Brian,
I believe you misunderstood the message I was trying to convey in my reply, but that's understandable as Twitter does not really provide a usable framework for such discussions. As such, I'm not going to try to reply in Twitter as I can't make that work but instead will line out my thoughts here.
To preface my original tweet: The Ruby community is oft known for arrogance, egotism, and shaming. Rubyists have not been a very welcoming bunch. I myself have readily partook in such discussions and joined the echo chamber far more often than I probably realize. As such, I've met many developers who refuse to touch the language in fear or disgust of having to deal with what has been a toxic community. I do believe that we as a Ruby community are better today but the damage has been done and won't quickly be forgotten.
As such, this is the last thing I want to happen to the budding and fantastic Elixir community. While a simple website like "canphoenixscale.com" is in itself harmless, it cannot be taken on its own, because without a site like "canrailsscale.com", the idea would have never come to mind. "canrailsscale.com" is a point of attack, a product of arrogance, and a continuing source of pain for many involved. Regardless of who from and who too, even making a nod towards such a statement is itself off-putting and will drive people away from Elixir and Phoenix.
I just came back from ElixirConf and I do want to thank you, Brian, for choosing to make Dockyard a major sponsor of this conference. The level of enthusiasm, comrodary, and yes a few friendly jabs at Ruby and Rails (which provides employment for a significant majority of conference goers) was infectious and fantastic. My workmates and I are even more pumped to help push the Elixir / Phoenix community forward to be something amazing that we can all be proud of.
But that can't happen unless we also push for inclusivity and friendship and a common urge to make everyone a better developer, even if they aren't or can't use Elixir. It took me a long time to realize where the Ruby community has ended up, and there is no one single time or situation where you can point and say "Ruby went wrong there". We are dealing with the culmination of years of small jabs, of tiny insults, of casually uttered words of arrogance that build up into a huge beast that bellows "YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE".
We cannot let this happen to Elixir too. That is why I felt the need to reply to the tweet.
As per your individual points, I only had 140 characters to fit in what I initially wanted to say, so I'll expand upon that here.
everything is derivative of predecessors. Giving credit to Ruby/Rails alone is disingenuous
I agree, but I would argue that Elixir would not exist, especially as it is today, if Ruby also did not also exist. The influence of the syntax, the focus on programmer happiness and productivity, and the fact that José himself was a Rails core contributor and very influential in the Rails and Ruby communities means that Elixir screams "Ruby is awesome, lets make it more awesome"!
canrailsscale.com is a very old site that was created by a Rails dev as a joke
Yes, I remember when it showed up, and I remember the arguments and vitrol that was getting thrown around at that time. I see some of the things I myself said and did and realize now that no-one benefited from that. The joke now sits as a testament to what can happen when valid concerns are met with blatant dismisal, shaming, or even outright attacks. This is not a time I look upon with fondness.
Elixir owes more to Erlang than Ruby. And Phoenix is not Rails
Please see my response to the first point. I didn't say Phoenix was Rails, but Phoenix's existence is definitely hugely influenced by Rails and is now deviating as it makes better use of Elixir and Erlang development ideas and philosophies. In many ways Phoenix is providing the way to do what many of us have wanted to do with Rails but have found more difficult than expected. I would argue that Phoenix is a product of many years of lessons with not only Rails but the other MVC and similar web frameworks, and similar problems, we've dealt with over the years.
I really hope we can leave the bait shaming out of the Elixir community. Please don't :)
I'm not sure what you mean "bait shaming" but if I follow what I think you're saying, this is exactly why I'm calling you out on the canphoenixscale.com website. It benefits no-one and can only hurt the community.
So in conclusion, you obviously have enormous passion for Elixir and are putting a lot on the line for it to succeed. As such, Dockyard is a very public face of the Elixir community and as a young community, what we do today can have ramifications years down the road. People will be watching to see what kind of community Elixir attracts and what kind of behaviour its larger supporters choose to engage in to see if they want to be a part or not.
And me personally? I want a community that finally steps above the language bickering that has defined the greater software industry for decades. We really are all in this thing together, and we only hurt ourselves when we treat, intentionally or not, other language communities as inferior.
Thanks for your time
Jason