by why the lucky stiff
Adam Wiggins: First, Rubyists love elegance.
Daniel Lyons:Every programmer worth a damn thinks they love elegance.
Rubyists love life. Boy, I tell you. They love humans. They love cars!! They looooooove dishes of real, actual food. You don’t even know. Airplanes in mid-air, refueling? They love that!
But, more importantly, Rubyists love pups. Baby dogs, man! Ever heard of em? Little dogs rock!!
Okay, wait, no. No, please hold, I can’t seem to find a citation for that. I mean, speaking for myself, I definitely like dogs. And I’ve heard tell of dogs in other places… Okay, well, how about, yeah, yeah here, let’s say a tentative yellow light interest in dogs. And we’ll green light that puppy if the blogosphere goes all taggy on us and there’s like a thousand delicious tags on this post that say rooby-roo!
Rich Kilmer: I propose that we demand civility in the Ruby and Rails community.
Matt Todd: When we’re fucking upset, we’re fucking upset!
I have a neighbor who demands peace and quiet. He’d kill all of us if it would bring some sanity. He’s a brutal peacemaker that one.
It’s smart, though. Really, truly, war is the only way to achieve peace. You have to get people totally sick of violence.
So, without further ceremony: I demand civility. But, boy, oh hot snacks, the lawlessness of these people is amazing! It’s like when you’d play army men as kids. You’d go, “You’re dead! I got you!” And the other kid’d go, “No, my guy can fly!” And you’d go, “No, who says?” And his guy is already fortifying a whole new pavilion way on top of the bookshelf.
Please. Stay on the ground. This is a decorated army veteran who fought for his country. And, no, he will not have his medals tarnished by allowing himself to get caught in that cunning old web of deceit that is the so-called Pretending To Fly.
Martin Fowler: I have noticed that that ruby community is much nicer than most on-line communities I’ve seen. Zed Shaw: I’ve pulled battered women out of abusive relationships. Helped kids who were being beaten by bullies. I got no problem stepping up and protecting the weaker ones in our world.
It’s like Jesus. Except Jesus never had the forthrightness and temerity to actually kick a guy in the jugular if he had to.
Zed is Gandhi. Zed is Che Guevara. And Zed is Morpheus. But, also, Zed is Daniel Larusso. Immediately following that, he’s Slim Shady. Ergo, Zed is Hannah Montana.
Cool, we’re making progress.
David Heinemeier Hansson: Let me take out one of my favorite words for the occasion: Who the fuck cares? Just put it on ignore, like you would any troll fest.
Rubyists live by this creed: DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS. Trolls are… how you say… unsavory people? Rubyists are VERY nice people. Always gladhanding and passing around the Lifesavers. Here, have one. We know other nice people when we see them. Nice people talk to each other. It’s way addictive. It’s great! (It’s completely social.)
Let me put it this way. Suppose you’ve got Zed Shaw. No, wait, say you’ve got “a person.” (We’ll call this person “Hannah Montana” for the sake of this exercise.) And you look outside and this young teen sensation is yelling, throwing darts at your house and peeing in your mailbox. For reals. You can see it all. Your mailbox is soaked. Defiled. The flag is up.
Now, stop and think about this. This is a very tough situation. This young lady has written one of THE premiere web servers in the whole wide world. Totally, insanely RFC complaint. They give it away on the street, but everyone knows its secretly worth like a thousand dollars. And there was nothing in that web server that hinted to these postal urinations.
Sacrebleu! Ah, the life and times of a Ruby guy. What is one to do? All you really can do is put one foot in front of the other. You’ve got to go to work. You’ve got gems to install. You’ve got agility to showcase. Sure, you’ve got some soiled envelopes open.
But, hey, you didn’t feed the trolls. Ten points to Gryffindor.
matz: I am afraid that it’s only in Japanese.
And, you know, I really regret the whole Hpricot vs. Nokogiri thing from a few weeks back. It was for fun, but I mean, come on, there’s no question that LibXML is a better, faster HTML parser. I’m not sure what I’m doing with Hpricot. It’s just a doodad. I mostly just like the name is all. Am I terrible person?
Disclaimer: I once sat on the advisory board of DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS. (Translation: I KNOW THE SILENT TREATMENT I LEARNED IT MYSELF. Doing business as: PARDON ME IF I SEEM TOTALLY ALOOF.) However, I resigned when Sally Struthers sent me a postcard exposing the severe malnutrition of these poor, poor virtual dwarves. It just rent my heart in twixt.
Now I send two thoughtful rebuttals a week to a troll in The Sheeple’s Republic of Reddit, always sure to include a few deliberate typos. Please consider contributing. Now is the time. Only you. Now?
So, look, Ruby is a crazy fun language (for some) and perhaps nothing more. You can get away with things that are heresy elsewhere. Maybe it’s an irresponsible language. A flimsy language. I don’t know, sheriff. The business world has its ideas about perfection. Maybe Ruby doesn’t take itself as seriously as the business world does.
If, after all these years, Ruby isn’t going to take itself seriously, then should I bother taking myself seriously either?
Disclaimer: the above is a paid advertisement for my Pong clone.
Based on a true story.