

The Fan Syndrome - billmcneale
http://beust.com/weblog/2005/12/15/the-fan-syndrome/
Interesting analysis of how people can't seem to differentiate between technologies they like from technologies that are going to succeed.
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wccrawford
I try not to reply to people who have fan syndrome. If I point out a negative
in something and that makes someone think I hate it, it's not worth trying to
debate with them. They aren't receptive. They won't learn anything.

Even worse, I find those people can usually only parrot back the same things
they've heard someone else say. I can't even learn anything from them!

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harterrt
Reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's concept that ideas are a form of social
currency. Agreeing with somebody makes them your friend and disagreeing makes
them your enemy. He suggests that this is why bad ideas don't die in Breakfast
of Champions

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anc2020
The conclusions of this article are a bit hasty.

Firstly there are other reasons politicians could want to save face other than
that they think they are the best candidate, and secondly the outcome of a
football game is much much less determined by the support of its fans than the
success of RoR. The analogies aren't particularly useful.

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invalidOrTaken
I liked the article, but I'm confused: RoR _hasn't_ taken over the world?

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billmcneale
Quick fact checking:

Job offers on Dice.com:

Java: 16837

Javascript: 10161

C#: 8011

Ruby: 1707

Ruby on Rails: 679

Scala: 82

Market share on Tiobe:

Java (#1): 18.5%

C (#2): 16.27%

Ruby (#11): 1.48%

Scala: not in the top 20

So, the article is right: Ruby on Rails is still quite niche.

(can't believe HN won't let me format this comment better than that)

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snitko
This data is not picked fairly. I suggest we only look into webdev jobs, then
Ruby should be somewhere at the top.

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joeburke
Look at the position of Javascript. It's fair to say it's used exclusively for
web development (node.js is quite marginal) and it still tops the job chart.

Ruby on Rails would be there as well if it were mainstream.

