[lnkForumImage]
TotalShareware - Download Free Software
Confronta i prezzi di migliaia di prodotti.
Asp Forum
 Home | Login | Register | Search 


 

Forums >

comp.lang.ruby

Zed Shaw - Ruby has dodged a bullet

Chuck Remes

1/1/2008 3:14:00 AM

Much like watching a car accident in slow motion, I could scarcely
believe my eyes when reading Zed Shaw's screed on Ruby & Rails on his
blog [1].

I know I shouldn't give an attention whore that which he so
desperately seeks, but I can't help myself. I'm the guy down on the
street shouting for the idiot on the ledge to jump. Not only has he
jumped, but he has promised "future installments" to complete the
tragedy. I cannot look away; I don't *want* to look away.

Any how... I think Kevin Clark labeled him correctly. See Zed's rant
for the background on this reference.

If I was in a position to do so, I am sorely tempted to hire him just
to fire him right away. :-)

Thankfully the mongrel project is in sane hands. He did a wonderful
job developing mongrel for which he deserves full credit. His rant and
apparent abandonment of Ruby is just peculiar in light of his past
contributions.

A community with a significant reputation for helping novices and
welcoming newbies doesn't have a lot of room for cranks. I hope Zed is
welcomed by the community(ies) focused on his next language choice;
based on his personality traits, I'd say he should join the LISP
community ASAP. Even they might find him to be a bit much.

Happy New Year! Happy New Rants!

[1] http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_g...
109 Answers

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

1/1/2008 3:37:00 AM

0

Chuck Remes wrote:
> Much like watching a car accident in slow motion, I could scarcely
> believe my eyes when reading Zed Shaw's screed on Ruby & Rails on his
> blog [1].
>
> I know I shouldn't give an attention whore that which he so desperately
> seeks, but I can't help myself. I'm the guy down on the street shouting
> for the idiot on the ledge to jump. Not only has he jumped, but he has
> promised "future installments" to complete the tragedy. I cannot look
> away; I don't *want* to look away.
>
> Any how... I think Kevin Clark labeled him correctly. See Zed's rant for
> the background on this reference.
>
> If I was in a position to do so, I am sorely tempted to hire him just to
> fire him right away. :-)
>
> Thankfully the mongrel project is in sane hands. He did a wonderful job
> developing mongrel for which he deserves full credit. His rant and
> apparent abandonment of Ruby is just peculiar in light of his past
> contributions.
>
> A community with a significant reputation for helping novices and
> welcoming newbies doesn't have a lot of room for cranks. I hope Zed is
> welcomed by the community(ies) focused on his next language choice;
> based on his personality traits, I'd say he should join the LISP
> community ASAP. Even they might find him to be a bit much.
>
> Happy New Year! Happy New Rants!
>
> [1] http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_g...
>
>

Well ... actually he has joined another community, but not Lisp He's now
a Factor devotee. Which reminds me -- some time I need to ask him why
Factor and not ANS Forth. :)

I'll go read his blog.

Jeremy McAnally

1/1/2008 3:45:00 AM

0

Regardless of how I feel about Zed, given his attitude in this rant
he'll fit in well with Factor's creator.

--Jeremy

On Dec 31, 2007 10:36 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
>
> Chuck Remes wrote:
> > Much like watching a car accident in slow motion, I could scarcely
> > believe my eyes when reading Zed Shaw's screed on Ruby & Rails on his
> > blog [1].
> >
> > I know I shouldn't give an attention whore that which he so desperately
> > seeks, but I can't help myself. I'm the guy down on the street shouting
> > for the idiot on the ledge to jump. Not only has he jumped, but he has
> > promised "future installments" to complete the tragedy. I cannot look
> > away; I don't *want* to look away.
> >
> > Any how... I think Kevin Clark labeled him correctly. See Zed's rant for
> > the background on this reference.
> >
> > If I was in a position to do so, I am sorely tempted to hire him just to
> > fire him right away. :-)
> >
> > Thankfully the mongrel project is in sane hands. He did a wonderful job
> > developing mongrel for which he deserves full credit. His rant and
> > apparent abandonment of Ruby is just peculiar in light of his past
> > contributions.
> >
> > A community with a significant reputation for helping novices and
> > welcoming newbies doesn't have a lot of room for cranks. I hope Zed is
> > welcomed by the community(ies) focused on his next language choice;
> > based on his personality traits, I'd say he should join the LISP
> > community ASAP. Even they might find him to be a bit much.
> >
> > Happy New Year! Happy New Rants!
> >
> > [1] http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_g...
> >
> >
>
> Well ... actually he has joined another community, but not Lisp He's now
> a Factor devotee. Which reminds me -- some time I need to ask him why
> Factor and not ANS Forth. :)
>
> I'll go read his blog.
>
>



--
http://www.jeremymca...

My books:
Ruby in Practice
http://www.manning.com...

