When you get to a point where you demonize people who disagree with you to this ridiculous extent, you should consider stepping back and reevaluating your position.
You might as well start saying things like, “You’re either for us, or against us!” I find this video extremely insulting.
I love change. I love new features. I tolerate new features that don’t interest me. And I hate breaking shit just to break shit, and that’s particularly what frustrated me about rails 3.
I inadvertently created many projects called “s” or “c” – because no one could back-in a shim to let ./script/server work? I have wasted hours and hours just to drag a project forward into rails 3, with no other benefit. The moment that rails 3 was released, almost every single piece of documentation on the entire planet about rails became wrong. Not simply “not the best way to do things, but still works” but actually _wrong – failing, with errors.
So, no, new Rails releases fill me with dread. New releases of many other software packages or frameworks can be very exciting.
Joe
on 01 May 12
Great speech David. This will go down as one which is watched for years to come.
Condesending?
on 01 May 12
Guy seems pretty full of himself, and condesending.
Luke Byrne
on 02 May 12
Nice talk DHH, always admired the honesty and clarity.
Erich Menge
on 02 May 12
I have to admit, as a child I had an easy bake pizza oven. You wouldn’t be able to say the pizzas were good, but they were strangely enjoyable to eat. It was like a little pizza cracker. I think part of the fun was my amazement at the inefficiency of using a light bulb to cook something.
Erich Menge
on 02 May 12
On the main topic: I’m a bit new as I started with Rails 3.0. So I haven’t experienced any of the problems people apparently are having migrating from Rails 2. Since starting with 3.0, I’ve found the asset pipeline introduction to be very compelling progress. I love the concept and the implementation has been overall quite smooth for me.
It also introduced me to CoffeeScript, which many seemed to have issue with being incorporated. After I played around with it a little bit I decided to write my new Backbone.js mobile app entirely in CoffeeScript.
I really appreciate the updates from 3.0 to 3.2.3. I’ve seen a lot of good progress in that time that keeps me enjoying Rails. I hope to see that progress continue, even if it means some pain if I decided to update my applications when Rails 4 comes out (I’ve decided to try to be a bit proactive in this regard. I have plans to start changing over to strong_parameters next month).
Enjoyed the video. A thought that came to my mind.
“Technology can be hard, sometimes you can cut yourself”
The response I get from those who take on something like CoffeeScript, HAML, SASS is that it helps them ‘not cut themselves’. It will magically fix their HTML. It will magically fix their JavaScript. It will magically fix their CSS. They use it as a crutch. Their knowledge of CSS, HTML, or JavaScript may be minimal, and this abstracts them having to know it (described as Dummies in this video).
Can you really put them into two buckets of “Mr. Mature” and “Mr. Progress”? There are excuses from both parties.
“I inadvertently created many projects called “s” or “c” – because no one could back-in a shim to let ./script/server work?”
Is this the biggest argument you could come up with? I’ve done this a dozen times too but each time it makes me chuckle slightly and I remove the directory.
Secondly, you made the best argument against yourself by using the words “back-in a shim”. That screams the wrong thing to do.
Rails 3 was a huge upgrade and took us a massive amount of time, but it was worth it in so many ways.
1) It forced us to do a code review;
2) We slimmed up the code base with the new refactoring capabilities in Rails 3, and;
3) It shook out the people on our team that probably had to go anyway (i.e. the stagnant complainers).
‘Nuff said.
Ian
on 03 May 12
@dhh great excuse for poor software quality and bad project management. You just can’t admit that you did it in bad way.
Vicki
on 03 May 12
I think it’s a great keynote – I can’t tell you how much I appreciate being pushed and challenged like this. What @dhh is talking about, the “I’ve got nice shit” and “It’s too hard” – there have been times when I’ve thought those things, when changing and adapting has seemed like too much.
But it’s presentations like this that make me go “Fuck yeah, this shit is hard, and challenging and I have to learn new stuff all time, but OH YEAH ISN’T THAT WHAT MAKES IT SO AWESOME??”
