Ok Ok, I know it’s a silly title for this blog post, considering that many people do see Rails and Ruby followers as cult members, and Matz and DHH as their leader and saviour. To be fair, DHH and Matz did pave the way for thousands of happy developers. But for the most part Rubyists and Rails developers are just enjoying challenging, fun and usually liberating coding careers. It doesn’t usually get all hokey and cultish, save for the hotel hallways and lobbies during seances, er, conferences.
I’m talking about all of this because of the #rmm (rails maturity model) proposed by Obie Fernandez, of Hashrocket. You can read about it here. Let me preface all of this by saying that I’ve met Obie briefly, have read about him extensively, and I think he’s BRILLIANT as fuck and he runs the best damn dev shop I’ve ever heard of. Hashrocket has it down. They’re like ENTP with flair. With that said, I’ll continue.
Obie grew up in a cult (ironically, so did I). He was a Jehovah’s Witness (as explained in his blog post, Becoming a Worldly Person). Anyone who looks at the way Obie runs Hashrocket can clearly tell that his background of growing up in an extremist religion has an influence over the way he runs a business in a very positive way. Hashrocket even has a gang symbol. And it’s fucking awesome. Best company logo EVAR. Two of their employees even had the gang symbol tattooed, that’s how intense this whole thing is.
But the point I want to make is that we should approach Obie’s plans for masterminding the Rails world with caution. Although I think he’s smart as hell and his ideas come from a truly good place, he is a bit of a cult icon and that in and of itself can be terrifying. I hate to be ruled, and I hate to follow. I would hate to be governed as a developer in such a way that I had to adhere to someone else’s set of coding standards just to be successful or on equal footing. Although many people agree on a set of “best practices,” most people can also agree that best practices are not always the best solution.
I was relieved to hear that DHH did not support Obie’s plan for a RMM and in his words, “I would not be supporting a “RMM”, which btw should rather be called “Hashrocket/Obie’s/People-who-agree-with-them-or-him’s Maturity Model for people using Rails”.
There will always be inept developers in any language. But we have to trust that when a developer sucks someone will tell him so. And hopefully that someone will then offer some guidance, take some time out of his/her life to mentor a newer developer.
The Rails community is what drew many of us into the Rails world in the first place. There’s no better community to be in. So let’s keep it open. Let’s allow the evangelists and happy coders to do their community work and stop trying to look for a revolution. Rails WAS the revolution. Let’s just enjoy it. For fuck sake, you’re not coding in Java, just shut up and smile about it. Rails does not need a leader to step up and create a revolution. Unlike the global economy, Rails is not falling apart. We don’t need a saviour yet. But perhaps we can keep Obie in our back pocket for when we do, since he would make a damn good one. 
Tuesday, 17. February 2009
This is so flattering! Thanks for the feedback. I assure you that this is not some evil plan to take over the Rails community (not that I think you really think that). We just think we’ve come up with a good way to show what successful shops are doing, or at least what they claim they are doing and letting other people vouch for them. If people who work in Rails want to use that data to model their own business practices or as the basis for learning materials, then so be it.
Tuesday, 17. February 2009
Excellent post as usual, Renae.
Tuesday, 17. February 2009
Awesome post!
Tuesday, 17. February 2009
Heh… lay it out there. This is a damn good post. Couldn’t have said it better myself in so few words. Will be subscribing…
Tuesday, 17. February 2009
Insightful post!
I remember telling a user group (that Obie invited me to) that Obie is dangerous (in the best possible way). He is a world-class communicator AND a world-class software developer. Couple these talents with his background and the dude is going to make waves. It’s unfortunate (but inevitable) that some people are going to misinterpret his tone (since he speaks strongly) but I hope that over time people learn where Obie is coming from and appreciate what he brings to our community.
Tuesday, 17. February 2009
Great Post!
I think we all gravitated to Rails because of the freedom and the direction the community was going, but perhaps #rmm is a sign that the community is looking for some acceptance and validation now, perhaps it’s just graduated into High School
Wednesday, 18. February 2009
Brilliant? When the hell did Obie get brilliant?
All kidding aside, this is a common thing that happens when technology becomes established. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was driven by some enterprise corporate guys asking Obie if they can get certified people.
Basically, if a manager has to “buy” programmers, but has no way of knowing how good or bad they are, since he’s not a programmer, then he’s the victim of a “Lemon Effect”. His answer of course is not to learn more about programming, but rather to ask for someone else to certify the programmers he’s buying as good programmers.
That’s pretty much it. The only people “buying” these kinds of certifications are lemon managers and the lemons themselves.
Wednesday, 18. February 2009
Thanks for the responses! I love getting feedback on the insanity that spews forth from my face sometimes
@zed I see your point, and it makes sense. Makes me think we’re dealing with shystery auto salesmen, but I guess it’s probably not that far off!
When I read your famous rant last year, it really resonated with me so I think this #rmm idea might be useful to protect the Rails clients out there from getting screwed by shitty consultancies. There is a significant problem with the way many Rails dev shops are dealing with clients. Developer sweat shops disguised as neat, fringey little Rails consultancies are doing a lot of damage. They don’t have any transparency with their clients. Devs get switched around constantly from project to project and get trained on the client’s dime, etc., all while the client thinks they are paying top $$ for experts who can write quality code. What they end up getting in return is horrific code delivered by an apathetic company that cared only for max profits and cared nothing for code quality or developer happiness along the way. Then they’ve got to take their app to someone who can fix it and they’re paying out the ass two or more times for a single application.
Plus, I think bad coders would get better if they weren’t worked to death at these places. When someone doesn’t have any time to write blog posts & plugins, attend Ruby and Rails user groups, or do other open-source projects then the community is being drained of a valuable resource. The coder will get caught in a cycle of SUCK and there they will linger, to produce gutter code forevermore.
So I’m sure there are lots of unhappy clients out there. I can’t really blame them. They need some protection from fuck tards that promise beautiful code that works but usually deliver vomit code that might run sometimes, but who the fuck knows what’s going on since there aren’t any tests. How can a company justify allowing their devs to take time to write tests, after all; it’s not about the code, it’s about the fucking cash. It’s sick, shystery shit and although I cringe at the notion of a ruling elite system of checks and balances I can understand where the idea is coming from and who might benefit from it.
Wednesday, 18. February 2009
“Two of their employees even had the gang symbol tattooed”
Omgwtbbq, that’s really great, the best thing evar, where did they get those tattoos, I want one too! No, actually two, one on my sole of my right foot and the other on my forehead so everyone can see it!!
I think RMM should definitely contain a clause ‘at least 20% of the developers and 5% of the business people should have a gang tatoo’. Then I would consider it more seriously.
But wait, what happens if they move on from HR and/or Ruby… as much as I am a Ruby/Rails fanatic, the reign of Ruby (if it reigns at all right now) will last shorter than those tattoos (just as C++/Java (and in my case Python) didn’t stay forever, even if it looked so during the first few months/years (to me)).
Maturity? Gang tattoos? They are synonymous, after all…