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Why is this interesting? It's just some guy calling people names, airing personal dirty laundry on his petty little web log, and then complaining about how poor
by neilc 19y ago
Why is this interesting? It's just some guy calling people names, airing personal dirty laundry on his petty little web log, and then complaining about how poor he is ("I wrote Mongrel and then my career was ruined").
I'm sure he's a smart guy, but he manages to make himself look totally unprofessional.
- hello_moto 19y agoIt's interesting to see the "inner-agenda" of Rails community especially for those who aren't involved. For some time many Rails bloggers are defending Rails very hard and often they poke (obsessively) other technologies. I've always knew these people were defending Rails for consulting money.
- chaostheory 19y ago(for the record I use rails) once you sift through his rants some of it is both interesting and disturbing at some points: "(15:11:12) DHH: before fastthread we had ~400 restarts/day (15:11:22) DHH: now we have perhaps 10 (15:11:29) Zed S.: oh nice (15:11:33) Zed S.: and that's still fastcgi right?" Thank God JRuby is here...
- boucher 19y agoThis is perhaps the most interesting part of this entire article.
- pius 19y agoIt was a stunner for me, I must admit.
- qaexl 19y agoPut it in context: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=91814 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=91814 I'm surprised the business even survived that long with that many restarts per day.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- chaostheory 19y agoforgot to mention this - in defense of 37 Signals and their flagship Rails app... I've been a heavy user of Basecamp/WriteBoard for about 8 months now (we're talkin 6+ hours a day), and I've only experienced an unexpected meltdown once.
- boucher 19y agowhat exactly constitutes a meltdown, and are there ever expected ones?
- chaostheory 19y ago"what exactly constitutes a meltdown" when all you get is a 503 page when nothing responds and it has nothing to do with your connection "and are there ever expected ones?" well, not expected meltdowns; more like advanced notice for maintenance - probably a deployment of a newer version of the web app
- Andys 19y agoDHH was referring to individual unix webserver process restarts, not server reboots.
- pius 19y agoSure, but either way, it's your app server process going down. Not useful.
- fauigerzigerk 19y agoNo that's not useful, but the information coming out of Zed is also not very useful. We don't even know whether the number 400 was meant to be accurate or rethorical. We don't know whether this was going on for a day, a week or a year. His rant was basically an insider thing and there's no way for anyone to judge anything from the outside, which is why I probably shouldn't even be writing these words about it...
- gscott 19y agoEven if it was over a period of a year that seems like a lot.
- pius 19y ago"Why is this interesting?" I think you just answered your own question. ;) Zed (and his code) is very well-known, intelligent, and important to the Rails community. Whatever you may think of his perspective or how it's been presented, he has some ostensibly valid criticism and it will certainly be interesting to see how people will react to it.
- raju 19y agoAgreed. I checked out Zed Shaw after reading the article (I did not know anything of him except that he wrote Mongrel) and was very impressed [http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/5455-zed-shaw http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/5455-zed-shaw]. He obviously is a very important, and known member of the Rails (and Ruby) community, and I am anxious to see the response the community has to his throwing in the hat. I personally have not interacted with the rails community (but have with ruby's) so I don't have an opinion as to whether he makes any good points, but taking him at face value, I have to admit I am a little disappointed. Again, it will be interesting to see how this turns out...
- queensnake 19y agoDid you see at the bottom where he says Dave Thomas' Pickaxe book killed Ruby? I gotta see that.
- raju 19y agoSure did... That piqued my curiosity too...
- nonrecursive 19y agoIf the main people who control the direction of the framework which you use to make your living were acting in a shady way wouldn't YOU be interested? It's not just "personal dirty laundry" in that what the people he's talking about do, how they work, affects a lot of people. Also, it's not just "some guy." Zed Shaw wrote Mongrel, which virtually every Ruby on Rails project uses. Without him, Rails development would likely still be a huge pain in the ass. BTW, you should read his essay on statistics; it provides a good starting point for figuring out how to analyze the performance of your sites.
- pius 19y agoYeah, that statistics essay is awesome. My favorite essay of his, though, is how he uses finite state machines to implement protocols. It's pretty badass.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]