It’s nice to be reminded of that, so I say thanks, and good keynote. :)
Eric
on 03 May 12
While he a good public speaker, the use of strawman arguments was a letdown.
The basic fact is all frameworks have churn and breakage. The question becomes “is the current level of churn and breakage acceptable” and “what do we do with old(er) releases”. Once the incremental churn becomes too high for a production system to keep up with you have lost that system. Either they need to invest a lot of time ( money ) in a refactoring/rewrite or the older code base need continued support ( split community or paid ). If the production system is mid-cycle it’s hard to justify that kind of effort.
Tony
on 03 May 12
I realy enjoyed the talk. Made me think about a few things, and evaluate some attitudes I have .. Thanks for the insight!
Makes me think about our industrialized education system and how it is tuned to the average person. Most people arent average (by definition) so we are failing most of them.
This talk was quite interesting. I had no intention of watching the whole thing but it was compelling enough for me to do so.
Unfortunately, DHH’s potential is sooooo limited by his potty mouth. Otherwise, his thoughts and expressions rise to the level of a commencement speech.
GeeIWonder
on 06 May 12
Otherwise, his thoughts and expressions rise to the level of a commencement speech.
A backhanded compliment if ever there was one.
Stacy
on 07 May 12
@GeeIWonder – I meant that in a positive manner. I was actually thinking about Steve Job’s commence speech at Stanford, as the comparison.
Marcin
on 07 May 12
Well, if he say “stay open”, why he never opened for something else than old boring TestUnit for BDD?
This discussion is closed.
About David
Creator of Ruby on Rails, partner at 37signals, best-selling author, public speaker, race-car driver, hobbyist photographer, and family man.
EH
on 01 May 12Watching this on YouTube instead of this page gets you a preroll ad.
Brady Wetherington
on 01 May 12When you get to a point where you demonize people who disagree with you to this ridiculous extent, you should consider stepping back and reevaluating your position.
You might as well start saying things like, “You’re either for us, or against us!” I find this video extremely insulting.
I love change. I love new features. I tolerate new features that don’t interest me. And I hate breaking shit just to break shit, and that’s particularly what frustrated me about rails 3.
I inadvertently created many projects called “s” or “c” – because no one could back-in a shim to let ./script/server work? I have wasted hours and hours just to drag a project forward into rails 3, with no other benefit. The moment that rails 3 was released, almost every single piece of documentation on the entire planet about rails became wrong. Not simply “not the best way to do things, but still works” but actually _wrong – failing, with errors.
So, no, new Rails releases fill me with dread. New releases of many other software packages or frameworks can be very exciting.
Joe
on 01 May 12Great speech David. This will go down as one which is watched for years to come.
Condesending?
on 01 May 12Guy seems pretty full of himself, and condesending.
Luke Byrne
on 02 May 12Nice talk DHH, always admired the honesty and clarity.
Erich Menge
on 02 May 12I have to admit, as a child I had an easy bake pizza oven. You wouldn’t be able to say the pizzas were good, but they were strangely enjoyable to eat. It was like a little pizza cracker. I think part of the fun was my amazement at the inefficiency of using a light bulb to cook something.
Erich Menge
on 02 May 12On the main topic: I’m a bit new as I started with Rails 3.0. So I haven’t experienced any of the problems people apparently are having migrating from Rails 2. Since starting with 3.0, I’ve found the asset pipeline introduction to be very compelling progress. I love the concept and the implementation has been overall quite smooth for me.
It also introduced me to CoffeeScript, which many seemed to have issue with being incorporated. After I played around with it a little bit I decided to write my new Backbone.js mobile app entirely in CoffeeScript.
I really appreciate the updates from 3.0 to 3.2.3. I’ve seen a lot of good progress in that time that keeps me enjoying Rails. I hope to see that progress continue, even if it means some pain if I decided to update my applications when Rails 4 comes out (I’ve decided to try to be a bit proactive in this regard. I have plans to start changing over to strong_parameters next month).
