Ruby Inside

I was the curator and co-organizer of RubyFringe and FutureRuby in Toronto. I'm really sorry to hear that folks organizing BRC felt so beat down by negativity that cancelation was the best option. Most people simply do not appreciate the hundreds of unpaid hours of work that are required to pull off a good event.

Several aspects of this controversy don't sit well with me, however. First off, since when does the curation of a conference have to follow someone else's value system? It's very simple: the people that organize an event should work hard to put together the most interesting line-up they can. It's then up to the potential attendees to decide if the event is worth their time to attend. That's it; there are no more rules!

If you want to solicit proposals for talks, go ahead. If you like some of them, give them a shot at speaking. If you decide that none of them match your curatorial agenda, then thank them warmly for their submission and move on. You aren't obligated to take proposals at all, and you're certainly not obligated to make your decision process transparent or part of some laborious community democracy. In fact, I would guess that one strongly opinionated curator will put together a far more coherent line-up than any popularity contest ever could. If you're looking for inspiration, consider asking attendees from previous years if they'd like to consider "leveling-up" to speaker.

When I put together our speaker lists, it wasn't arbitrary and much like test…

I did a quick browse through the threads in question and suggest others do the same. Yes, there is negativity, but the actual debate is more complex than simply one grumpy side slamming a poor developer.

The most relevant comment I found was by /u/bixmix:

> It's getting much worse - not better. The internal churn within pip also is not community driven as much as it is developer driven. It's like we didn't learn from the debacle of python3 vs 2.

I'm not a Pythonist so I had no idea there was such a huge debate over how to manage deps. At various points the past few years I've googled "bundler for python" and come up with different projects. I remember trying pipenv early on (didn't work with conda Python install). Then I revisited it months later--the project was much more developed--and it worked great. FWIW I like pipenv, it solves my largest gripe with Python development.

If you have as part of your community philosophy "there should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it," it seems like you're going get a lot of stubborn tug-of-war situations (see 2 vs 3) where each side thinks their way is the superior way and there is less room to compromise for the sake of keeping the community together. That said, this pattern of debate is pretty universal across communities.

Ruby--even with it's MINASWAN motto--had it's own RVM vs rebenv drama back in 2011. Same sort of developer/community vs developer/community drama. Nowadays I think rbenv has a larger…

I do agree with shooter that python is good technologically... but the problem with Python web frameworks is that there's no one official framework yet for python that's overwhelmingly popular in the python world (though someone can prove me wrong). The end result is that there aren't that many books on stuff like Django (compared to other technologies), which really sucks when you're just starting out.

Rails on the other hand has tons and tons of books. I just started a little less than a year ago and I've caught up fast because of the plethora of books and communities for Rails.

in the end, if you happen to find your partner quick - they may help you choose (that's probably the best route)

Forgot to mention - check out some video tutorials of Rails programming:

http://rubyonrails.com/screencasts

http://railscasts.com

http://peepcode.com (not free but really really good - they actually have 2 vids that covers all of the basics of Rails - in I think about 3-5 hours; you're not goign to remember all of it in the 1st run but it gets u comfy)

a decent list of resources

http://railshandbook.com/

http://rubyinside.com

http://dzone.com

http://poignantguide.net/ruby/ -funny and useful intro into ruby itself

I absolutely love Lisp, but I'm not in the least bit offended at someone describing some aspects of the culture as cultish.

But the thing is.. the very same thing could be said of most other language enthusiasts.

Look at all the endless hype from Python and Ruby fans (especially when they compare their favorite language to Perl).

Or look at some OCaml or Haskell fanboys and their attitude that static typing is The True Way and only ignorant savages would prefer a dynamically typed language.

And this doesn't even touch on the vi vs Emacs holy wars.

There's plenty of fanboyishness, exclusivity, and and chastisement of outsiders in many computer fields. And I dare say it's not really limited to computers either. I'm not sure if "cultish" is really the most appropriate term, but I feel no offense at it.

The whole discussion reminds me of these images:

http://www.deimeke.net/dirk/blog/uploads/G7WyP.gif

http://www.rubyinside.com/holiday-fun-how-programming-language-fanboys-see-each-others-languages-2911.html

The core dev having worked on new GIL (py3.2) explained this to me.

I never said it was magic.

But he said GIL is a tool to achieve thread-safety in python when calling non 'thread safe' code.

I am not him, I will not take on any argument of how it works.

But since ruby GIL is inspired by python GIL let's hear ruby coders:
http://www.rubyinside.com/does-the-gil-make-your-ruby-code-thread-safe-6051.html

Oh, yes, it seems some people are seeing it my way and that it is a controversial point that can be argued. So I agree to disagree.

Btw, I don't multithread and share states, I multiprocess with 0MQ and communication patterns such as PUB/SUB PUSH/PULL for the obvious reasons that I really think multi-threading is an over-valued and wrong abstraction.

So did DHH give permission to use the Rails logo for this project?????

"The use of the logo is restricted as it always is when talking about a trademark. When the logo is used in a commercial setting, such as part of the promotion of a book, it legally requires that the trademark holder has been involved and stands behind the quality of the book. If that's not the case, you're on the way to lose your trademark.
So I only grant promotional use for products I'm directly involved with. Such as books that I've been part of the development process for or conferences where I have a say in the execution."

http://www.rubyinside.com/david-heinemeier-hansson-says-no-to-use-of-rails-logo-567.html