
Matz: We are mere mortals - tosh
https://twitter.com/yukihiro_matz/status/1082418360501948416
======
nickelcitymario
Seems worth reminding ourselves of the old Ruby community motto: "Matz is
nice, so we are nice."

~~~
btown
It always seemed so incongruous to me that the Ruby _language_ community could
be so nice, while the Rails community (following the self-aggrandizing example
of DHH) would be so aggressive to anyone with unorthodox thoughts.

~~~
hnbroseph
> aggressive to anyone with unorthodox thoughts

do you have some specific examples? (not a rails user, so if there are obvious
things, i'm unware)

a bit ot, but i've noticed an uptick in what seems like a reductive/straw-man
characterization of disagreeing with particular ideas as summarily dismissing
"different ideas" in general.

~~~
eridius
I don't have any examples, having not touched Rails in an extremely long time,
but as I recall the core philosophy of Rails was "we're opinionated about
things so you don't have to make decisions", and it's no surprise at all to me
that a framework that prides itself on being opinionated would be hostile to
differing ideas.

~~~
anko
I think this might be a mischaracterisation. Rails merged with Merb because
they were accepting of new ideas, and didn't see the point of 2 groups wasting
their time implementing the same kinds of stuff.

Rails is an opinionated framework in that it has strong opinions for what the
default configuration should be. They realise it can't be general purpose and
stay as effective. But if you're doing CRUD apps, on the web, those defaults
save you a bunch of time.

That's not hostile to differing ideas, it's just saying that some ideas don't
belong in rails or rails itself becomes less good.

------
faitswulff
It's a sad state of affairs when a high profile open source maintainer like
Matz has to literally say "don't ruin our lives."

~~~
dustingetz
Is it the People's fault, or is it Twitter's?

~~~
WarDores
People. You don't get a free pass on being an arsehole just because the
platform makes it easy to do.

~~~
Touche
Ok, people are terrible. Now what? The platform that brings out the worst in
us is something that can be changed.

~~~
glitcher
I get frustrated at times, but still never go on any twitter/social rants. I
hate to break it to you, but the platform is merely allowing every individual
to behave as they please. There are plenty of folks who never have their worst
brought out.

~~~
lubesGordi
Its the classic freedom / responsibility tradeoff.

------
jgrahamc
I feel for him. When my old machine learning email filter, POPFile(1), was
popular there was a great community around it. But sometimes I would get hate
mail. I still recall one person who accused me of having destroyed his
computer (I guess something bad happened to his disk) in an email filled with
swear words, threats and more.

(1) [http://getpopfile.org/](http://getpopfile.org/)

~~~
rqs
I quote from myself: Among those haters, idiots hurts the most.

Been an idiot myself, I know how many damage I can cause & caused. Lucky,
through out many years, I've learnt to investigate the problem first, before
deciding whether or not to send hate mail/comments.

Sometime, during the investigation, I'll found out the fact that _I_ was the
one who actually caused the problem, because I'm such an idiot. When that
happens, I will just sit on my chair for few seconds to appreciate the time
that I've saved for not to write the hate message with my broken English.

Sadly, investigating is a skill not everybody have.

~~~
rectang
Congratulations on the success of your investigation and reflection!
Undertaking that effort makes you an exceptional individual IMO.

The medium of the internet brings out the worst in all of us -- even the most
empathetic among us are worse people on the net than IRL, because we are all
missing that feedback.

------
coleifer
I had a similar thing happen. The CTO of a company was using a library I
wrote, and he ran into things he wanted to change. When I disagreed, I was
accused of sabotaging my own library, by refusing to fix it's obviously broken
aspects. Guy went on a smear campaign on hn, Reddit, Twitter, Wikipedia.
Literally made me miserable for weeks.

I wrote about it, more here if you're curious:

[http://charlesleifer.com/blog/your-idea-
sucks/](http://charlesleifer.com/blog/your-idea-sucks/)

