

Coding Horror: Douchebaggery - sharksandwich
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001065.html

======
mechanical_fish
I can't figure this post out. It reads kind of like a drunken fratboy's
impression of Stephen Colbert's impression of DHH. I mean,

"...when you're using Rails and OS X, you're using the platform of choice for
douchebags."

Is that _meant_ to hurt my feelings? Or is it an attempted parody that has
gone horribly wrong and started killing innocent bystanders?

FWIW, I can't tell the difference between DHH's opinion of Windows and the
average Unix expert's opinion of Windows. And I hope for the sake of Atwood's
blood pressure that he never encounters PG's hilarious line about Windows NT
from "Great Hackers".

~~~
icey
Atwood is a dyed in the wool Windows / .Net evangelist. Nobody should be
terribly shocked when he makes the assertion that anything other than Windows
& .Net are substandard platforms.

~~~
pchristensen
"I take issue with David's claim that, when it comes to computers and
operating systems, there's any "best" anything. In my considered opinion, they
all suck. Sure, there are tradeoffs, pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses.
But an objective best? It's all relative."

"Don't waste time arguing about the character select screen. Results speak
loudest. Show the world what you can do in your programming environment of
choice."

Hardly sounds like he's bashing non-Windows. More like bashing elitism and OS-
ism.

------
mattmaroon
The argument about OSes has long since left the realm of useful debate about
relative merits and become some sort of brand-identification circlejerk. Apple
is always going to win that war because Windows, for as long as it is
dominant, will always be bourgeois. It's the same with Sam Adams vs.
Budweiser.

That's the price you pay for achieving ubiquity. You forfeit the hipster dufus
demographic.

~~~
Xichekolas
It's funny, because I remember that before Apple switched to Intel, the only
reason I could see to buy one was that the machine/OS _looked cool_. Now their
hardware is considered superior (at least for laptops), so all the nerds love
them, but I still have the stigma in my head that anyone using a mac is just a
trendy hippy (or hipster dufus, as you put it) trying to show off how stylish
he is.

I'm slowly giving up on that idea now that their hardware actually wins... but
it's still hard not to chuckle at some kid in the coffee shop with political
stickers on his macbook pro who is most likely using his $2500 laptop to watch
youtube videos.

~~~
mattmaroon
I don't think it's accurate to say Macs win on hardware. There are clearly
some Windows OEMs who make hardware that's generally better (Lenovo for
instance) though I'll give Apple credit and say that they're pretty good.

~~~
cstejerean
I've yet to see (in a store near me) a laptop that even comes close in
features with what a MacBook Pro offers and that doesn't look like it was
designed by monkeys.

If you know of such a laptop, would you mind posting a link to it? I would
definitely take it into consideration if I finally decide to get rid of my
MBP.

~~~
mattmaroon
I'm a pretty big fan of Lenovo Thinkpads (don't think they sell their good
line in stores). Most Mac users I know who've owned both agree that Lenovo
kicks ass in terms of hardware. You probably won't like the design aesthetic
as much though, but in terms of PCs, they're the top dogs right now.

The T series is probably the closest competitor to the MBP.

------
timr
Douchebaggery, indeed.

In my experience, the people who get tweaked when someone like DHH expresses a
strong opinion, are usually the same ones to suck the creativity and
excitement out of any room they enter.

