Rob Conery's Blog: Oh Look, Darth Vader's Wearing Black Today

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Oh Look, Darth Vader's Wearing Black Today

Friday, October 12, 2007 -

If you ever write a contentious post, don't tell one of your friends who's got great Karma on Reddit. You'll be pretty busy getting buried by flames for the next day. It's worth touching on some of the responses - I'll keep it brief.

Hi, My Name's Rob, Open Source Advocate
Most of the people who commented on my blog probably have no idea that I've created two very large Open Source projects on the .NET Platform. One of which is SubSonic, a "Rails Port" in which I'm doing my best to bring many of DHH's ideas into ASP.NET (which I spend a lot of time supporting - even with regards to Rails!). I'm a free thinker and have no problem stating my opinions, to either side.

The Potty Mouth Thing
I shouldn't have said that - and I apologize to DHH for my word choice. Over here, the term "Potty Mouth" is a thing you call children with foul mouths - it seems in Europe this isn't the case and some folks took exception. DHH does himself and his users a disservice by lacing his posts and presentations with F-Bombs: it's disrespectful and juvenile- and I'm not the only one who thinks this. F-Bombs are for people without command of their language and I know that's not the case with him, he's an incredible writer. So I'm at a loss as to why he keeps using playground-speak. I prefer ScottGu's style.

The Bashing Bandwagon
I don't jump on those - as people have noted "I'm a little late to the party". I'm not bashing Rails (it's silly to suggest I am given my work on SubSonic and the other posts I've done). I've waited for the dust to settle out of the Bashing Party to see what the Rails Core Team has to say about it all. I don't think "It's your problem" is reasonable. Aside from flaming me - answer this question for me: Are you happy with their response to the perf issues? Is it your problem?

Use It Or Don't, DHH Owes You Nothing
The Rails concept is a gem, the size of the user base shows that. No, DHH owes me nothing. Or does he? It's the Hero's Dilemma: You've done something great, you're a hero. You can't walk away because you put yourself there, and by doing that, you set the expectations. You sing the songs Britney, you show the skin...

Misrepresentation
Commenters have suggested that I misrepresented quotes. I've offered links in every case and they tell the story. Telling me I'm misrepresenting is out of line.

Finally.. I want to share what DHH has created with as many Microsoft developers as I can. That's my mission with SubSonic. I don't "do it for me" and that's as it should be.

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Rob Conery » Imploding Rails, Jesus DHH, and The Uncle Ben Principle - Friday, October 12, 2007 - [...] Update: I’ve responded to many of the comments below here [...]

DotNetKicks.com - Friday, October 12, 2007 - Rob explains his Rails view... You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com...

Alec Whittington - Friday, October 12, 2007 - Very well said Rob. I know are the one that has made me learn Ruby and Rails. So everyone knows I am a .NET developer as well. It is all I use, but far from being all I know.

Shawn Oster - Friday, October 12, 2007 - *chuckle* I was wondering what kind of crazy your post was going to stir up.

Aside from blatant flames one thing that has always disturbed me is how blindly so many developers seem to follow a single language or framework. It's .NET or nothing, Rails will conquer all, Python is the language of the gods, etc. It seems those that enjoy learning new things and seeing how they can mix are few and far between while most are content to plant their flag in a single camp and then blindly defend it, even if only good constructive criticism is being offered. It's as if people identify with the framework they use and if someone is criticising that then they must be attacking them as a person.

While I understand DHH's meaning behind his F-bomb mentality and even agree in many respects his approach was just plain wrong. I don't like to get wrapped up in what's "appropriate" or not since it's so subjective but that wasn't a good way to express the sentiment. Also, "I build for me" doesn't really jive with how aggressively 37signals markets themselves and like it or not Rails and 37signals are linked. DHH went way beyond the, "here's a tool I created that works for me, I'm making it available for others to play with," a long time ago and nothing on the core websites lets a budding developer know that at some point they may be told to fuck off if they try to use Rails in a way that differs from DHH's vision.

While I'm not satisfied with the hosted performance or scaling of Rails I do have to say the critic of having to write a 100 lines in C to be a bit unfair. Even in my days of writing C and C I had to drop down to ASM at times for a few perf critical routines. Then in classic ASP I had to write COM objects in Delphi to gain some speed. Half the extra class libraries for PHP are C-based and I've even had to call out to unmanaged code from .NET to meet certain speed requirements. No framework, no language, no library will be able to do everything, that's why we learn new languages and tools.

www dot james mckay dot net » Is your rudeness necessary? - Friday, October 12, 2007 - [...] on Rails for life. I won’t link to it because it is Not Safe For Work, but it has provoked quite a reaction in the [...]

Ryan - Friday, October 12, 2007 - Yeah...I'm another .Net developer who found Rails because of Rob....

Rob Conery - Friday, October 12, 2007 - Appreciate it Ryan - good comment and something for the Flame Police to think about - anyone else?

Innocent Bystander - Friday, October 12, 2007 - Oh. Look. A fight on the internet. I have nothing of value to add, so that makes me perfectly qualified to comment.