~~~
idbehold
Here is the list of closed issues/PRs said CTO made in case anyone was
curious:
[https://github.com/coleifer/peewee/issues?q=author%3Akeredso...](https://github.com/coleifer/peewee/issues?q=author%3Akeredson)

~~~
pablasso
If you don't mind the feedback, I get the point of your post but you came out
pretty aggressive very often. "This is horrible", "wtf is this", "this is
awful" are not useful.

------
nixpulvis
I met Matz briefly once. The most striking thing about him to me was his
calmness, and desire to listen. I never felt like he was just humoring me, and
he had some good pointers for me too.

This thread resonates with that to me. He's just a guy, like any of us, trying
to make something beautiful and good for the world. There may be issues, bugs,
or even serious design issues, but we're all in this together.

------
ksec
I believe he Tweeted that after he read the Reddit thread [1].

While we may criticise and want Ruby Improve, ( Guild, GC, JIT, etc ). Lets
not forget to show him some love, after Guido quit Python Core, I believe the
worst for Ruby would be Matz also quit being Core Dev.

And a Reminder the Unofficial Slogan of Ruby, "Matz is nice, so we are nice."

[1][https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/ad46f9/whining_ruby_e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/ad46f9/whining_ruby_evolution_is_taking_too_long/)

------
rectang
It's incredibly important to a lot of toxic people -- in open source, on HN,
really everywhere on the internet -- that this thoughtful piece from Matz be
questioned and then forgotten.

Because toxic people enjoy a disproportionate advantage on the internet.

~~~
zzzcpan
It's rather toxic "us vs them" opinion. You shouldn't hate on other people.
Most hate on the internet is actually manufactured and people are just
hostages to their emotions.

~~~
rectang
I disagree with that both-sider-ist perspective. The abuser and the abused are
not equally at fault.

------
gdubs
I’m grateful for Ruby and the Rails community. Ten years ago those tools
allowed me to support myself as a freelance web developer, and provided a
springboard for my transition into iOS development.

Then I got a taste of the hate mail :)

It’s incredible how people will spend $5 every day on a coffee, but spend that
same amount _once_ on an app, and (some) people feel entitled to say the
darndest things over email. Doubly impressive when they receive years of free
updates. Add to it the real financial pain an angry one star review...

I can’t imagine the scale of emotion Matz has had to wade through, all for
providing an awesome, amazing, free tool to anyone who wants it.

He’s probably not reading this, but just in case: Thank you, Matz.

------
projectramo
The problem is that public figures are exposed on social media to everyone.
And even though 95% of the population might be reasonable and decent, you have
those 5% who are simply not. Then you catch them on their worst day and so I
am sure Matz gets bombarded by all kinds of garbage.

I have noticed this problem in other places where people have to deal with the
public at large without a filter. For instance, a retail or waiter might
encounter all kinds of rude people on a regular basis.

I wish there was an AI quality filter on social media. Sort of like what @dang
does here.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Wait, @dang is an AI?

~~~
ekianjo
No, it's a real person. As far as we know.

~~~
projectramo
Maybe we can start rumors and this will end up second only to emacs vs vim as
the primary debate in tech circles. (Or third if you count rails vs django)

------
viach
I can only imagine what would happen to the Bitcoin creator's life if he
decided to be a public person.

~~~
xiphias2
Most of the Bitcoin core developers were gerting lots of death threats during
the blocksize ,,debate''.

They blamed the devs for the price of Bitcoin not going up.

Often I just wished that core devs stop reading all this and share more videos
that I can learn from, but I understand that they couldn't.

------
agumonkey
There's a book called positive négociation, while I don't like the title much,
the core idea is to share and try to find better for all. I think it's a good
Idea to follow.

Thanks to matz for his kindness, and to other of the same kind.

~~~
loco5niner
Sounds similar to habit 4 of the 7 habits of highly effective people: Think
Win-Win.

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aboutruby
What triggered this is a post on the /r/ruby subreddit getting 100+ upvotes
complaining that ruby development is too slow.

~~~
bluehatbrit
Can you provide the link to the one in particular?

~~~
MrBra
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/ad46f9/whining_ruby_e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/ad46f9/whining_ruby_evolution_is_taking_too_long/)