My free Ruby e-book
http://www.humblelittlerub...

My blogs:
http://www.mrneigh...
http://www.rubyinpra...

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

1/1/2008 4:06:00 AM

0

Jeremy McAnally wrote:
> Regardless of how I feel about Zed, given his attitude in this rant
> he'll fit in well with Factor's creator.
>
> --Jeremy
>
> On Dec 31, 2007 10:36 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:


[snip]


>> Well ... actually he has joined another community, but not Lisp He's now
>> a Factor devotee. Which reminds me -- some time I need to ask him why
>> Factor and not ANS Forth. :)
>>
>> I'll go read his blog.
>>
>>
>
>
>
Well ... I went and read it. I think it's rather sad, actually, because
stuff like that lives forever on the web.

James Britt

1/1/2008 4:10:00 AM

0

Chuck Remes wrote:
> Much like watching a car accident in slow motion, I could scarcely
> believe my eyes when reading Zed Shaw's screed on Ruby & Rails on his
> blog [1].
>


I liked the Ruby community better when it placed more emphasis on code
and less on personalities.


--
James Britt

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, but the illusion
of knowledge."
- D. Boorstin

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky

1/1/2008 4:35:00 AM

0

James Britt wrote:
> Chuck Remes wrote:
>> Much like watching a car accident in slow motion, I could scarcely
>> believe my eyes when reading Zed Shaw's screed on Ruby & Rails on his
>> blog [1].
>>
>
>
> I liked the Ruby community better when it placed more emphasis on code
> and less on personalities.
>
>

Well, since I got here late, I *still* like the Ruby community. :) And I
think that's exactly the problem with Zed's rant ... it seems to me that
he *has* placed code above relationships.

Luis Lavena

1/1/2008 4:48:00 AM

0

On 1 ene, 00:13, Chuck Remes <cremes.devl...@mac.com> wrote:
> Much like watching a car accident in slow motion, I could scarcely
> believe my eyes when reading Zed Shaw's screed on Ruby & Rails on his
> blog [1].
>

Zed's personal arguments but I I had to agree on some of them.

> I know I shouldn't give an attention whore that which he so
> desperately seeks, but I can't help myself. I'm the guy down on the
> street shouting for the idiot on the ledge to jump. Not only has he
> jumped, but he has promised "future installments" to complete the
> tragedy. I cannot look away; I don't *want* to look away.

Let me ask you, you enjoy watching the guy about to jump, desperately
waiting he just loose the only thing is holding him with life, or you
try to convince him that life have bad and good things and he
shouldn't jump just because something bad happened to him?

> Any how... I think Kevin Clark labeled him correctly. See Zed's rant
> for the background on this reference.
>

Mmm, I wouldn't say "KC was correct", that makes you put a label on
someone you don't know, someone who didn't spoke directly to you or
you didn't meet, that is worse than using bad words when speaking
about someone isn't present at that time.

> If I was in a position to do so, I am sorely tempted to hire him just
> to fire him right away. :-)
>

I don't find that funny, honestly.

> Thankfully the mongrel project is in sane hands. He did a wonderful
> job developing mongrel for which he deserves full credit. His rant and
> apparent abandonment of Ruby is just peculiar in light of his past
> contributions.
>

Yes, he did and I can say that I miss some of the clear guidance he
provided to the project:

flight low, keep it small, if ain't broke don't fix it.

> A community with a significant reputation for helping novices and
> welcoming newbies doesn't have a lot of room for cranks. I hope Zed is
> welcomed by the community(ies) focused on his next language choice;
> based on his personality traits, I'd say he should join the LISP
> community ASAP. Even they might find him to be a bit much.
>

Actually, Amy Joy (from Slash7) wrote an excellent article about Help
Vampires [1] a long time ago, a long time before Rails and Mongrel
became the "new defacto" or Ruby became "the next big thing".

I've encountered a lot of times questions asked all-over-again, users
that din't research (hey, they even didn't hit search button) -- and
google make that so easy to happen.

Also, that happens with some "consultant" companies too, they don't
hire knowledge, they hire fingers, the more the merrier, the less they
pay and the faster you can type, the better (yes, no matter what you
write).

I can't speak of TW, but I know some of them, mostly unrealted to Ruby
or Rails.

I don't have MBA or BS degrees, I didn't finshed my engineering career
neither, I just have a bachelor title, nothing more.

I've been with ruby since 2001, way before Rails, way before it worked
right under Windows (yeah, I can do Linux and *nix too).

I was also on Python, and Lua, and had more success embedding the
later than Ruby.

Zed is a great human being, no matter if his language/framework choice
isn't shared with you. I'll like to quote something Matz. showed in
his RubyConf presentation:

Python: One True Way
Ruby: Diversity.

Now replace Python with Rails. Diversity is what let people with
different thoughts can live along, if you don't agree with Zed, you
can show your point of view, like he did, and others will agree with
you, or not.

