5 ms·

_why's work was much of what got me into Ruby in the first place. Not so much quirky as proudly both hyperliterate and unhinged, like the computing world's exte

by Arubis 3y ago

_why's work was much of what got me into Ruby in the first place. Not so much quirky as proudly both hyperliterate and unhinged, like the computing world's extension of depressed indie bands meeting David Foster Wallace in the early aughts. Most of us that would've been into _why's stuff now have more traditional-looking jobs and responsibilities. But I'm so grateful for what he showed us then, and miss the more genuinely human, broken and vulnerable community he represented.

local_crmdgeon 3y ago
I miss that in general. Everyone has become a Cool Internet Person who acts like a celebrity, or at least in a homogenized way. I miss the internet of weirdos, that felt separate from the real world. I worry a lot that I contributed to how this is now, too, in my professional life.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  Sometimes I feel bad for having been a customer of digital devices and internet, and then going into computing studies. It's strange to observe a world I dislike even though I was part of the wave driving the change.
- tilne 3y ago
  Why do you think you contributed? Edit: maybe “how” would be a better word to use.
- throwanem 3y ago
  All frontiers close eventually. I wouldn't take too much on myself about it, if I were you.
- rjbwork 3y ago
  Honestly, internet of weirdos that feels separate from the real world is on private discords now. I pluck people from various semi-public communities that seem cool and build cool private communities.
  - local_crmdgeon 3y ago
    Those discords are full of "weirdos" who are all exactly the same. I'm talking about the self hosted blogs about how the moon landing is fake that also explained how to emulate NES games, BBS' etc. Every Discord I've seen is just a bunch of Zoomer communist furries which, while not exactly your average bunch, are all very similar to each other and everyone on Twitter and Mastodon.
  - AeroNotix 3y ago
    There is a huge difference between pockets of weirdos sharing giphy memes in walled gardens using tools provided by a corporation and what felt like practically the entire internet being comprised of, built for and used by absolute weirdos.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - rjbwork 3y ago
      Fair enough. It just became too much of a risk to put your full private self out there on the internet unless you're a special kind of DGAF, I think.
- epolanski 3y ago
  Internet is still full of weirdos. What changed are primarily two things: 1) The social media war hasn't been won by those platforms that offered users possibilities to customize their page (MSN spaces, myspace, tumblr still survives) but by pre-canned, limited but simple platforms. 2)Internet citizens are increasingly less anonymous on all those platforms which makes them further unwilling to be unfiltered.
q845712 3y ago
Honestly at the time I remember getting weird twee/precious vibes from the Ruby community and I wasn't particularly interested in it or Rails. I only discovered _why's poignant guide later after I had to learn Rails on the job, and to be honest I never finished it. I still strongly prefer the worldview, circumstances, mindset, etc. where that kind of content is written, read, and celebrated over today's focus on Influence and Professionalism.
- wyclif 3y ago
  I actually knew _why's real identity, but I refused to divulge it partly because I didn't want his performance to end (even though, sadly, I knew it couldn't last forever) and partly because _why is a fellow native of my home state of Pennsylvania. And I totally agree that his whimsical style is far more preferable than anything every written by any LinkedIn programming "influencer."
- throwanem 3y ago
  I don't. Even in the terms of the false dichotomy you've constructed here, I would much rather participate in a community of professionals who've organized themselves around sufficiently overlapping shared intents, than one accreted around the kind of twee, precious narcissism that characterized the early days of Ruby and Rails. That comparison is informed by direct experience with both, and is the precise reason why my professional experience with both the language and the platform will to my dying day consist of one successful project a few months long. A good professional community supports a wide variety of learning styles and levels of engagement, and tends to make a lot of resources easy to find for anyone who's willing to put in a little effort of research. The early Ruby and Rails communities did the exact opposite of this. Between "_why"'s guide serving a primary-reference role to which it is manifestly ill suited, and nobody much bothering to document anything effectively outside that, figuring out how to work with their garbage software was like pulling teeth - especially because, in a language constructed as a farrago of the worst ideas from Perl, Smalltalk, and Common Lisp, even reading the source is anything but a guarantee of understanding. The structural exclusivity alone was bad enough, but the behavior of community leaders quickly demonstrated that the exclusivity was the point. That the "Poignant Guide" should be considered acceptable as primary documentation implies that the function of selecting for people willing to put up with that kind of nonsense was intended - maybe not as a matter of explicit design, although this would not surprise me, but "the purpose of a system is what it does". This system was created by narcissists to select for acolytes, and while I wouldn't quite call it a cult, neither am I prepared to say those who have are entirely wrong. And if it was a cult, it was a stupid cult, because Ruby is a language that makes programmers worse and Rails was never good technology; its sole unqualified success lies in having inspired software engineers to do similar things in better ways. I'm sure by now I've upset some folks; there are some for whom no criticism of Ruby, Rails, or their leading lights can fail to read as a personal attack. If that's you who's reading this now, all I can say is this shows the difference between us: if you're cut out to be an acolyte, fine, go to it! I would rather be a practitioner in a community of practice. Granted this means my technical documentation comes without cartoon foxes and a level of pretense suited to an early 2000s Abercrombie catalog, but for documentation that actually documents that's a trade I'm happy to make.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by Arubis 3y ago

local_crmdgeon 3y ago

I miss that in general. Everyone has become a Cool Internet Person who acts like a celebrity, or at least in a homogenized way. I miss the internet of weirdos, that felt separate from the real world. I worry a lot that I contributed to how this is now, too, in my professional life.

