
Be Professional or Be Edgy: How Context Can Keep Everyone Happy - _pius
http://www.rubyinside.com/be-professional-or-be-edgy-how-context-can-keep-everyone-happy-1709.html
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bitwize
I think powerful ideas should speak for themselves, and not rely on the
"edginess" (read: trendiness) of the presenter to come across crystal-clear.

If the Rails community were full of powerful ideas they wouldn't have problems
attracting and maintaining an audience of like-minded folk (including women).
I think, rather, for the most part they are trendoids with MacBooks, seeking
ego gratification by demonstrating "projector code" (i.e., code that looks
great on a projector and works great when you demo it to your prezo audience
but which may have serious issues (maintainability, scalability, composability
with other people's code, etc.) in the real world). The result is the current
situation: de-evolution into MTV presentation, where the goal is to be as
shocking as possible in order to keep the audience's attention.

~~~
_pius
_If the Rails community were full of powerful ideas they wouldn't have
problems attracting and maintaining an audience of like-minded folk (including
women)._

So I guess the math, computer science, and physics communities are also full
of Macbook-toting "trendoids" who lack "powerful ideas."

I don't get why you'd cheapen the point you were making with gratuitous Rails
bashing.

~~~
bitwize
I don't see math, CS, or physics scholars giving presentations with the kind
of obnoxious 'tude that seems endemic to the rails community. For the most
part -- if they're any good -- they let the concepts they're presenting speak
for themselves.

~~~
_pius
The comment I was responding to implied that the reason why Rails doesn't have
a lot of women in its community is because it isn't "full of powerful ideas."
That is, of course, nonsense.

~~~
bitwize
I see more women involved in academic math and CS than I do in Rails (and many
other industrial computing communities for that regard). And Rails conferences
used to be a lot more female-friendly than now. Women are turned off when your
ego exceeds your actual capability, and somewhere along the way the Rails
community took the ego path.

