“The Ruby Conspiracy” : July’s Troll Of The Month
It's time to bring in a regular feature.. Troll Of The Month. Every month or so there appears to be a new article circulating that explains why 'Ruby sucks' or why you shouldn't use Rails to develop serious applications. Most of the time, they're unbalanced and poor explained, even if the author has some valid points.
This month's TOTM is "The Ruby Conspiracy" by Greg Luck. His heart seems to be in the right place, but it just seems like an opportunity to bash Ruby.
July 27, 2006 at 12:52 pm
It seems to me that he's spot on at least with the first part; O'Reilly and friends seem to be whoring Ruby, Rails, and especially the PragProg as if they're the Gospel. Frankly, I find their books to be not very well written. Even further, they (as in the "Ruby" leaders) seem to book the same little party of friends to speak everywhere. I realize there are experts in every field, but it seems like they just want to make money and get their name in big letters wherever they can. For example, they accepted a talk on Radiant for RubyConf (WHY?) but not a talk on test driven development vs. developing for tests (which is a practical matter that would matter much more to developers who are there) and a talk on Win32 integration (again, practical). Or Tim Bray is speaking, who has never even used Ruby until a week ago (surely after his presentation was proposed and accepted)! I know he's _TIM BRAY_, but come on! There are plenty of brilliant Ruby hackers who made proposals and got shot down.
*sigh* Ridiculous.
I like how that was totally irrelevant to the post by the end; I apologize.
(Disclaimer: I'm a religious Rails and Ruby user)
July 27, 2006 at 12:56 pm
I actually agree with some of your complaints, That Guy. That's partly why I decided not to go to the European Railsconf (that and the fact that £700 will buy me groceries for half a year). But.. the community is small, and that's the way it goes for now. When Ruby hits the real big time, that center 'core' will be less stable.
July 27, 2006 at 5:35 pm
I think calling him a Troll is a bit excessive. He raises issues raised by some prominent community members. Please don't devalue the term TROLL by labeling anyone who doesn't agree with your religious affiliation du-jour.
July 27, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I love ror and I actually agree with some of this blog, especially some of the shortcomings of Active Record. There is defiitely room for improvement regarding AR, IT WILL HAPPEN though!!
July 28, 2006 at 6:32 am
NR: Hey, it's near the end of the month, and you gotta pick something ;-)
Intriguingly his article no longer loads properly for me.