First Impressions Of The Ruby Community

48 commentsWritten on August 31st, 2010 by
Categories: Opinions, Ruby

It's been about 3 weeks since i've started my Ruby journey. Obviously, i still have a lot to learn. And in order to keep learning, i'm subscribing to more Ruby-related blogs and i'm starting to follow more Ruby-related folks on Twitter. At the same time, i'm gradually unsubscribing from a lot of .NET blogs and have even un-followed some people on Twitter that i only followed for .NET related stuff.

The biggest difference that i've noticed so far is that the Ruby community is pretty much a lot like what the ALT.NET community always wanted to be. As far as i can tell so far, knowledge is being shared all the time. And this is generally done in good spirits without negativity or flamewars (save a few exceptions obviously). People genuinely seem to care about helping other people out and making sure that everyone improves. I privately contacted a few Ruby people out of the blue. They don't know me, and i didn't know them. I just happened to stumble upon their blogs or twitter profiles and i figured "what the hell... i'll just bother them with some questions". And you know what? Every single one of them has responded in a remarkably friendly way.

When i asked them about interesting resources to follow as a newbie Rubyist, they all gladly shared their suggestions. When i thanked them for it, they all replied stating that i should feel free to contact them if i had any more questions about whatever Ruby related. Seriously, can you imagine the few .NET heroes that we have responding to questions through email from people they don't even know like that? I can't. Hell, i know most of them don't respond like that. The few that do are still trying to earn their MVP award or are too worried about renewing their MVP status.

Now, i'm not saying that all is well in the Ruby/Rails world and that there are no arguments or that there isn't any negativity or anything like that. Because the negativity and the arguments are definitely there. The thing is, it just seems to happen at a much lower frequency than it does in the .NET world. Granted, the .NET world is probably one of the most unfriendliest of all but still, the difference is striking IMO.

A part of me hopes that i'm wrong about this and that in the end, there isn't really a substantial difference between the ruby community and the (previously ALT).NET community. Then again, another part of me hopes that what i'm seeing so far is indeed true and real. If only because that would mean that what i consider to be the ideal developer community indeed exists somewhere.

To summarize the difference: i'm sure some of you remember the infamous "Rails Is A Ghetto"-rant. Well, from what i can tell so far... if Ruby/Rails is a ghetto, then .NET is the trailer park.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 23:28 and is filed under Opinions, Ruby. You can subscribe to any comments to this entry via RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • http://ayende.com/blog Ayende Rahien

    Davy,
    To put it simply, it is literally not _possible_ for me to answer all the cold support requests that I get daily.
    Just to give you an idea, I routinely get at least one support request per day for NHibernate or Rhino Mocks, usually I get > 5.
    At some point you have to draw a line

    • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

      @ayende

      I’m talking about the community in general, not you. If this were about you, you know i’d have put your name in there.

  • configurator

    The secret is not to be well-known enough to get a request every day.
    I’ve been asked some interesting C# questions before and I make sure I always answer, and quickly too.

  • Rob Conery

    I answer every email I get sent. I consider it a privilege and a bit of a duty. I do know what you mean – a guy like Oren gets barraged with questions :) . I do too – but for those I have mailing lists (specifically SubSonic). Personal questions, though, I do my best to answer. Sure – some of them fall through the cracks…

  • http://thezendev.com Dan Martin

    Honestly, I have to say my experience within the .NET community hasn’t been too bad. Anyone who I have asked for help has been nice enough to respond and try to help me out. There are a bit too many flamewars on blogs/twitter, I will admit that. But typically the people who I follow on twitter and through blogs (including this site and the previous commenters) have been extremely helpful. Of course I have yet to dive into Ruby and experience the community first hand, so my perspective isn’t very worthwhile yet.

  • David

    “When i asked them about interesting resources to follow as a newbie Rubyist, they all gladly shared their suggestions”

    Apologies if you’ve already done this and I missed it, but if that means you now have a good list of resources that would be useful for a .NETter looking at Ruby, I’d love to see it!

    • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

      @david

      I’ve got something like that coming up soon :)

  • http://danthar.tweakblogs.nl Danthar

    I’m getting emailed with questions at least 3 times a week, by mostly friends and other people who have my email. I always answer, since i have the time…
    But if you email people like Scott Hanselman or Ayende, or other high profile community people, it basically means one thing, get in line.. your not the only one :P . But I don’t think that’s a problem related only to the .Net community. If you can call it a problem at all.

  • XuMiX

    I suppose, that in if Ruby community grows as large as .Net, you’ll get the same negativeness from the most famous members. I mean, when it is 5 mails per day – it is OK to answer them, but if you get 50+….