Unless you're planning to work with DHH, what do you care what he thinks about
your laptop? Learn to deal.

~~~
mynameishere
_when someone like DHH expresses a strong opinion_

It's not a strong opinion. He's saying something stupid and stupidly arrogant:

 _I would have a hard time imagining hiring a programmer who was still on
Windows for 37signals. If you don't care enough about your tools to get the
best, your burden of proof just got a lot heavier._

Whatever. I could find you some old fogeys who wouldn't hire you because you
didn't love OpenVMS, and Richard Stallman himself doomed us all to using Unix
instead of VMS, which he prefered, because of political constraints. Is DHH
using OpenVMS? No? Then he's not using the best tools, and he should seriously
consider firing his stupid ass.

That he thinks that ability really corresponds to making the polically correct
choice in OSes really says more about his hangups than his discernment. As for
OSX, it frankly strikes me as the Disney Corp. of the OS world. But that's
just my stupid opinion, and I wouldn't hit someone over the head with it.

I code on Windows, and deploy to Linux and have never noticed any differences
besides file path names and a mysteriously superior performance of MySQL on
linux. Hey--I know linux in and out----why am I not using it for a desktop
machine? Because Windows is better at that.

~~~
cstejerean
I'm fairly convinced that anybody who thinks Windows is a better desktop
machine has never used Ubuntu.

Just think of how long it would take you to install XP from scratch on a
machine and get all the drivers, service packs, updates and tools you need
installed. Then imagine being able to get all of that done in under 45
minutes.

Imagine having better eye candy and performance than OSX or Vista on hardware
that is less than half the price.

Throw in the benefits of developing on the same platform you deploy on.
Welcome to Ubuntu!

~~~
aston
Ubuntu's a fine OS, but it's not really to be compared to Windows or OS X for
general purpose computing, mostly because it's not popular enough to merit
serious 3rd party investment.

Wake me up when I can apt-get install photoshop-cs3

PS: I code all day on Ubuntu.

~~~
cstejerean
try apt-get install gimp :)

------
far33d

      OS X == (UI niceness > windows) + (coding tools like unix)
     

I don't see how you can argue with that much. I prefer to code on linux. I
prefer to have a window manager and desktop apps that work @ home. Add the
fact that the macs are the nicest laptops of all in terms of features and form
factor, and there doesn't seem to be any other comparison.

------
ROFISH
I have had nothing but trouble when it comes to programming web environments
in Windows. In _any_ language be it PHP, Ruby, etc. and so forth, there's too
much "Oh, it acts differently in Windows."

Most of it is related to POSIX environments vs. Windows, but I digress...

~~~
wmf
PHP? Ruby? You were thinking Unix and using Windows; no wonder it didn't work.
Windows probably works much better if you've never seen Unix and you stick to
100% MS tools. (In other words, blub.)

~~~
Xichekolas
On the contrary, if you have only ever used Unix and some unixy language like
PHP, you are still a blub programmer. Blub isn't the exclusive domain of
Windows, even if it makes sticking with blub really easy.

------
pistoriusp
I used FreeBSD as my development platform until I got a Mac. The reason why is
because the majority of websites are hosted on `nix platforms and as a
programmer it's important for me to understand and experience the platform
that my code is going to be running on.

If I was a Windows programmer I wouldn't know about cron, symlinks, du, etc...
And I might waste an exceptional amount of time trying to code an already
available feature in `nix.

~~~
kingkongrevenge
I work with a bunch of rxvt terminals, a browser, and a few gvim windows. It's
the same damn setup on either Windows or Linux once I have Cygwin and Virtual
Dimension (virtual desktops for Windows) installed.

If you're deploying to a Unix server, i.e. not writing desktop apps or systems
code, I fail to see how it matters what OS you're using. The dev tools are all
ported.

------
tlrobinson
_Y Combinator is (we hope) visited mostly by hackers. The proportions of OSes
are: Windows 66.4%, Macintosh 18.8%, Linux 11.4%, and FreeBSD 1.5%. The Mac
number is a big change from what it would have been five years ago._

(<http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html>)

The percentage of Mac-using Y Combinator founders appears to be even higher.
Actually the majority, I think.

