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Rails Bigwig Rails on Rails Community
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Jan 02, 2008 05:34 PM
from the less-than-elegant-exit-strategies dept.
from the less-than-elegant-exit-strategies dept.
Zed Shaw, creator of the popular Mongrel HTTP daemon / library, has decided it was high time to tear into the Ruby/Rails community for many different complaints that he has been collecting over the last few years. "Rails is a Ghetto" is Shaw's self-proclaimed exit strategy from the Rails community. "This is that rant. It is part of my grand exit strategy from the Ruby and Rails community. I don't want to be a 'Ruby guy' anymore, and will probably start getting into more Python, Factor, and Lua in the coming months. I've got about three or four more projects in the works that will use all of those and not much Ruby planned. This rant is full of stories about companies and people who've either pissed in my cheerios somehow or screwed over friends. I can back all of them up from emails, IRC chat logs, or with witnesses. Nothing in here is a lie unless it's really obviously a lie through exaggeration, and there's a lot of my opinion as well."
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Firehose:Rails Bigwig Zed Shaw drops Bomb on Community by Anonymous Coward
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So what (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So what (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:So what (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:So what (Score:5, Interesting)
I've worked club security in Boston and been in more than my share of altercations and I can attest that years of Ju-Jitsu absolutely make things easier, But I do agree that someone walking out of a normal dojo and getting into their first fight is almost certainly going to be in for a painful surprise.
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It's sad that this will reflect on Ruby itself (Score:5, Interesting)
You can see the difference between the old Ruby community and the Rails evangelists in many threads on the main Ruby mailing list throughout the last few years. Some of us already warned that in the end Rails may be a bad thing for Ruby back when the marketing blitz started, and now it seems this might hold true after all.
It's not a fate a very nice, expressive language made by an incredibly modest guy deserves. I hope more Ruby aficionados distance themselves clearly from the Rails hype.
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Re:It's sad that this will reflect on Ruby itself (Score:5, Insightful)
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Apparently Zed Shaw got noticed... (Score:5, Funny)
Some predictions for 2008:
* Zed will fork and re-factor the framework, quietly releasing the far technically superior and more stable "OpenRails".
* Google will use OpenRails to successfully deploy the Beta release of its Next Big Thing. It handles thousands of requests per nanosecond and Google's share price spikes, though it doesn't account for any of Google's revenue.
* The PHP community declares "OpenRails is dead!"
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Team Dynamics Lead to Tantrums (Score:5, Insightful)
* spend 10-20 minutes calling me names over IRC,
* not have the balls to say any of that to my face,
* say I'm a dick for wanting to use a different (established) publish/review model,
* and then demolish such an important file for a project,
* keeping everyone stumped and pissed for an hour,
* therefore proving me right.
This is exactly what makes Rails a ghetto. A bunch of half-trained former PHP morons who never bother to sit down and really learn the computer science they were too good to study in college. BTW, this is true about Kevin as he's an English major or something stupid (and it shows).
Hats off to you Kevin, you fucking prick. I'm enjoying my vacation too.
People commonly have disagreements, work them out.
The fact that this (largely nontechnical) issue is his first point disheartens me and makes me wary of ever working with Zed no matter how brilliant he is. Perhaps this is another example of how non-personal communication (forums/IRC/IMs/e-mail) leads to heated debates over absolutely nothing. I would start to point out that Zed did call Kevin a 'mofo' first before Kevin called him a 'dick' but I would hesitate as name calling and the like is for children.
It's a wonder Zed gets anything done other than by himself to me.
As for his complaints about companies, I have to warn him that bad companies are everywhere
I hate to say this but after reading this first part of the rant, I think Zed is just as big (if not half) of the problem of the community being in shambles as any of his targets are.
Re:Team Dynamics Lead to Tantrums (Score:5, Interesting)
All his complaints stem from him not getting along with people, not getting paid on time, the fact that the majority of the people jumping on rails aren't smart enough to properly implement things and that he really seems to be an abrasive character.
I mean, the first several paragraphs are nothing but him talking shit about kicking people in their respective mouths.
Aside from the fact that it's about rails, why is this on slashdot, exactly?
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Re:Team Dynamics Lead to Tantrums (Score:5, Insightful)
Things like having complained to the rails team about its thread safety and having the rails team stubbornly insist that it wasn't possible to make it thread-safe up until the point where someone went off and wrote a better version that was thread-safe. Things like that, if it's true, don't inspire a whole lot of confidence in RoR, regardless of how tactless the critique is.
Yes, he's got the kind of personality flaws that are, unfortunately, all too common in the tech industry. But I don't think that alone means we should automatically dismiss everything he says.
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Still no job? (Score:5, Funny)
He sounds like a real people person. I can't imagine why companies aren't jumping at the chance to hire this guy.
