My SFW version of Zed Shaw's famous "Rails is a Ghetto" blue comedy rant, in which I completely miss Zed's "insider" jokes and possibly represent his style and vocabulary inaccurately:
Rails Is Monsters Inc
I don't want to use Ruby anymore because some people upset me. I'm going to complain about them here, and they are going to listen to me or not.
Personal Responsibility
It's all my fault.
The General Personality
I think Tom Werner named "Fuzed" after my favorite catchphrase and me, in that order. I find that offensive.
Kevin Clark of Vapor Set didn't like my ideas. I don't like him. Our egos clash. A silly mistake he made in a huff got me thinking: I'm better than all these people.
Tied To The Rails
I like Obie Fernandez. He's a nice chap.
The Stories I Could (and Will) Tell
I've turned down some job offers.
Revenge Of Some Chap Who Got My Name Wrong
Despite my genius, people don't like working with me. Or maybe they mix me up with some Shain
chap who's apparently quite a rough employee.
How'd This Happen?
David H. Hansson said he had to restart his rails server up to 400 times a day before fastthread. I know it's a language bug, but still: 400 times a day? That's like once every four minutes. You duped us, Dave, you told us Rails wouldn't hurt.
He could have been using hyperbole. We may never know.
If he duped us, I'm glad he did. I like rails.
Michael K. and Dave Thomas threatened me into not fixing my code for 3 months while cgi_multipart_eof_fix was developed.
DHH Still Rocks More Than You
I like David H. He sent me a calm e-mail explaining that it took 60 processes to reach 400 restarts a day, and expressing his gratitude for my work championing the fixes.
Alright, but I had to champion those fixes. No one believed in the cause until a fix was found.
Then The Ninnies Came
I don't like Michael Koziarski. You probably haven't heard of him, but he writes lots of code.
Some Ruby web frameworks are better than Rails. Because I'm a genius, I totally could have made Rails better, but I don't like the Rails team.
Can you believe Michael Koziarski defended his use of semicolons in requests? He singlehandedly brought down Rails.
The Nitro, Factor, Django, Lua, Python, Lisp, and Mongrel crews are nicer people who put up with me.
Everyone's an idiot. That's why they refuse to hire me.
The Hysteria Of Consultancy
Consultancy firms charge a lot of money. A lot more than they pay their employees.
The chaps at ThoughtWorks are using the RoR buzz to make money:
- TW learns RoR.
- People pay for TW's services.
- Profit.
They aren't really experts. Step 1 only took two weeks. They don't use the RoR
and eXtreme Programming
seal of quality, so we have nothing to hold them to.
I took over a couple of projects from ThoughtWorks. Nasty code. We did a better job, and guess what happened? We got it done faster with fewer people.
You know what's really bad about ThoughtWorks? They compared RoR to Visual Basic. What silly nonces.
Mingle Rocks Hard, Buy It
Having said that, Mingle is great.
Maybe it's just the code they gave me that sucks. Code which, by the way, doesn't have any comments.
From Industry to Corporate
RoR sold out, man.
Fighting Consulting Firms
Be careful hiring consulting firms. Make sure they aren't as sleazy as I said TW is.
Day Two
I Don't Like Dave Thomas
So Dave Thomas wants to talk to me on the phone. He'll probably tell me to calm down or something. I am calm, Dave!
No matter how much I try to grab his attention with insults and slurs, Dave never has anything nice to say to me. It's like the guy has something personal against me.
Also, have you ever noticed how he's the only guy in the Rails Core chat room?
Also, I hate the first edition of that one Rails book. Models in modules doesn't work. He didn't ask me for help, that's why it's a bad book.
Then I realized all of Ruby's problems can be pinned on Dave Thomas by saying Programming Ruby is a bad book. Get this: it's all about how people can use Ruby to do things. It's as though he wrote it for people who aren't already familiar with the language. Also, I don't like his examples.
Maybe you think I'm nit-picking, but Ruby didn't take off until Rails. That's Dave's fault for writing a bad book.
Dave challenged me at a keynote, even though I was working on something he'd have liked.
Ruby Mailing Lists
I had bad experiences in some Ruby mailing lists, too. I seem to have bad experiences almost everywhere I go.
RailsConf
At some big conferences, people are wasting their time playing some Victorian parlor game from the 80's instead of working instead of paying attention.
Also, smaller conferences are often better. I liked GoRuCo, Rails To Italy, and Lone Star Ruby Conference.
Industry? What Industry?
RoR is not an industry because it has no representation in congress.
Your Boss Doesn't Care
I swear a lot. Demand for Rails cleanup exists.
Free Market
Lying and ineptitude should be condemned. Marx was wrong, the free market will work.
Your industry
is silly, but my rant may fix it.
People I Like
These people are cool:
- DHH
- Obie Fernandez
- Bradley Taylor
- Why The Lucky Stiff
- NYC Ruby Crew
- Mongrel Team and Contributors
- Nitro, Merb, IWOA, Camping and Others
- 1/2 Of Rails Core (the half I like)
- Ezra Zygmuntowicz
- Rubinius and Evan
- JRuby and Charles
- Matz himself
- Anyone else I like
Buy their books and services.
I like Ruby, but the community could use some work.
Zed's Dead
Industry
chaps, hear this: when the bubble bursts, remember I told you so.