Have you heard the one about the woman who found a finger in her Wendy’s chili?
The NBC site has several articles stretching back one month. Read in order, they seem to be the makings of a great shaggy dog story1.
I got another excuse to use footnotes. ( =
I just read a truly excellent post about having a simple main in managed applications. Sorry for you VB.NET-heads, the code samples are in C#. Which you should be too anyway. Just sayin’.
Actually, skip C# and go do Ruby. Trust me on this.
So David Heinemeier-Hansson has done it again. He’s made some loud, slightly abrasive, not-so-well-thought out comment disparaging more “mature” technologies while pushing Rails. Just as when he was debating semantics in an effort to defend his fledgling technology, DHH has got people buzzing about Rails and its figurehead. Most of the reactions were predictably and correctly critical, but I believe that DHH’s basic motive is to spread the word about Rails, to get people talking, to spur discussion.
So, good job there… evangelists should be technically savvy, slightly abrasive, and push push push the tech, which DHH succeeds in doing. And I know I’m contributing to his success by talking about it. I don’t mind all that. That’s cool, really. I’ve known some other evangelists in my time who were fantastic at getting their views in other people’s heads, in getting people to meme-ify their phrases. The difference here being that DHH is an enginner, at least, who knows what he’s talking about. Rails is built off
To his credit, David’s apologized (in writing, no less!). And, reading the post he was critiquing, he did the right thing; the guy was praising Rails but just being a little cautious… sort of thinking out loud, musing about his options… maybe even soliciting opinions in a friendly way (why have a blog, right?).
So in the end, good job… but when do we move beyond the sound and fury stage? When do we start measuring acceptance and standards? When does it not become a conquest that a project is written using Rails, but instead becomes commonplace? How much further do we have to go?
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails recently released a Garage Band file of the latest single from the new album “With Teeth”... The file itself comes in at 70 megs and contains the multi-track recordings for The Hand That Feeds.
This is so badass I can barely speak.
Want to transform it into a country song? How ‘bout trance? What about a polka? All do-able. Holy shit. This takes music as open source to a whole new level. What if more artists did this? What if we could play, literally play, with all published musical media like this?
Thanks, Trent!
David published some clarifications about his position. When the debate is recontextualized within the nebulous “culture” heading I can begin to agree with him… especially since I am currently wearing the thick-client C# developer hat but lasciviously eyeing the Rails developer sombrero. When interviewing people I like to make sure that they’re up on current trends, that they’re thinking about technology, that they’re extrapolating their own experiences into some useful cluefulness… from that perspective, sure, I agree. Using the best tools? I don’t want to devolve into an EMACS vs. vi debate, and I think that he wasn’t talking about that, either.
Maybe if I was working at a web application development shop I would be a little wary of hiring assembler programmers, and I’d definitely be wary of people who favor certain tools/platforms vs. others for purely idealogical reasons. But I think that a great dev can shine no matter what the tools, regardless of the tools, maybe even despite the tools… and that recognizing that type of person should be the end goal.
Still don’t hate the guy, but at least I’m past my kneejerk.
David’s got a good point in this post about the stink over Ajax. I think it’s a little funny and a little sad that people who love technology have this pathological hatred/fear of what they call “marketing types”. The culture of a technology is a large part of what makes it develop; without an evangelist as effective as Mr. Heinemeir-Hansson I doubt that Rails would have taken off as completely as it has. Sure, we’d like to think that good technology rises to the top on the basis of its own merits but that’s not entirely true, now is it? In moving forward let’s waste less time feeling superior to other people and more time working on the technological kinks, the adoption curves, and the idea generation.
For instance, did you know you could put Ajax on Rails? Let’s spend more time re-mixing our Web, eh?
On that note, Ryan and I had a spirited talk about what would happen should he ever meet Jesse James Garrett. Ryan said that if we’re going to have name debates, why don’t we start with Jesse James Garrett… what’s up with that name?
Is the irony of this lost on absolutely everyone? Donald Rumsfeld warning people about stacking the ranks of government positions with one’s “cronies”?
I might have to agree with Mr. Rumsfeld there:
Lack of confidence or corruption in government would be “unfortunate”.
Yup, it sure is.