DHH is certainly free to treat the community in whatever way he pleases, but he comes off looking like a complete twit. All the Rail sycophants will certainly defend him, but why? Would I really want to be involved in a community where the leader tells everyone to "fuck off" if they have a difference of opinion? To each their own, but I'll stick with a more friendly, less narcisistic environment.

And for the language...While I find the phrase "potty mouth" to sound a little silly, I agree with Rob that excessively crude language is for people who have no creative way to express themselves. It's being puritanical, it's not being uptight. Dropping "fuck" on every sentence makes you look like a simpleton who has a limited vocubulary. Naturally, other people with similiar problems expressing themselves will see no issue in it and will rally around the word "fuck" as if they invented the word and by using it are demonstrating how free they are. Bizarre.

Matt Blodgett - Friday, October 12, 2007 - Keep up the good work, Rob. You've got many fans, myself included. SubSonic reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the .NET platform. It's a phenomenal exemplar of the .NET open source community.

TunnelRat - Friday, October 12, 2007 - I just sold a client on the CSK after demoing it. It's like Amazon, but free. But what I really dug was this SubSonic thing, which was like an elegant O/R model what I could tell that gens itself. I have been trying to drag .NET developers into the O/R world, and a lot just don't get -- they want to write their own DAL all the f-ing time. Good stuff, Rob.

Recently I had the misfortune of working next to a Ruby freak, and he kept talking about "scaffolding" and all this stuff, and I'm like, yeah, I've been using code generators since VB6 and I probably couldn't write raw ADO.NET code from scratch if my life depended on it. Plus, a auto-generated DAL is nothing revolutionary , only PHP and ASP hacks write DB calls from scratch.

Anyway, I cracked open a Ruby book and it looked like I was back in 1999 -- HTML mixed up with Ruby tags. And the text editor and command-line stuff kinda threw me. Like what are these guys, Ludittes? Nice for hobbyists, but if you are "enterprisy", Ruby is kinda like a trophy-wife -- sexy, good in bed, nice to look at, but not really in it for the long haul. And I don't know C, so when it doesn't scale, I'm screwed.

Miguel de Icaza - Saturday, October 13, 2007 - Hey Rob! I always love your blog entries, and I thought that the blog entry on Rails was pretty interesting. Am not much of an insider in the Rails world (or the ASP.NET world) and it was nice to get the story from you. I always enjoy your posts even if am neither a database person or a web developer, I always learn something interesting from your postings. Am a fan. Miguel.

Steve - Saturday, October 13, 2007 - Hey Rob, It's the nature of people to rally around the flag, so to speak. Remember way back to high school when we were given to believe that our school is the best and yours sucks and if you don't like it we'll fight you after the football game's over and prove it -- so there! Or, maybe, we'll flame your butt on your blog until you admit we're right. As non-sociopathic individuals, we all want to be recognized for something, either what we've done ourselves or what we support that others have done. We need for others to know we exist, to be seen and accepted, to be a part of something. Unfortunately, early on we meet rejection and our response to it is driven by ego, e.g. we paint a picture that we're proud of and someone says "I don't like it" or "It's stupid"! What's our response? It's probably something like "I don't care" or, possibly, "Fuck You." Sound familiar? Maybe DHH is very proud of what he's accomplished with Rails and is sensitive about it. Perhaps his statement, though worded poorly and inappropriate given the venue, was his way of preemptively staving-off criticism or the suggestion that his work might not look perfect to others, in short, rejection. Maybe not. At any rate, thanks for introducing me to RoR. The time I've invested in it has, so far, proven to be very worthwhile. I would probably not have bothered to look into Ruby or Rails if you hadn't blogged/webcasted such a positive image of them. It's hard to find the time to keep up with what's going on in languages, frameworks, architectures, business processes, legalities, taxation, etc. so I, for one, must limit my exploration to the topics and items that people I respect, in this case you, endorse. Please keep up the great work; your blogging is always insightful, stimulating and informative. Also remember that Darth Vader wears black every day; he must, it's his nature, just as yours is helping your fellows. --Steve

scott - Saturday, October 13, 2007 - Mark Pilgrims translation of DHH's response to the Twitter scaling problems. http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/04/16/dhh-translation

Joe Brinkman - Saturday, October 13, 2007 - @Rob - I think this is a great discussion, not about DHH or rails, but rather about the relationship between the team that runs an OS project and the community that rallies around that project. I have certainly had my share of FU moments in the DNN forums, but I try to limit them to trolls and not to the majority of the users. The more I have matured on the project the more I came to realize that we did not casually drop DNN on the sidewalk and walk away. We put billboards up, sent out fliers and did everything we could to attract users to our platform. As such we have a certain responsibility to our users. For many, they are using our software because of the claims we made about the capabilities of the software. Because of this we have an obligation to back up those claims and do our best to help our community get over their hurdles. If we are not up to the task we should step aside and let others have the reigns of the project. This does not mean that by listening to our community we have turned over control of the product vision or ceded architectural responsibility, just that we have an obligation to listen and try to be responsive as best as we can. There are times where the community's vision may differ from our own, and it is ok for us to speak up and say that we have different ideas and plan to go in a slightly different direction. That conversation can and should still be done in a respectful manner. We do not need to insult our community members just because they may have a different vision for the project.

