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The Cancers In The Ruby Community

blog.txustice.me

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Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#21

Post by danneu »

Maybe the ruby community is a secret sanctum I've yet to be granted access, but I've never identified with or understood these sort of posts.

Granted, I'm a superficial participant in things ruby. But if this vogue opinion of the ruby community is only something you can see in some deeply-heated debates in some Google Group or pull-request comments on some repository, your blog post seems more applicable to all of humanity.

    The three virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris. -- Larry Wall

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#22

Post by salimmadjd »

Maybe because rails is like a religion-based on faith. As an old-timer who started web programming on perl/cgi I've always found rails programmers rather arrogant and a bit off-putting. I say rails because this seems to be the main driver behind Ruby's growth.

Rails seems to work magically for first-timers and without knowing what's happening it allows anyone to build sophisticated web applications. It basically expects you to have faith it will work and as such perhaps it creats a faith based following.

What the author is describing is all sympthomatic of many religious groups :)

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#23

Post by FooBarWidget »

derefr wrote: post #4
rollypolly wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you fix lack of professionalism?

You don't. Non-professionals will become professionals with time and experience, but there will always be more non-professionals to take their place. The only reason some communities have to deal with more non-professionals than others, is that those communities are perceived to have a lower barrier to entry--so, when a non-professional tries to select a community to join/language to learn/tool to use/etc., they end…

I don't think barrier to entry is the only factor, if it's a factor at all. The Linux desktop has a relatively high barrier of entry, and yet a large part of its community has devolved into an elitist, cognitive dissonant crowd that's defending their usability problems by framing them as a good things.

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#24

Post by petercooper »

It's the latest attempt to define a singular "Ruby community" from a tiny subset someone has encountered and pin FUD on it, giving ignorant third parties a bad impression of Ruby in general.

I frequently encounter people who say things like "Ruby is all drama", "I chose Python because Ruby is full of bickering hipsters" or "I've always found rails programmers rather arrogant." Lies (or gross generalizations at best) but at least an understandable opinion when sentiment like this keeps doing the rounds.

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#25

Post by petercooper »

nupark2 wrote: post #15
pluies_public wrote: post #9

Interesting article, though the point could have been carried across just as well without all this motherflippin' swearing.

Well, he is a part of the Ruby community, and they do often seem to often favor emotional arguments conveyed through harsh language.

What a crass, and inaccurate, generalization.

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#27

Post by txus »

petercooper wrote: post #24

It's the latest attempt to define a singular "Ruby community" from a tiny subset someone has encountered and pin FUD on it, giving ignorant third parties a bad impression of Ruby in general. I frequently encounter people who say things like "Ruby is all drama", "I chose Python because Ruby is full of bickering hipsters" or "I've always found rails programmers rather arrogant." Lies (or gross generalizations at best)…

I didn't mean to give a bad impression of Ruby. I think (and many people have pointed out) that the problems I outline are valid for many developer communities, if not all of them. In the end, those communities are human, and share a good amount of our defects.

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#28

Post by toast76 »

txus wrote: post #12
pluies_public wrote: post #9

Interesting article, though the point could have been carried across just as well without all this motherflippin' swearing.

But swearing is a personal signature. (Anyway sorry if I offended anyone.)

Having swearing as a personal signature is like having a tattoo. It doesn't make you any "cooler", and everyone does it so it's not much of a signature.

It's not that it's offensive, it just says you are unable to convey the strength of your argument without the vulgarities. You lose critical (logical) thinkers when you resort to crass language; primarily because it says your argument relies on emotion, not logic.

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#29

Post by txus »

jinfiesto wrote: post #26
pluies_public wrote: post #9

Interesting article, though the point could have been carried across just as well without all this motherflippin' swearing.

Also, there were enough spelling and grammatical errors to be distracting. The author should proofread before publishing.

I corrected a couple of those upon indication from readers. I hope there aren't any more :)

Re: The Cancers In The Ruby Community

#30

Post by txus »

toast76 wrote: post #28
txus wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But swearing is a personal signature. (Anyway sorry if I offended anyone.)

Having swearing as a personal signature is like having a tattoo. It doesn't make you any "cooler", and everyone does it so it's not much of a signature. It's not that it's offensive, it just says you are unable to convey the strength of your argument without the vulgarities. You lose critical (logical) thinkers when you resort to crass language; primarily because it says your argument relies on emotion, not logic.

Just like a tattoo, it shouldn't distract critical thinkers when judging the contents and the point of my argument.
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