~~~
Hexstream
I'm guessing lots of people access HN from work, skewing results towards
Windows?... (I don't doubt Windows would still be quite dominant though).

~~~
cstejerean
You're probably right. Personally I refuse to work anywhere that would require
me to use a Windows desktop for development.

------
randrews
I don't see how what DHH said translates to "OSX/Rails is the best platform
ever!".

It seems to me that he's just saying you should care about your tools, and
pick the one you think is the best (and be prepared to justify it, if you
apply to 37Signals). Don't just default to Windows/Java/Blub.

------
projectileboy
In general, I couldn't give a rat's ass about any of this. But I must say that
3 months ago I switched back to a Mac after 10 years away, and while I like it
much, much better than Windows, it's absolute bullshit to talk about Apple or
Mac OS X like the quality is infinitely better. On that front, I find both my
hardware and software to be just as flaky and crappy as the Dell/Windows hell
to which I had become accustomed. Laptop wakes from sleep? Usually. Machine
locks up? Rarely, but sometimes. Crummy wireless mouse works? Usually.
<sigh>...

------
mixmax
"David (heinemeier Hansson) gets off on putting other people down."

And there's a pretty serious backlash appearing on the horizon because of it.
If Jeff Atwood, who is normally a really nice and straight guy, starts writing
personal attacks then I think that DHH has a potential problem.

Note: I don't personally have anything against DHH, I've met him once and hes
one of the smartest guys I've talked to. He even bought the beer...

~~~
mechanical_fish
I think you're right that there's going to be (is?) a Rails "backlash", but I
disagree that it has anything to do with DHH or his personality. (What, you
think Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, and Steve Ballmer are humble and self-
effacing?) It's just the backside of the hype cycle.

Rails is no longer as young and hot as it used to be, and the fanboys and the
media will move on to something else. Because Rails was the subject of such
breathless hype from the Silver Bullet crowd, the "backlash" meme will
probably get considerable media play as well. Nobody is more bitter than a
frustrated seeker of Silver Bullets.

Meanwhile, Rails and Merb and jRuby and other Ruby-based tools will continue
to slowly improve, as such tools generally do.

You can argue over whether or not such hype cycles are useful in the long
term. They certainly didn't hurt Java.

------
xirium
From the article: I'd expect hard core OSS folks to want Freedom Zero in their
operating system as well as the software they build.

I expect freedom zero for my hardware. OpenCores ( <http://www.opencores.org/>
) and Arduino ( <http://www.arduino.cc/> ) is a good start.

------
geebee
I use OSX at home, and windows at work. No big surprise there. So when I first
learned about Ruby on Rails, I did the intro tutorial on both platforms.

I had to install Ruby on windows. My Mac had ruby pre-installed, but it
shipped with a broken ruby, so I had to reinstall.

I had to install a few patches to get the very first tutorials to work on my
Mac. It was seamless on Windows.

Since then, it has been more of a pleasure to code on the mac than the
windows. I'm also a lot better able to deal with remote hosting, because I'm
going from unix to unix, rather than windows to unix.

That said, I was surprised that it took a bit more struggling on a Mac,
considering that the 27Signals team is very mac-centril.

------
systems
I guess the main issue is, people who are too much into free software may
sometimes loose their grasp of reality

You frequent slashdot, this site, the serverside and number of other FOSS
wikis and blogs, and you start to think that most ppl would agree, that x is
better than y and that MS is evil

But in real life, most ppl havent heard of slahdot, or arc and think python is
a myth

And this is why DHH for them will definitely sound like a douchebag, and to be
fair, if you compare RoR to a product like Sharepoint (yes you can use RoR to
create stuff you can create with Sharepoint) if Sharepoint can do it,
Sharepoint will be light years ahead of RoR.

------
nradov
For most purposes the leading three (including minor variations thereof) are
all good enough to get the job done. OSs have essentially become commodities,
just like web browsers and relational databases. Who cares. Let's move on to
something that really matters for application development.

------
sutro
Ever hear of a guy named John Carmack, DHH? He develops on Windows. I'm sure
he'll be crushed to find out that he won't be able to get a job at 37 Signals.

------
edw519
Sounds like judging a race car driver for the pavement he races on.