Re:Still no job? (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on the writing on his site, I wouldn't hire him for anything. Even if he's a god among programmers, I can hire someone who's 80% as good and causes fewer problems in the workplace, and likely come out ahead due to that.
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Re:Still no job? (Score:5, Funny)
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Whose chopper is this? (Score:5, Funny)
Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.
Slow news day? (Score:5, Funny)
Zed Shaw: A master at self parody (Score:5, Insightful)
Obligatory pot/kettle/black reference.
O....K.... I think that stands by itself.
But wait! There's more...
No, I believe you're doing that...right now...
And, based on the "beat your fucking ass" statements above, he'll be utilizing that software as a client at some point.
Seriously, based on reading only a portion of his post, I wouldn't hire this man even if he was a coding god. I don't think his woes are due to his previous co-workers. Textbook example of a serious attitude problem.
Zed's So Fucking Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps Google read a few paragraphs of Zed's So Fucking Awesome and thought better of asking him to do anything at all. I feel sorry for this guy now because this one post will do more to ruin his career than any minor tantrum in front of a few people (a few of which he describes here). I hear dreamhost [dreamhost.com] is hiring though; his weblog reminds me of theirs.
Re:Zed's So Fucking Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, there's such a thing as burning bridges, but he's taken it to the next level. I know for a fact that if I ever received a resume from such an individual, it would go straight into the trash.
As far as I'm concerned, interpersonal skills count for a lot - even if your a genius, in a real environment you'll have to function as part of a team. This guy, well, it seems that he has real difficulties in a team environment. Sure, he may have worked with some individuals that were not up to his standards (would anyone be?), but to say what he said...it's too much.
Good riddance to him.
Guess It Is Back To Lighttpd + FastCGI (Score:5, Interesting)
Prior to this, lighttpd and fastcgi had been favored. With that guy's attitude, I suspect that Mongrel is quickly going to fall out of favor. Hell, with that outburst, I think people should be rightly concerned about using and updating Mongrel as a matter of due diligence.
The major point here is that alternatives exist and we of the lighttpd and fastcgi persuasion would like more fellows to build brain share. We promise not to swear at you quite as much.
That's actually given me an insight (Score:5, Interesting)
In closed source software, very few have access to source code and those that do aren't at liberty to discuss it in any detail. We only have access to the same help files, knowledge bases and forums, which are by and large a lot more human readable than several thousand lines of C code. But at the same time, they're a lot less informative. In solving a particular problem, everyone's trying to find the proverbial black cat in a coal cellar. It's in everyone's interest to remain at least civil at all times, because next week it could be us asking the questions.
In Open Source, everyone has access to and can discuss the source code all they like - and there is an elite of people who have the time and expertise to be able to understand it in some detail. The elite don't need to worry so much about pissing people off because they have the ability to read the source code and understand what is going on. And so it seems much more often you find someone who tends to come across as either very outspoken (at best) or downright malicious (at worst).
Re:Ruby (Score:5, Insightful)
Clever title, but "Pissy Foul-Mouthed Drama Queen Makes Histrionic Exit from Rails" would have been more accurate. I don't much care for rails either, but I do hope any other project he hops onto doesn't look to him for their public face.
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Re:Ruby (Score:5, Interesting)
I like Mongrel -- I use it to run my Instiki web site -- and think Shaw's an undeniably good programmer. But there's a certain kind of personality in a (fortunately small) subset of tech-heads, that assumes that the sheer brilliance they bring to their work is all that matters. You'd better listen to them because they're fucking brilliant and you're not them and don't you fucking forget it. I have more than one acquaintance who exhibits this attitude -- and who has a whole lot of trouble finding and keeping work. Hmm.
Oddly, I'm exploring Python and Django now after my own long detour through Rails, without quite accomplishing anything on my own part other than cementing an exasperation with PHP (version 4 in particular). Running that Instiki instance is part of what's lessened the appeal of Rails. I don't know how much of that can be blamed on Instiki itself, but I'm pretty sure the answer is "not all of it." But I digress.
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Addendum (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Make the bad man stop (Score:5, Insightful)
I care. Not so much in the context of Rails, Ruby or Mongrel, but in the context of being an employee in the IT business. Working in teams, working with excentric individuals, stupid bosses, geniuses, hacks, nice but incompetent, obnoxious but blazingly creative, hard working average joes, brilliant slackers. All this is what we all meet every day. It's great to hear these stories, since we all can relate to them, pehaps come to terms with our own failings and forgive the failings in others.
I feel for Zed, I really do. It seems to me that he's one guy who've been screwed one too many times, and breaking down is just too common under such circumstances. People skills, yeah. He might not have them, but reading a story like this makes me more proficient in that department. So.. I think it matters. It matters a lot. To me. To us all.
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