Tim Morgan - Saturday, October 13, 2007 - I think the lesson from these last two posts is that people hear what they want to hear. The reaction at Reddit was as predictable as it was ill-informed. People keep calling the first post Rails-bashing when even a cursory look will reveal that Rob is a big fan, has ported some core features to ASP.NET, written glowing blog posts on it, and even taken valuable time to create webcasts about it. People seem to forget that frameworks are just tools to get the job done. It's not a religion and it doesn't define who you are. I tend to think there's a correlation between lack of experience and sycophantic allegiance to a given framework. That's why you find the older, tempered developers approaching these kind of issues with measured reason. But, beyond that, no one likes opinions, even if they are in partial agreement with their own. Rails criticism, even laced with "I LOVE Rails", is always hard to take, especially considering the fanaticism of the users. The other factor in both of these posts is something I noticed some time ago: Rob is a very humble, very nice developer person. His approach represents the opposite side of the spectrum from your DHH personalities. He's very responsive to feedback, is never snippy or condescending to his users, and in general presents himself as an anti-egoist. This is rare and refreshing in this business and a testament to his personality. ScottGu has a similar approach. This trait of Rob's is almost antithetical to how DHH presents himself and his work. I know which I prefer and I think that knowing this informs greatly on the rationale behind the first post. To wit, Rob is in a position, more so than some of us, to comment on how to react to your users.

Dietrich - Saturday, October 13, 2007 - Rob the phrase "Potty Mouth" gives bachelors (me) the heebie-jeebies. The phrase "fuck you" is an affirmation of masculine vitality (I'm serious). Both you and DHH are artists and deserve to be cut some slack in terms of the delivery of your message. Like Ryan I learned (learning) rails because of your blogs and tutorials. But honestly you threw red meat to the Railians --what did you except? But having said that I completely agree with the big picture of your comments -- in particular your last sentence in your last blog. Anecdotal but when I asked people who attended the last Rails Conference what they learned. The 1st thing they talked about was all the funny videos lambasting Microsoft and then they talked about how everybody had a Mac laptop (as if that foretold the end of MS) -- they never got around to telling me what they learned. That's ridicules and diminishes an important programming movement.

Rob Conery - Saturday, October 13, 2007 - @Dietrich: thanks - it's a cultural thing I'm finding out :). Over here Potty Mouth is a brat with... well a Potty Mouth :). Goods and Bads RE the Web and how close we all are - lesson learned. I was telling a friend that my blog audience is pretty defined to MS devs using SubSonic and I sort of wrote it with them in mind. If I'd thought for a second Phil would pop this on Reddit (and I'd get slammed) I would have toned it way back. I should have been smarter and you're right - red, dripping juicy meat. But in a way, it underscored my point didn't it? Good comment - thank you.

Caffeinated Coder - Sunday, October 14, 2007 - ALT.NET: Does Your Passion Invigorate or Annoy?... ALT.NET: Does Your Passion Invigorate or Annoy?...

T - Sunday, October 14, 2007 - @Rob Conery: the download page for SubSonic is broken (http://subsonicproject.com/view/download-subsonic.aspx) Does SubSonic work with mono? P.S., Your email validation code doesn't allow ' ', e.g., user label@geemale.com

adminjew - Sunday, October 14, 2007 - Does SubSonic work with mono?

Not yet

Rob Conery - Sunday, October 14, 2007 - @T - version 2.0 worked with Mono (I built it right in front of Miguel at MIX). Since then we've made some changes that have outpaced the Mono team.

josh - Monday, October 15, 2007 - Rob, just wanted to voice my support. Regular readers know where you stand. Getting swarmed by those ready-to-be-offended is probably annoying to deal with, but carries no weight with me. Personally, I had no idea of the potty mouth divide either. And some of the negative commenters on that post didn't seem to have even read your entire post. Watching your screencasts on Rails inspired me to experiment with it more myself.

Rafael - Monday, October 15, 2007 - @Rob, I want to voice my support too. Subsonic is a great project, I'm using it at work and I look forward to seeing the next version.

I'll just add that If DHH is so eager to use the f-word, I don't see why he (or anyone at RoR) cared about someone using a simple "Potty Mouth"...

Rob Conery » Crazy Talk: Inline Scripting and Code-Behind - Monday, October 15, 2007 - [...] As if I haven’t been flamed enough in the last few days (and I still have a few minutes left on my Fire Ward), I’m going to challenge the notion that Inline Scripting is a relic of Web 1.0, and that it has no place in today’s ASP apps. I take a slightly different view, and that is that many times inline scripting is preferable because it forces you to write less UI code, decreases ViewState abuse, and can result in cleaner, more manageable HTML. [...]

The Other Steve - Saturday, October 20, 2007 - I've always gotten the impression that Ruby/Rails looks really impressive to people coming from either a Java or PHP environment.

For those coming from .NET, we've already had at least half of what Rails offers. What we're missing can be introduced via tools like Subsonic or by changing how one thinks.

Oh Look, Darth Vader's Wearing Black Today

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