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…

@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.

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.

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

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.