure (I had the feeling that there are no other kind of Ruby people around these days) summarized the recent situation so well - kudos!
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
AMEN! Please, fella’s, check your guns and egos at the door, and we can all get on with making Ruby, Rails, Merb, etc. a better language/platforms. Time spent bitching, railing, or putting down others is time not spent improving things. I’ve been following the Rails community since it’s infancy and I’ve seen it transform from very welcoming/fun/inclusive to start looking like the very system/s it was providing escape from. But it’s still early enough to reverse the decline. Leaders need humility as well as vision, in order to truly stay on the cutting edge.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Excellent post!
Pay no attention to _why and his pop star defaming ways. :)~
http://hackety.org/2008/11/21/aCostlyParade.html
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Well said. I’ve been happily using Ruby for the past 8 years, and it’s no less pleasant and useful a language now than it was when it was shiny and new.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Oh wow, I really didn’t expect that anyone would read this or find enough interest in it to comment! I definitely appreciate the feedback!
I’ve heard that the Ruby community is supportive of each other and I definitely feel warm and fuzzy over this — and not only because _why is here
It’s good to know that someone with absolutely no relevant experience can try to make a point without being butchered by the community she is targeting
I think Ruby just needed a group hug 
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
You guys are so incredibly dumb. I road the ROR train and you know how I did it? I offered education and consulting. It was hilarious how many of these losers bought it up. Didn’t they see it’d go no where and become a PHP ghetto?
This one complained to me that he was being undercut by PHP newbs (his words), I told him to grow up, Rails is meant to be easy and it is easy. There will be more competition because it is low hanging fruit and it is easy.
Anyways I made good money of Rails and now I schilling yet another technology that I don’t care about! ERLANG!
Wanna buy some training for your developers?
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
post-traumatic Java syndrome! Lol I had that one too.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Nice post Renae. I have never been to your blog, I just kind of found it. But a lot of Ruby people are commenting here, so, I thought I might add my 2 cents also (offtopic as I may be). I am a Java developer by day. No groans please
Anyways, I have been following Ruby to see if it a direction I would want to go in. The language is definitely very attractive and so are the frameworks. But I won’t get into a platform comparison. Rather, I would like to say something about the “Java refugee” comments, or the post-traumatic Java syndrome that you felt after your CS class, oh and of course the “lulz”.
I think that is a big problem with the Ruby community. The people tend to potray themselves as being enlightened or something (like those hybrid driving people in an episode on South Park). Java people (or any other big shop technology people) are looked down upon as being code monkeys or whatever, at least that’s the feeling I get.
If an extremely successful language makes you cry, there might be a problem with your perception of it, or maybe you were using it for solving the wrong problem for that toolset. For example, where I work, I need to use BPM. I don’t think I can do that in Ruby at all. So, its not that I don’t like Ruby or that I “love” Java, but that, Java has the tools which let me do my job. Right tools for the job is what its about. If I could do that in Ruby, maybe I would evangalize for it at my workplace.
I guess what I am trying to say is that my feeling is that the Ruby community sees itself as an all or nothing proposition. Its either Ruby or those guys. I have been working for some big companies in the past years on “enterprisey” stuff. To someone like me, the value proposition of any platform is in the fact whether or not it can integrate and co-exist with existing platforms. If I get a warm, fuzzy feeling while doing so, its an added benefit, not my goal or reason for using a platform.
I remember when the whole hype cycle for Ruby started about 2-3 years ago. It was all about “build a blog in 10 minutes”. I even went to a BarCamp and that’s the exact same demo they did there also. When I asked a couple of questions about if we could connect to say, a messaging server, or asked questions about ROR’s performance and scaling stuff, they pretty much shook their heads like I “just don’t get it”. Until I can orchestrate services, talk to MOM servers etc. with good tooling support using Ruby, I don’t think Ruby will make a lot of headway in corporate environments. And community can only go so far. Even Linux (I think the biggest community project ever) got its boost from folks like Red Hat, IBM etc.
Or maybe Ruby (or the people using it) dosen’t need to make that headway. The warmth and fuzziness trumps all. I don’t know.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Very cool post ! I’ve seen that exact feeling of disillusion among some of my co-workers. I was sad to hear such things as “happy back home in Java land”. So your post is more than welcome
!
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Harsh Chaudhary, Thanks for your thoughts. I never got far enough with Java to use it to solve problems; it was learning to program in general that made me cry, Java and C++ were just the vehicles
The CS program at USM used C++ to teach programming (this was 10 years ago almost now) but did offer a couple of specialty Java courses that I took. I had such a hard time training my dumb head to think in a computer language that I just gave up, pursued a psych degree and moved on. I’ve read a few articles from computer science professors since then, professing the great difficulty they have teaching programming theory to new students. I think Ruby would offer a more simple and intuitive approach and hope that it might be used in the university system someday.
I rave about Ruby now because I’m actually able to wrap my head around programming concepts for the first time. Ruby’s style is a bit easier for me to understand I guess because it’s more human-readable. For me it’s made a huge difference and has reawakened the desire to learn to program.
