Mike Perham, Creator of Sidekiq: From Employment to Independence

It's always interesting to find out about these niche subcultures. Having worked with batch schedulers of all varieties for a couple decades, I've never run across Sidekiq but, then again, I didn't realize anyone had actually built anything in Ruby in the past decade.

Congratulations, that’s great. I’m always happy to hear of more successful indie developers.

Works for me! Very much matches the MO I've been using as "JS is wild, ain't it great!," so I tend to agree with the shown perspective.

I also think a huge amount of these tend to be pretty typical conservative-developer overconcern (see Yegge's Notes From The Mystery Machine Bus https://gist.github.com/cornchz/3313150), governing yourself on fear, that is probably not really as fully warranted or deserved.

But I'm also a huge fan of wild & fun & diversity. I also love that we try & do other things, that programming languages are not a Last Man Standing situation, & that we have great technical ecosystems with caring trying folks finding new ways to move forward & progress like Elixer. I look forward to seeing what lessons there prove really valuable (and perhaps aping them)! It's a choice in JS world but I do use immutable.js, for example, and it's great & as described as an advantage above. Ditto for some fp tools, but often I will mutate & use effectual/imperative styles, I often find there are significant performance or understandabity wins.

I would say, yes, the cost of talking vs snarking may be real, but it doesn't have to be this large & well examined a list as you've madd. I don't like JS, the amount of dependencies terrifies me. I don't like JS, it's too fragmented. I'd rather use Elixer, I like having a good actor model underpinning my ecosystem. Sharing some sort of tidbit can help calibrate where a person is & turn destructive contagious negativity into healthy discourse.

Both agree in this case with Mike's right to fun, but also, I feel like the idea of lighthearted jabs has become a steady stream of blows. I said elsewhere:

> Context also matters. Conversationally Mike's words could be an amusing wink & grin quip. I can see that. On paper, & seeing it repeated with the same reckless unnuanced antipathy, it lacks the personal connection & feels indicative of a general attitude situation that is quite prevalent.

"Don't get so upset it's just a joke" is sometimes indeed a legit statement, sometimes we do take things too seriously & need to be reminded. But when the light jabs keep coming, when there's so rarely an attempt to ever bring both parties into the laughing, when it's always jokes at expense, the action whatever it's intent becomes part of a larger behavior that is more than a lighthearted jab.

How many folks would stand up and say, no, there is no pattern of behavior about JS receiving short shift put downs? Do folks think there is no issue? How above board Vs how trashy do we think we've gotten with how programmer culture especially those parts that don't like it treats JS? What other parts of programmer culture endure repeated joke making at their expense today?

> There are tons of businesses selling products that are ideas brought to life from scratching their own itch or simply a desire to make something and put it out there.

I'd bet money that the number of businesses which fail because they boil down to "a solution in search of a problem" is vastly larger than the number of businesses that succeeded despite performing "no validation".

That said, "making something" and "starting a business" are two different things. I would challenge you to point out where in the post he argues against making something, especially for the reasons you mention.

> I am one of those people who started a business based on an idea with no validation before launching it. I built it in its entirety, then went to places and people who I expected would want it and low-and-behold, I am making a living doing it.

Consider the possibility that you're in the minority there, and that you succeeded despite performing no validation.

> Sorry, this is bogus.

So if it doesn't apply to you personally, or in all cases, then you dismiss it as "bogus", full stop? Are you in the habit of doing this often?

Also, for future reference, it's "lo-and-behold", not "low-and-behold". [1]

1. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lo_and_behold