agumonkey 3y ago
Sometimes I feel bad for having been a customer of digital devices and internet, and then going into computing studies. It's strange to observe a world I dislike even though I was part of the wave driving the change.
tilne 3y ago
Why do you think you contributed? Edit: maybe “how” would be a better word to use.
throwanem 3y ago
All frontiers close eventually. I wouldn't take too much on myself about it, if I were you.
rjbwork 3y ago
Honestly, internet of weirdos that feels separate from the real world is on private discords now. I pluck people from various semi-public communities that seem cool and build cool private communities.
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  Those discords are full of "weirdos" who are all exactly the same. I'm talking about the self hosted blogs about how the moon landing is fake that also explained how to emulate NES games, BBS' etc. Every Discord I've seen is just a bunch of Zoomer communist furries which, while not exactly your average bunch, are all very similar to each other and everyone on Twitter and Mastodon.
- AeroNotix 3y ago
  There is a huge difference between pockets of weirdos sharing giphy memes in walled gardens using tools provided by a corporation and what felt like practically the entire internet being comprised of, built for and used by absolute weirdos.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rjbwork 3y ago
    Fair enough. It just became too much of a risk to put your full private self out there on the internet unless you're a special kind of DGAF, I think.
epolanski 3y ago
Internet is still full of weirdos. What changed are primarily two things: 1) The social media war hasn't been won by those platforms that offered users possibilities to customize their page (MSN spaces, myspace, tumblr still survives) but by pre-canned, limited but simple platforms. 2)Internet citizens are increasingly less anonymous on all those platforms which makes them further unwilling to be unfiltered.

q845712 3y ago

Honestly at the time I remember getting weird twee/precious vibes from the Ruby community and I wasn't particularly interested in it or Rails. I only discovered _why's poignant guide later after I had to learn Rails on the job, and to be honest I never finished it. I still strongly prefer the worldview, circumstances, mindset, etc. where that kind of content is written, read, and celebrated over today's focus on Influence and Professionalism.

wyclif 3y ago
I actually knew _why's real identity, but I refused to divulge it partly because I didn't want his performance to end (even though, sadly, I knew it couldn't last forever) and partly because _why is a fellow native of my home state of Pennsylvania. And I totally agree that his whimsical style is far more preferable than anything every written by any LinkedIn programming "influencer."
throwanem 3y ago
I don't. Even in the terms of the false dichotomy you've constructed here, I would much rather participate in a community of professionals who've organized themselves around sufficiently overlapping shared intents, than one accreted around the kind of twee, precious narcissism that characterized the early days of Ruby and Rails. That comparison is informed by direct experience with both, and is the precise reason why my professional experience with both the language and the platform will to my dying day consist of one successful project a few months long. A good professional community supports a wide variety of learning styles and levels of engagement, and tends to make a lot of resources easy to find for anyone who's willing to put in a little effort of research. The early Ruby and Rails communities did the exact opposite of this. Between "_why"'s guide serving a primary-reference role to which it is manifestly ill suited, and nobody much bothering to document anything effectively outside that, figuring out how to work with their garbage software was like pulling teeth - especially because, in a language constructed as a farrago of the worst ideas from Perl, Smalltalk, and Common Lisp, even reading the source is anything but a guarantee of understanding. The structural exclusivity alone was bad enough, but the behavior of community leaders quickly demonstrated that the exclusivity was the point. That the "Poignant Guide" should be considered acceptable as primary documentation implies that the function of selecting for people willing to put up with that kind of nonsense was intended - maybe not as a matter of explicit design, although this would not surprise me, but "the purpose of a system is what it does". This system was created by narcissists to select for acolytes, and while I wouldn't quite call it a cult, neither am I prepared to say those who have are entirely wrong. And if it was a cult, it was a stupid cult, because Ruby is a language that makes programmers worse and Rails was never good technology; its sole unqualified success lies in having inspired software engineers to do similar things in better ways. I'm sure by now I've upset some folks; there are some for whom no criticism of Ruby, Rails, or their leading lights can fail to read as a personal attack. If that's you who's reading this now, all I can say is this shows the difference between us: if you're cut out to be an acolyte, fine, go to it! I would rather be a practitioner in a community of practice. Granted this means my technical documentation comes without cartoon foxes and a level of pretense suited to an early 2000s Abercrombie catalog, but for documentation that actually documents that's a trade I'm happy to make.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]