All languages evolve and in time I think Ruby will as well. It takes a lot of hard work from committed people that care about it. As a ruby nubyist I’m just really excited about what Ruby does have to offer right now and the great community that surrounds and supports it.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Renae: I’ve been coding Ruby (with occasional re-entry into Java) for three years now, and I have essentially the same view as you do after three weeks. You might enjoy my humorous take on it, written just over a year ago: http://davidrupp.blogspot.com/2007/10/last-language-war-language-trolling.html
Cheers!
David
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
@Harsh: JRuby is a great way to connect Ruby and Java - so it is very possible that you can talk to a MOM server, utilize BPM (which is btw possible in pure Ruby too - http://openwferu.rubyforge.org/) etc through JRuby.
If that doesn’t float your boat, all the classic cliches apply (no silver bullet, use the best tool for the job etc) - if you want to (or have to) use/connect to/utilize Java application servers, tools, libraries and/or write ‘enterprisey’ stuff, Java is probably still your best shot in most of the cases.
However I think the trick is (at least this is my case - switched from full-time Java programming to Ruby/Rails freelancing a year ago) that once you start working with Ruby, the problem domain changes - you are confronted with tasks which can be solved by web frameworks, system scripts, rake tasks etc. rather than Java enterprise machinery and suddenly you don’t care that much about connecting a MOM to a vendor specific AS while talking to an Oracle server etc.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
@Peter
Thanks for the link to openwferu. I wasn’t aware that something like that existed. Is that pure Ruby based BPM or does that use JRuby? And I had a feeling about what you said regarding “the problem domain changing”, that’s why I said, “maybe Ruby dosen’t need to make that headway” i.e. Ruby *currently* is being used for mostly CRUD web applications.
I also think JRuby is a step in the right direction. Change is slow in big enterprise. And I think it will start only with support from big vendors. I would love nothing more than a simpler and more powerful way of writing code, but at the same time also make use of the immense tools and technologies that we already have access to. Maybe people like Charles Nutter can work some of their magic and get pure Ruby to run on the JVM and be performant on the JVM also.
@renae
I know what you are talking about. I remember when I first started coding in Java, just getting the classpath right drove me nuts. But now I have come to really like the platform when I see all the plumbing (yea, big shop programming is more about the plumbing than anything else) I can do with it. Talking to different service providers, 2-phase commits, distributed transactions, building clustered apps and all that. I guess I am just a different kind of geek
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Four or five blog posts says absolutely nothing about the Ruby community as a whole.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Sadly, you could be talking about nearly any technology that was at one point popular in your above post. Our industry is entirely too fashion-centric and this kind of situation crops up over and over again throughout one’s career.
Even more sadly, the people about whom you complain are the majority of the IT industry: people who care not for elegance or quality, but those who want the fattest check for the least effort.
Just to avoid confusion, the people like Zed Shaw, Dave Thomas and Dave Fayram aren’t the people to which I refer, as they have valid, constructive criticisms to which we should listen. I’m referring to the same ranters as Renae refers, the people who expected too much and exhibited irrational exuberance without perspective. These people should move on to news media where their talents would be more appreciated
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
I am greatly interested in this “inorganic chicken” and its glorious promise of large, bouncy, succulent boobs for everyone.
I propose an immediate worldwide ban on all chicken tragically deficient in this miraculous boob-giving hormone forthwith.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
Great perspective and great post. As someone who quite happy quietly working away in Rails, getting things done and staying out of the politics I never fully understand why people feel the need to rant so much about ruby/rails. But I appreciate their passion and you don’t usually see passion where something significant isn’t happening.
Tuesday, 25. November 2008
‘But what I am so annoyed with are the reformed evangelicals that are all of a sudden declaring that “this shit ain’t cool no more” and expect everyone to throw up their hands and say “Oh wow great leader, you’re right. Let’s just go learn [Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Whatever].”’
This bit right here, especially.
I’m one of the early adopters and, well, while i appreciate the possibility that i could make a living off Ruby i’d rather not see it crushed by the people making it popular. The ones saying “we all need to move to Scala now!” probably picked up Ruby last month or two and will pick up a new language in another month or two–not that there’s necessarily something wrong with that, as learning new languages is good for you. But it is wrong to learn them only because of trends.
Anyway, the “Next Big Language” (NBL) isn’t Scala or Erlang or any of those, anyway. It’s Javascript. But i kind of don’t want it to be Javascript, even though i kind of like Javascript, because Ruby is better as far as i can tell. Sure, Javascript is nice in that it’s everywhere thanks to it being the browser language… but…
Friday, 28. November 2008
Rant less and program more. It’s hard work, but it’ll pay more in the end.
Sunday, 30. November 2008
Fun Post. Thanks.
Monday, 1. December 2008
Nice post u have here
Added to my RSS reader
Tuesday, 23. December 2008
One problem is that there are some people who like to rant and start rants. I saw this from a python guy. He didnt even have a comment field.
I hate stark rants without a comment field to reflect upon. Really makes me angry - if someone just rants, but is too afraid to have a comment field, what is the point of the rant? He doesnt want to listen to the opinion of others anyway, so why should we listen to his rants?