Off Topic: Peace and Love

Obie wrote a wildly satirical post wherein he set his phasers to “Disintegrate, with maximum prejudice.” Of course, there has been a backlash. Including from people who love Ruby.

Well, first, let me talk to people using Rails and Ruby who are miffed that Obie has made people angry. Should be be censured? I say Non.

You are nice people. You don’t want to offend anyone. You want to reach out and hold hands and embrace and take over the world with non-violent peace and love. I’m all for that, and I applaud you. The world is a better place with you in it. Obie isn’t that way, not always, that much is obvious. If this were the sixties, I have a feeling he would be throwing rocks at the pigs. And you would abhor his actions as counterproductive. You would complain he’s alienating the people you want to convert.

That’s how movements work: There is no single cohesive, Ruby community with a single purpose and a single, coördinated plan of action. There are a bunch of people, some of whom form little groups, some form big groups, some go one way, some go another.

This is really why Ruby will not take over the world in its present form, of course. The other side has huge corporations, where everybody is in it for the career, for the money. They’re passionate about their career, about making money. So if you say “Hey, be nice to so-and-so so you can get a bonus cheque,” they are nice to so-and-so. What do they care about whether they actually like that person or not?

But people who are in it for the passion, they are opinionated. And the beauty is, we (I count myself as passionate) all have our own individual ideas. Which means we bring a lot more to the table than a million monkeys marching in lock step. They can overwhelm anything in their path, but they only have one path, they only go one way. We let a thousand flower bloom. And sometimes, we work against each other.

For example, why are the three major Ruby VM efforts (Rubinus, YARV, and JRuby)? Is this the work of people who can agree on anything?

let’s keep things in perspective

Anyways, so Obie tried to make a funny. I laughed, a little. Okay, I laughest hysterically at the line Java has a compiler. Ruby does not. That's great! Fuck compilers and their false sense of security. That was pure, unadulterated George Carlin brilliance.

But a lot of people took it seriously and got very offended. That’s happened to me when I’ve joked about Java as well. And at the time, I told them to go soak their head in a toilet.

Today I’m a little more mellow. I just had a delicious, fresh roasted mug of Costa Rica’s finest. What do we care what Obie Fernandez thinks? We’d have to be pretty insecure to get outraged when some guy who’s a drop-out from a consulting firm insults our tool of choice (no deliberate offence intended, I admire people who drop out of the rat race). If you read it and you were amused, great. If you read it and thought it was serious, you could respond. You could ignore it. But why get outraged? For what? One guy’s opinion?

What kind of life is it if we are to walk around all day with our happiness held hostage by people we’ve never met, just because they have a blog and they write about the things we use?

Or do we fear him? Is our manager going to read his list and say “Oh, what idiots we are to use Java here at BigCo, let’s switch to Ruby?” Are we worried that Obie is spreading lies and disinformation that will somehow get us tossed from our cushy jobs? Do we have to get the facts out this very instant before his heresies infect the world?

I didn’t think so.

So, my message to everyone, whether you love Ruby, or Java, or both, or neither, is simple:

Peace and Love.  ¶ 11:26 AM