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    i wonder why everyone focuses on the email remark instead of the part about the negativity, which i’d say is far more imporant

  • http://www.kenegozi.com/blog Ken Egozi

    @Davy – I’l second Rob (and Ayende).
    I do get quite a few questions by email (not as much in the last year plus that Ive been more occupied, but a lot more back when I was an indie consultant). I can only testify on myself as always answering (and always pointing to the relevant mailing-list stating that answers will be given faster and more accurately there).

    On the other way around, whenever I had a problem and I needed to ask someone personally, I always got quick and good answers. Usually even from pretty busy OSS project leaders.

    So, the .NET OSS community is not that bad. As for the ruby community, I am n00b-ier than you, so I can’t really tell. I do get a good vibe from it.
    As a side note, the vibe I get from the Rails community is somewhat different. There is a strong feel of “my way or the high way” going on there. Yet again, I’m a total n00b there and does not really know the community people. I don’t even like Rails too much, my ruby-web taste is more geared towards sinatra

  • http://ashmind.com Andrey Shchekin

    This is very strange. I always answer people who contact me through my blog, and I saw a lot of people doing the same. I didn’t really see much negativity or flamewars in .NET either (but I do not listen to podcasts, is it there?).

    .NET community is a bit unexciting at times, but this is not a big deal I think. But generally it is a good community, and I do not see the reason for the recent influx of criticism.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Andrey

    i don’t listen to podcasts either, so can’t comment on any negativity in podcasts

    a lot of the negativity that i’ve seen over the past few years was both coming from and directed to the ALT.NET crowd… it’s still there at times in blog posts, and frequently on twitter

  • http://blog.reichertconsulting.com Eric Reichert

    This post is one long fallacy of composition. As other people have mentioned, the .Net rock stars are going to have problems answering all their email. I suggest it’s a microscopic fraction of the community that falls into that category however.

    To make my point I’ll provide my own fallacy of composition. When I’ve approached people, some of whom one would consider .Net rock stars (Connery, Ayende, Seguin), they’ve been very helpful. In fact, I’ve never had a bad experience.

    Regarding negativity within the .Net community, what you perceive as negativity I perceive as constructive criticism…for the most part. One has to consider .Net is coming up on a decade of use. It’s been through a bunch of paradigm shifts and it’s had its growing pains as a result. In addition, a lot of people that are blogging and Tweeting about .Net grew up as programmers not knowing anything else aside from Java, maybe. The Microsoft C++ community went through the same thing when .Net, specifically C#, became usable. Granted, when C++ went through this perceived negativity there wasn’t a dearth of blogs and Tweets to make it as palpable as the current iteration.

    Good programmers get bored with what they know. Good programmers want to keep learning new things and play with new toys. This is a natural progression in this business. Ruby/Rails is relatively new and shiny. When it’s been through all the crap .Net has its community will go through the exact same thing. And IT WILL go through this. There’s always a new language or paradigm doing pushups in the corner trying to take the reigning champ down.

    I also think there are lot of people staking claim to digital land in the Ruby/Rails world. A lot of people are trying to become the next Ayende, or Hanselman, or Connery, or in the Ruby/Rails community. That ship has largely sailed in the .Net community so there is a segment of people in the .Net and Java communities that have more of an incentive to be extra helpful in the Ruby/Rails community.

    I’ve been considering this a lot lately. I think the desire to be famous is driving a lot of the Ruby/Rails blogging/Tweeting/evangelism of Ruby/Rails whereas I think fame just kind of happened for certain .Net people like the aforementioned. It’s a different world than when .Net was coming up.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    Ayende’s response to this post, and the comments to that are a nice example of what i’m talking about:
    http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2010/09/01/it-is-an-issue-of-traffic.aspx

    i was glad to read the following comment from Ben Taylor, which i’m gonna copy here:

    I agree with Davy on the general “feel” of the Ruby community versus the .NET community. There _seems_ to be a more “we’re in it learning together” spirit versus the “Microsoft/beginner your code is junk, look what I did”.

    In a roundabout way, this post re-enforces his point. He did not call out Ayende and the post was only partly about email responses. The bigger point was negativity and the fact that ALT.NET did not reach it’s potential. Responding as if he did call you out flames a _new_ argument which only results in further division (as you can see in the comments above).

  • Scott Lowe

    @Eric You are of course very much entitled to your opinion, but I find it odd that you think Ruby is new. Ruby pre-dates C# and .NET by several years. Rails came a little later, but it was released in 2004.

    Following heavy use of .NET, I returned to using Ruby more regularly in 2010 after being away from it for 4 years, and the Ruby community is still there; it always has been. Just look at the ancient dates on some of the Ruby mailing lists! It just _seems_ new to a lot of those in .NET community.