Steve Butterworth
on 02 May 12Honest and inspiring as ever with the usual dose of self assured delivery. Thanks @dhh you inspired flumes
Nate Klaiber
on 02 May 12Enjoyed the video. A thought that came to my mind.
“Technology can be hard, sometimes you can cut yourself”
The response I get from those who take on something like CoffeeScript, HAML, SASS is that it helps them ‘not cut themselves’. It will magically fix their HTML. It will magically fix their JavaScript. It will magically fix their CSS. They use it as a crutch. Their knowledge of CSS, HTML, or JavaScript may be minimal, and this abstracts them having to know it (described as Dummies in this video).
Can you really put them into two buckets of “Mr. Mature” and “Mr. Progress”? There are excuses from both parties.
Joshua Pinter
on 02 May 12@brady
“I inadvertently created many projects called “s” or “c” – because no one could back-in a shim to let ./script/server work?”
Is this the biggest argument you could come up with? I’ve done this a dozen times too but each time it makes me chuckle slightly and I remove the directory.
Secondly, you made the best argument against yourself by using the words “back-in a shim”. That screams the wrong thing to do.
Rails 3 was a huge upgrade and took us a massive amount of time, but it was worth it in so many ways.
1) It forced us to do a code review;
2) We slimmed up the code base with the new refactoring capabilities in Rails 3, and;
3) It shook out the people on our team that probably had to go anyway (i.e. the stagnant complainers).
‘Nuff said.
Ian
on 03 May 12@dhh great excuse for poor software quality and bad project management. You just can’t admit that you did it in bad way.
Vicki
on 03 May 12I think it’s a great keynote – I can’t tell you how much I appreciate being pushed and challenged like this. What @dhh is talking about, the “I’ve got nice shit” and “It’s too hard” – there have been times when I’ve thought those things, when changing and adapting has seemed like too much.
But it’s presentations like this that make me go “Fuck yeah, this shit is hard, and challenging and I have to learn new stuff all time, but OH YEAH ISN’T THAT WHAT MAKES IT SO AWESOME??”
It’s nice to be reminded of that, so I say thanks, and good keynote. :)
Eric
on 03 May 12While he a good public speaker, the use of strawman arguments was a letdown.
The basic fact is all frameworks have churn and breakage. The question becomes “is the current level of churn and breakage acceptable” and “what do we do with old(er) releases”. Once the incremental churn becomes too high for a production system to keep up with you have lost that system. Either they need to invest a lot of time ( money ) in a refactoring/rewrite or the older code base need continued support ( split community or paid ). If the production system is mid-cycle it’s hard to justify that kind of effort.
Tony
on 03 May 12I realy enjoyed the talk. Made me think about a few things, and evaluate some attitudes I have .. Thanks for the insight!
Makes me think about our industrialized education system and how it is tuned to the average person. Most people arent average (by definition) so we are failing most of them.
Andy Goundry
on 04 May 12Really great. Thanks.
Looking forward to rails 4 :)
Marcin
on 04 May 12Nothing new. A little bit borring for me.
Michael Guren
on 04 May 12Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
warambil
on 05 May 12Very inspiring. I loved it congrats man!
Stacy
on 06 May 12This talk was quite interesting. I had no intention of watching the whole thing but it was compelling enough for me to do so.
Unfortunately, DHH’s potential is sooooo limited by his potty mouth. Otherwise, his thoughts and expressions rise to the level of a commencement speech.
GeeIWonder
on 06 May 12A backhanded compliment if ever there was one.
Stacy
on 07 May 12@GeeIWonder – I meant that in a positive manner. I was actually thinking about Steve Job’s commence speech at Stanford, as the comparison.
Marcin
on 07 May 12Well, if he say “stay open”, why he never opened for something else than old boring TestUnit for BDD?
This discussion is closed.