A while back I played this joke on Ruby people. It was an elaborate joke, where I wrote a fully dynamic assembler in a couple weeks, and then did an entire pres

A while back I played this joke on Ruby people. It was an elaborate joke, where I wrote a fully dynamic assembler in a couple weeks, and then did an entire presentation at RubyEnRails (Amsterdam) basically showing how my “literal machine” beat the pants of all the Ruby virtual machines What are "Ruby people" to Zed? I happen to use Ruby but I didn't even know who _why was until about 6 months ago, when somebody mentioned his book and asked how I possibly couldn't have heard of it. I don't follow any of the DHHs of the blogosphere unless I stumble on a story about them. I don't attend Ruby and/or Rails conferences. I just happen to use Ruby from time to time, in situations where I believe it is the appropriate tool, and because I like it. The thing is, I may have fallen for this joke. I don't have the expertise to know that it was a prank. How would misleading somebody like me be funny? It would be like a a professor misleading her students instead of teaching them. How did things get so sour between Zed and the "Ruby people" that he feels the need to play these pranks at conferences where presumably he was called in because he had the respect of the attendees? I was sad to see the fallout happen and at the time I emailed Zed and thanked him for his effort. What I didn't mention was that he shouldn't assume that the only people using Ruby and Rails were the type of people he mentioned that he hated. I'd like to think that a lot of programmers who use Ruby are modest and amicable, and like me, uninterested in the peripheral fluff that has sprouted up with the birth of Rails.