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The problem with "phrase-oriented programming" is that it's entirely subjective. I worked in a large Ruby shop where the devs spent more time worrying about su

The problem with "phrase-oriented programming" is that it's entirely subjective. I worked in a large Ruby shop where the devs spent more time worrying about subjective Ruby idioms than whether the software worked or not. Rubyists never took this aspect as seriously as they should have. This doesn't surprise me, because even if we charitably consider the primary goal of "developer happiness" as not narcissistic, the focus of Ruby still is the programmer, not the user or the concrete artifacts of the software. (I might add, this is what you get when you really believe that software is primarily meant to be read by a developer, and only secondly to be run.) Ruby's core value was it looked pretty when you put it on a slide at a Meetup group. It created a space for a particular type of software developer very concerned with their identity as such. Many of the ancillary problems with the Ruby community—excess drama, lack of respect for backwards compatibility, need for novelty—stem from this identitarian mindset.

Lio 5y ago
> the ancillary problems with the Ruby community—excess drama, Not sure I'd agree that's particular to Ruby or its mindset. This seems to be a feature of communities in general. It's certainly pretty easy to find "drama" associated with the python, javascript, rust, go and scala with a quick Google. I don't think we should draw any conclusions about thsoe language based on that either. “There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always complain about, and those nobody uses.” ~ Bjarne Stroustrup
- abernard1 5y ago
  > It's certainly pretty easy to find "drama" associated with the python, javascript, rust, go and scala with a quick Google. Sure, but I've seen it up close, and there's no contest that there's more drama with Ruby people. That there is less drama than there was during its hipster heyday is a testament to many of them getting jobs outside of webdev consulting and their code needing to last longer than a single contract. A lot of the other half just got burned out on Ruby. Ruby is the only language I'm aware of where the programmer's mindspace took more concern than the actual problems they were trying to solve. I do not fault Matz' love of beautiful code for this, but it enabled the narcissism of a very specific type of douchey hipster programmer. The brogrammer era (and its sisprogrammer reactionaries) could not be bookended in history without this phenomenon. To concretize this. If you believe that you've crafted a specific "phrase" that is beautiful, and you believe it to be objectively beautiful, and then you find other people don't find it beautiful, then you start thinking perhaps there's something wrong with those people. This interpretation of The Ruby Way™ was a license for elitism. It also invariably ends up in the world of narcissism of small differences [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...

Lio 5y ago

> the ancillary problems with the Ruby community—excess drama, Not sure I'd agree that's particular to Ruby or its mindset. This seems to be a feature of communities in general. It's certainly pretty easy to find "drama" associated with the python, javascript, rust, go and scala with a quick Google. I don't think we should draw any conclusions about thsoe language based on that either. “There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always complain about, and those nobody uses.” ~ Bjarne Stroustrup

abernard1 5y ago
> It's certainly pretty easy to find "drama" associated with the python, javascript, rust, go and scala with a quick Google. Sure, but I've seen it up close, and there's no contest that there's more drama with Ruby people. That there is less drama than there was during its hipster heyday is a testament to many of them getting jobs outside of webdev consulting and their code needing to last longer than a single contract. A lot of the other half just got burned out on Ruby. Ruby is the only language I'm aware of where the programmer's mindspace took more concern than the actual problems they were trying to solve. I do not fault Matz' love of beautiful code for this, but it enabled the narcissism of a very specific type of douchey hipster programmer. The brogrammer era (and its sisprogrammer reactionaries) could not be bookended in history without this phenomenon. To concretize this. If you believe that you've crafted a specific "phrase" that is beautiful, and you believe it to be objectively beautiful, and then you find other people don't find it beautiful, then you start thinking perhaps there's something wrong with those people. This interpretation of The Ruby Way™ was a license for elitism. It also invariably ends up in the world of narcissism of small differences [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...