

Rails is a Ghetto (Part 2) - carpal
http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html?part2

======
Xichekolas
All I can say is that if Zed gives up programming, he has a brilliant career
in comedy ahead of him...

 _I feel like a dirty whore trying to get straight after a 10 year stint in a
Tiajuana donkey show._

 _Oh wait, they don't write comments, because the "code should speak for
itself." Right, that nasty shit doesn't say anything other than, "Keeeel me.
Kill me please."_

 _Oh, did I mention ThoughtWorks compared Rails to ColdFusion as well?
Awesome._

 _No, not unstable, just pissed off. But if it makes everyone feel better then
fine, I'm fucking crazy as hell. boogie-boogie-boo! (Morons)._

 _When I cracked open Ruby on Rails I said, "Holy fucking shit they have nice
meta-programming. Oooh, and you can do that with blocks? Oh and what's this
nifty stuff over here? Damn this is pretty nice." It was like seeing the
neighbors dorky daughter in a bikini one day and finding out she's built like
a brick shit house._

~~~
gleb
Hear that. He is telling the truth about his 5 min speech during RailsConf
2007, btw. It really was the most entertaining presentation of the conference.

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apathy
Heh. Looks like Zed was reading what people posted.

I can hardly describe how much more focused this revision comes across.
Idiosyncratic but generally straightforward and (more interesting to me) much
better examples on round 2.

I can't say that I disagree all that much with his talking points. For his
sake, I hope his management career (resumption) goes well. Mongrel does seem
like a well-written, strictly-RFC-compliant counterpoint to, say, Apache. (The
latter being a fine example of _Worse Is Better_ , viz.
<http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html> ...)

~~~
mechanical_fish
The key line in Version 2.0:

 _When I wrote this rant it was in kind of a private beta, but then it got
out._

No kidding. Thank god my own diaries are handwritten!

------
granderson
I have thought about this for a few days and have concluded that it's a
massive publicity stunt on Zed's part.

Think about how so many people get famous -- by creating controversy. Zed has
done a great job (in terms of entertaining us)... now we just need to wait for
the big announcement.

~~~
cglee
There might be something there, good observation. Notice his latest post talks
about how his site survived the slashdotting, redditing, etc...and his promise
of more info about his deployment environment in a future post. Pretty soon,
he's going to be the deployment guru for Ruby (and probably Rails) projects.

------
chaostheory
It was funny when you first read it... but the more I think about it - it's
kind of sad. We basically witnessed a public mental break down (which isn't
too suprising in our line of work - being a former east coaster, I don't think
it helps that he's in NY).

From this new revision it looks like he's trying to say he's sorry to a few
people.

~~~
cglee
I don't think so. He mentioned in his first post he was going to follow up
with a part II where he will thank a few people.

------
drubio
Reads like "Lord of the Flies" for nerds

"Boys stuck on a deserted island who unsuccessfully try to govern themselves
and consequently have disastrous results"

------
goodgoblin
When I read the first rant, I didn't really get it - but now it makes a bit
more sense. Sounds like Zed tried to make a career around Mongrel and ended up
meeting a bunch of hucksters and shysters. I was actually thinking of
attempting to do a little rails consulting myself - will definately keep this
in mind as a cautionary tale. If the writer of Mongrel has a hard time making
a living doing Rails consulting, might not be too much money in it after all.
Also - thinking about the kind of people who would be interested in paying for
a Rails project - they probably have read about how coding in RoR is like
putting together legos or something and so would expect to pay very little. In
many cases you are likely to get people looking to do something on the cheap.

Not saying you would need to do "Rails consulting" - any kind of consulting
could be successful - i.e. a normal project where to the client the technology
was not as important. But if you wrote Mongrel and tried to make a living by
getting consulting gigs on that reputation, could explain why he ended up
dealing with the kinds of people he did.

------
pius
His updates make this a much more effective rant.

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cera
Here are some videos interviews. He talks alot about the same issues, but
these happen to be safe-for-work.

<http://www.infoq.com/interviews/ruby-zed-shaw>
<http://www.infoq.com/interviews/rails-shaw-pelletier>

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anaphoric
Yes I think that Zed shows that the "meritioracy" is something of a lie....

The natural response has come about... And what is the natural response to
fight individual expression?

It's the mob. The mafia. They are in control now... Too bad, but the world is
a sewer and they are the rats.

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sabat
This guy really needs some therapy. His anger over trivial dealings in a tiny
community of developers is astounding. The anger is really about childhood
issues, obviously, and he really needs to get that shit worked out before he
causes himself some real problems.

------
edu
Will this be a trilogy? The Lord of the Rubies? The Rail Wars? (boring)

------
joeguilmette
anyone who posts irc logs to prove what an asshole somebody else is usually
ends up proving just the opposite.

------
tac-tics
This guy's "rants" are aptly named. He vents his frustration the way I'm sure
most of us do after a bad day at work: incoherently and unconvincingly.

I've long wondered whether or not to put in the effort to learn Rails. I would
be more than happy to listen to any well-reasoned praise or criticism of the
Rails community. Regardless of any accuracy he may have in his arguments, his
writing comes off in the same whiny tone one might expect from a 13 year old
in Counter-Strike or Halo who just got sniped.

And, yeah, the IRC posts are a bit much. When you're trying to provide
evidence that people in some community are a bunch of assholes, it hurts your
credibility if you use an assholish tone yourself throughout your entire blog
post.

Move along, nothing to see here folks.

