DISQUS

Chris · 8 months ago

Nice dig on Reiser. I'm still sore about that.

Here's hoping ext4 stands up to scrutiny.

shtdisturber · 8 months ago

i totally agree with farr here

i use rails too for web development, and i like it... but over time i've come to the conclusion that core rails team/community are immature idiots

i mean every time i see a rails page there is some mention of DHH being the creator of rails. i mean i know that already, but having that advertised at every opportunity you get smacks of shameless and blatant egotism

it's things like assigning rank to rails developers in order of importance, with you-know-who at the very top

i mean i've worked with various open source tools, and i have NEVER seen anything revolve so much around one person as rails has with DHH has... what a loser

Ken Hoxworth · 8 months ago

Linux?

nk · 8 months ago

Linus is tame compared the the all out assault rails advocacy has done to portray Heinemeier Hansson as the second coming of god (aka, John McCarthy). But who am I to talk, I use rail daily.

jpartogi · 5 months ago

That's because Rails is using MIT licence. MIT licence promotes that attitude to opensource community.

JS · 8 months ago

If Ruby/Rails is a meritocracy, then how come the core technology is so severely flawed in performance and stability? Any system that requires you to port to the JVM (JRuby) to function half-way decently does not seem to have much merit in my book.

JS II · 8 months ago

Ruby is not perfect. Rails is not perfect. After 4 years or intense delivering I can't claim "the core technology is so severely flawed"

zby · 8 months ago

Maybe ASF is really different here - but what I've seen is that rockstar attitude is quite widespread in the Open Source community. This is something that really makes me sad: http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=669596 (see also the original post to which this was my answer: http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=669062).

John Galt · 8 months ago

Sounds like this writer has Roark envy ... seriously .. why the objectivist comment?

matt · 8 months ago

"The result is a community which collaborates largely by aggressive competition and fierce meritocracy."

And this is a bad thing?

Ivan · 8 months ago

Spot on. It's really sad more people in the Rails community aren't rallying to the cause, and defending DHH's rallying cry of stupidity.

shtdisturber · 8 months ago

DHH is an idiot. i am glad more people are not defending him

for one thing, he needs to recognize that the open source community consists of an assortment of different kinds of people with various sensibilities. what might be cool or funny or edgy to one person might be offensive or crass to another. this is human nature. people have different tastes and thinking

i suppose DHH can just say fuck you to someone if he disagrees with someone over something...

... but he is depriving the rails and its development effort of the collective intelligence and expertise of the entire open source community, by offending certain groups of people and tacitly approving certain kinds of behavior that may turn some people off... which kind of defeats the whole point of open source in the first place :-/

DHH has a lot of growing up to do. seriously, what a prick

matt · 8 months ago

That is an idiotic statement. He created a kickass framework that JUMPSTARTED a movement in web development. Like minded people joined in and great things happened.

DHH is a brilliant developer, a smart businessman and a great marketer. So what if he rubs you the wrong way? I've never understood what is so polarizing about the Rails community. The core members are whip smart, brash and move fast. Don't get in their way. That's what a successful movement of any kind: commercial or open source requires. You don't have to use Rails, you don't have to read his blog. You disagree with what he is doing? DO YOUR OWN THING.

Thomas · 8 months ago

I don't use rails because I have issues about ruby, but I can attest that the rails framework was a blow of fresh air in the web-development scene,.My two favorite frameworks django and grails are greatly influenced by it. But being a brilliant developer, a smart businessman and a great marketer doesn't excuse him from being an asshole, which I have conclude just by reading his blog posts and watching his presentations.

Maybe it's all part of his marketting strategy, maybe it isn't. Only people that really know him can attest to that buy from the image he projects, he is a horrible person.

Mike · 8 months ago

Perhaps if we dropped "Rockstar" which has a "cool" connotation and went back to the original "prima donna" which is not so "cool" folks might not aspire to this status.

Having sat next to a real prima donna for a 2.5 hour flight I can personally attest to how excruciatingly painful they are.

Michael Campbell · 8 months ago

One of the problems with the whole attitude is that ... COMPANIES LOVE IT! They say they don't, and they go to great lengths to do the whole "team" thing, but it's all bullshit. What company doesn't applaud the guy who works late to get something finished, that should have been planned weeks before? What company doesn't put the "brilliant but solitary" guy up on a pedestal, asking everyone to forgive his social ineptness and douchebaggery because he knocked something out at the last second with no testing that will come back to haunt people later? Hell, most companies INCENT this behavior with things like "[on the] spot awards", MVP plaques, and similar shiny tokens.

Companies love to award poor planning. It's just how it is.

Jeff · 8 months ago

Aaron, just wanted to say your comment on the merbist yesterday was spot on. Like so many public institutions and personas have learned the hard way, the proper reaction is a direct, swift, concise, apology. Thanks for posting your comment there.

Dave · 8 months ago

So if I've had people contact me saying they've heard that I'm a Rockstar Developer they are really calling me a prima donna? And I thought it just meant I was good...

Nuts.

sasamat · 8 months ago

Bob Sutton (http://bobsutton.typepad.com/) from Stanford Business School has turned the 'Asshole Issue' into a science and written a book on it to boot.

D2H is nothing new --- he's been well documented.

Dennis · 5 months ago

Whoever wrote this is seriously wacky! Most people don't even care about the rails "community", they just enjoy working with Ruby and Rails, etc.

EuropeanGuest · 4 months ago

I find your post completely idiotic. And your comment on merbist.com linking here clearly shows that YOU are a prima donna-wanna be. Pathetic.

Name · 4 months ago

You make some interesting points but the one on git makes little sense. That SCM is the only sane way to do branches, period. It's up to whoever assembles all the patches to be individualistic or community minded.