
Rails is a Ghetto (2008) - teffen
http://web.archive.org/web/20080103072111/http://www.zedshaw.com/rants/rails_is_a_ghetto.html
======
tseabrooks
I disagree. This isn't interesting. This is tantamount to the trashy gossip
rags at the cash register. It's just negativity that doesn't really add to the
community. This should've stayed dead. I've flagged it to do my part.

Let's stay classy HN.

~~~
zedshaw
Stay classy? My friend, the H.S.S. HN Classy ship sailed away many years ago.

~~~
rbanffy
Let's then bring it back to where it should be.

This was a very ugly moment of what seems to be a very ugly story. We should
learn from it and try to avoid situations like this in the future. I'm sorry
things like this happened and that they continue happening all over the place
with people less vocal and with blogs less popular than Zed.

Zed... After reading this a long time ago, I was afraid when you approached
the Python community. I feared something like this would happen again and I
expressed my concern publicly. I am happy you proved my fears unfounded.

~~~
zedshaw
Oh there's similar crap going on in the Python community, but none of it
involves me directly so I ignore it. However, if I find out about similar
backroom deals and cons I'm going to tell everyone about it. I cannot stand
abusive communities that con their members to make a quick buck.

~~~
tseabrooks
I'm not a member of the community in question. However, I guess I'm just in
the mind that if you have problems with a person you take it up with them
directly and privately (including only the people that must be involved).

This was obviously a long time ago but things like this "public shaming" just
seem like a one sided mud sling designed to call people out and make people
feel bad (or give other people bad feelings about them) rather than a method
to fix the problem.

I don't want to make assumptions regarding values. Maybe we have different
ideas on how to combat things like these. Maybe, our views or very similar and
you thought this was the only way to make your point. Either way, bringing it
back this far from the actual event (Not that your did this) only serves to
dredge up old animosity instead of burying the hatchet and "Getting Shit
Done".

I think I'm more of the mid that the OP shouldn't be submitting what amounts
to old gossip-y mud slinging articles 5 years later.

~~~
zedshaw
I think a major thing you're not admitting to is that most of these people and
organizations were fucking people over, including me, and then using other's
unwillingness to speak the truth to keep it all quiet. If more people outed
these community leaders when they screwed people over you might not have this
kind of thing happening.

What your sentiment does is simply perpetuate the situation by allowing bad
actors in a community to use their popularity to harm individuals, and the
individuals then feel like they can't tell anyone for fear of being a "gossip"
or "tattle tale".

So, if my problem with someone is between me and them, then I do keep it
quiet. But in this case, no it was not kept between us, many of these people
actively slandered me, and until I spoke up they did it to many other people
as well.

------
agscala
How come people take Zed's rants so seriously? Honest question, I'm oblivious
to how he got so much credibility in the first place.

~~~
zedshaw
Because I can write. Whether people love or hate what I say, I'm at least
entertaining and informative at the same time. Even if my essays are full of
hilarious bile I still make sure that there's a kernel of awesome information
that's very true, or an informed opinion I can defend.

As for my credibility in technical matters, well I do make stuff people use,
but more importantly I make stuff that helps other people be awesome. That's
my niche.

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da02
Similar things have been written about IBM and others. Like what Cringely
wrote about IT, IBM, and Memphis. For some reason, it's called "trashy gossip"
when Zed writes it, but Cringely gets a bunch of people agreeing w/ him and
providing insider accounts. No one ever seems to come and prove Zed wrong with
facts of their own.

For example, no one seems to say, "Oh I was there, and the situation was way
overblown. ThoughtWorks was kidding, never serious w/ its intimidation. And
offering a junior sysadmin job to a real programmer applying to Google is just
a starting point. It's not because of a screwed up corp. hiring process."

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davidw
Not really. Developers get into pissing match, news at 11.

------
taskstrike
Rails is still a ghetto. Out of most programmers, Rails is the one with people
with the least amount of CS degrees.

While there might be great rail programmers who know there CS basics. A lot
don't

~~~
zedshaw
Well to be honest, there's a lot of people with CS degrees that don't know the
fundamentals of basic CS either. I know, it sounds crazy, but you'll
frequently run into people who graduate from reasonably top notch schools and
have never heard of simple things like ternary search trees or suffix arrays,
or even state machines.

In my experience I find that nearly _all_ practicing programmers simply don't
know a lot of important basics about building software or even how a computer
works.

~~~
rbanffy
> have never heard of simple things

Or much worse: have heard, can answer questions about them, and still can't
code themselves out of a paper bag.

