Rob Conery on Imploding Rails 8
Rob Conery is a Microsoft MVP and mastermind behind the brilliant SubSonic project, an open-source toolset that brings a lot of Rails' concepts to ASP.NET. If you haven't caught his latest epic post on Rails scalability and DHH's potty mouth, here's a taste:
The Rails Team needs to accept that they are now a VENDOR, not radical mavericks... It’s easy to be the punk upstart. It’s harder to be successful. That’s what this is all about isn’t it? The Rails guys are really, really successful because they created a Bitchen Platform. Unfortunately it seems like they’re not going to be responsible for it.
I'll have to happily and respectfully disagree with Rob on this one. But it's sure a damn fine read. Don't miss the comments or DHH's response (to the "potty mouth" bit, at least) either.
For the record, as any of my friends will tell you, exercising my potty mouth is one of my favorite pastimes.
Interesting that DHH's blog does not allow comments.
I was ok with the initial Fuck Off remark. It has been taken out of context, in any case.
BUT I think he's done himself a disservice by ranting about Potty Mouths in his blog.
You know, I have to admit I was taken completely offguard by the whole Potty Mouth thing. I've come to learn that the F-bomb and Potty Mouth have an inverse weight and meaning between here and the Old World.
I find it hysterical that DHH and others take such offense to the Potty Mouth thing - and DHH's response is laced with F-Bombs. Oh well - it's a tangential thing anyway.
Appreciate your thoughtful post - disagreeing is all good. I'd like to know more about your thoughts as to why I'm wrong because, to be honest, I haven't seen all that much written (though it could be for lack of looking) which address these issues.
Also - you'll find me signed up in the forums here :). I'm a very avid Rails fan and I'd like to think there's room for some dissenting voices here :).
Marketing Microsoft style: first copy all the good ideas, than bash the competition.
@Rob,
You're right about potty-mouth phrase having a bigger impact on people from the Old World than you've anticipated.
As far as Rails performance is concerned, I do believe that at Rails Conf '07, DHH and crew have talked about their renewed focus on performance and that for the 2.0 version they were taking things out of the core in order to lighten it and make it go faster. Now, that may not be enough for you and if you have specific ideas as to how to get Rails to perform 'acceptably', then I think the community would like to hear them. I know I would.
When I read your post, I was under the impression that it was an old one, since you seemed to focus on Twitter's scaling issues, as well as the development of Campfire, which are arguably old news. So, in my mind, the reason everyone is up in arms is because you've used old examples to criticize Rails.
Also, while Twitter is an extreme case, as far as scaling goes, it's a good example of what happens when your app becomes hyper-popular. And, as a commenter pointed out in your own comments section, it only took two days for someone (Dr. Nic, of all people) to come up with a Ruby solution to Twitter's problem. That's why I agree with everyone who disagrees with you.
For those who are interested, I've added my (rather lengthy) response to the already long list of comments on Rob's article. Unfortunately comments there don't have a permalink, so you'll have to scroll down and look for my ugly face in the avatar.
Everyone should feel free to respond to my comment here or there.
Rob makes goods points, Jeff makes good points (on Rob's blog...I fully agree that Microsoft is trying to be everything for everyone), DHH makes good points (even about cussing and cursing...I do not agree with everything). I can see how this debate is fun and most of us (I hope) would be fine with having a cup of coffee or tea with the guy on the other side because we all play the same game (software).
What follows is not meant to belittle anything anyone else has said. Pick up your preferred axe, whatever label it has on it (Rails, ASP.NET, PHP, etc.), and build good software.
As will easily be shown in the next section, philosophy proves the validity of, in particular, our experience.
I, the meditating phenomenologist, set myself the all-embracing task of uncovering myself by a freely actualizable return to multiplicities of what is itself given.