But please, don't put labels to others that you don't know, and if you
know Zed, word it correctly.

"I know Zed and he is a complete moron" -- which wouldn't be polite,
but is *your personal oppinion* about him.

Like Zed, we all have some differences with other users in the
community. Zed didn't stab all the members of it, nor Ruby nor Rails,
but lot of folks must agree that Rails is becoming the next Java.

I start hearing the 'enterprisy' word too much lately. Like Zed and
guess a bunch of folks started with Ruby for the joy of programming,
not to make a few bucks with it.

Abuse of our love for it (from consultants, contractors or peers)
stress us and remove the joy of even enter in #ruby-lang to hang out a
bit.

So please, if you have something different (and constructive) to say
about this, go ahead, write a personal post like Zed did I'll love to
share also my comments.

Have a nice Year! (2008 just started!)

[1] http://slash7.com/page...

--
Luis Lavena

Martin DeMello

1/1/2008 8:47:00 AM

0

On Jan 1, 2008 7:36 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
>
> Well ... actually he has joined another community, but not Lisp He's now
> a Factor devotee. Which reminds me -- some time I need to ask him why
> Factor and not ANS Forth. :)

Dunno about Zed, but I made the same decision recently. My reasoning
was (i) nascent languages and language communities are fun (ii) the
stdlib and emphasis on real world coding look really attractive. It
looks like it might become the open source equivalent of rebol, which
looked nice but which ran into my reluctance to invest in a
closed-source language.

martin

Marc Heiler

1/1/2008 10:24:00 AM

0

"Like Zed, we all have some differences with other users in the
"community. Zed didn't stab all the members of it, nor Ruby nor Rails,
"but lot of folks must agree that Rails is becoming the next Java."

Well he wrote:

'I donâ??t want to be a â??Ruby guyâ? anymore, and will probably start
getting into more Python, Factor, and Lua in the coming months'

And to me this sounds as if he hates Ruby as language, but without
giving any concrete evidence what he dislikes about ruby as language.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

Jari Williamsson

1/1/2008 12:54:00 PM

0

Marc Heiler wrote:

> 'I donâ??t want to be a â??Ruby guyâ? anymore, and will probably start
> getting into more Python, Factor, and Lua in the coming months'
>
> And to me this sounds as if he hates Ruby as language, but without
> giving any concrete evidence what he dislikes about ruby as language.

Well, just about the whole blog is about Rails, but:
http://rubyisnot...

Some time ago, I was evaluating Zed's "Profligacy" as a framework for
Swing (in JRuby). However, although his technical solution was quite ok,
I decided not to use it in my project based on his extremely hostile
tone towards fellow programmers on the web pages. (My impression was
that if I would get into trouble along the way, I would probably be
stuck forever.) And now with this new blog of his, the counts for words
like "idiot", "dumb", "moron", etc just confirms that fact.

If Ruby was very much designed to make the programmer feel good (which I
personally feel to be very much the case, my eyes opened by Giles'
excellent blog post at
http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-i-program-in-ruby-and-maybe-wh...),
Zed clearly needs 2 new languages (one for the computer world one for
the real world). IMHO.

Happy New Year to Matz and the whole Ruby community! Thanks for a great
language!


Best regards,

Jari Williamsson

John Joyce

1/1/2008 3:12:00 PM

0

Oh give Zed a break. He's an excellent programmer. He's not gentle or
ginger with words and never has been. Some of that his also his sense
of humor and exaggeration. BUT, I can totally understand where he's
coming from dealing with web developers and web development
companies. I believe he's aiming to much of that anger at Rails
because of the people he's dealt with.
Among web developers, there are lots of them with big egos, self
importance, going only for the gold with no pride in what they're
building or real confidence in coding. Many web dev companies and
their leaders just have absolutely zero sense of loyalty or ethics
and will screw people at the drop of a hat AFTER making promises and
schedules they could never keep.
And the half-baked, hair-brain ideas for web sites? Oh yeah, there
are lots of those Rails projects. There are lots with PHP too.

Zed is not wrong, except to blame Ruby or Rails for the problem. What
he says about Rails being a big "lie", well there may be some truth
to that... But clearly Zed was able to build a heck of a good thing
with Mongrel...so he does know a thing or two about that!

I can understand the allure of the Python community for him. Python
web frameworks do tend to be used by companies and groups that are
very clear about why they're using a particular technology and pretty
well-grounded in reality. We all know that Rails' hype sometimes can
be annoying.

Sounds like Zed just wants to do interesting programming and get
rewarded for it, not just well paid, but treated like a human being
without junior high school drama. Seems reasonable, but often
difficult to achieve.

Personally, I think Zed is a funny guy. I think I get his humor. But
I also hope he continues to develop good stuff in Ruby and realizes
that it is largely just the bad side of the culture of the web
development world that got to him.

Zed, get away from the web sites, do something without web stuff!