    The Ruby community has already established its list of well known faces and contributors, so your theory regarding the desperate quest for personal fame doesn’t seem to match the facts. Finally, Ayende is not a famous ‘rock star’ because he simply staked an early claim in the .NET blogging world. Ayende is highly regarded because he writes some seriously good blog posts and has contributed a significant body of excellent code, tools and educational instruction to the .NET eco-system.

  • http://blog.reichertconsulting.com Eric Reichert

    @Scott

    I want to make it clear I’m not a language/framework zealot. I don’t care what your medium is as long as you’re getting the job done correctly.

    I’m aware of Ruby’s age. However, please don’t try to make it seem as though it’s been in mainstream use for a decade. It hasn’t. In fact, it languished as a curiosity until Rails. I would argue Rails didn’t start getting mainstream traction until 2005 and maybe even later than that.

    Were there early adopters? Yes. Was it a real player prior to 2005? Not by a long shot.

    With that in mind, it is a new, shiny toy relative to .Net.

    [Ayende is highly regarded because he writes some seriously good blog posts and has contributed a significant body of excellent code, tools and educational instruction to the .NET eco-system.]

    Absolutely correct. But, like I said, he started his blog at a time when getting famous for programming was just getting started (unless you wrote a language or discovered a paradigm). Blogging and, later, Tweeting changed that. And, yes, people do both about programming to get famous now. You’re naïve to think otherwise.

    Mind you, I don’t think anyone’s getting invited to the Playboy mansion after blogging about dynamic typing versus static typing. However, there is money to be made by becoming a rock star programmer and I think some of that has driven the establishment of some of the newer languages and frameworks as older languages and frameworks established their rock stars. People only have so much time in a day to read blogs.

    And, as a preemptive strike, I also don’t think it’s every blogger. Some people genuinely like to talk about programming. Obviously, I am one of those people considering I’m supposed to be working right now and instead I’m posting a comment on a blog.

  • Scott Lowe

    @Eric Touché, Sir!

    Your further clarification helps a lot. It’s easy to misunderstand people in blog comments. It’s possible that I am naïve, but I like to think of myself as extremely optimistic! You’ve made some fair points there. Good reply.

  • Franck

    The community should learn from Scott Gu. This guy has such a way to respond to questions, even the very basic ones.

  • Lucas

    Even Scott ‘The Gu’ Guthrie responds directly to questions/comments/criticisms via Blog, Twitter, email. I don’t think you could find a busier, bigger ‘rockstar’ in the .net world, nor a more friendly, genuinely helpful one.

    DHH, who I guess is the equivalent in the Ruby world, has been quite dismissive / negative in the past (see: the whole F.U incident)

  • Alex Simkin

    @Davy

    ” then .NET is the trailer park.”

    My motor home cost more than your house, and you call me TPT?

    Proud citizen of the the most unfriendliest world.

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Alex

    it’s a metaphor… think about it

  • Alex Simkin

    Hmm… so in other words we are lazy and ignorant?

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Alex

    that’s not what i said. ‘unfriendly’ is what i said and i stand by that statement. If you or any else has a problem with that, then so be it. I have my opinions and you have yours.

    About the metaphor specifically… you need to look at it in the context of the ruby/rails community. If that is considered to be a ghetto (by at least one person at the time… even though he has retracted his rant and is still active in that world), then the .NET community is far worse… we treat each other worse than people in the ruby/rails community. So i thought: “what’s worse than the ghetto?”

  • Alex Simkin
  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    @Alex

    there is another aspect to the comparison that is particularly relevant: what is cool in the ghetto, is cool in the trailer park one year later :p

  • Alex Simkin

    I suspected that I am slo-o-o-w.
    And one more just for fun :)

    http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081209193416AAI3wP8

  • http://www.hanselman.com Scott Hanselman

    I understand your post and your perspective, but I disagree a bit. I get about 40-70 emails per weekday to my personal (not Microsoft) account and I answer every one of them. Surely I’m one data point, but I think that it IS important to be a steward of the community no matter what your role. I give out both my emails to anyone who asks and often my phone number.

    That said, answering technical questions via email is an extremely inefficient use of time so I’m more likely to write a blog post with the question and send them the link.

  • http://litanyagainstfear.com Nick Quaranto

    Welcome aboard! :) If you need any help don’t be afraid to ask. There’s plenty of great channels in IRC as well on freenode.

    I was pretty much standing where you were in 2008. I haven’t looked back yet. My thoughts: http://litanyagainstfear.com/blog/2008/09/18/switching-to-rails/

  • Andy Vulhop

    For every 1-on-1 answer a “celebrity” can give via email, s/he could give a 1-to-many piece of knowledge via a blog post or podcast. I don’t think I want the rock stars of the community playing digital call-center roles with every novice to the platform. I think that’s why a large, helpful community is important.

    I doubt you would see the likes of Matz replying to 100s of emails about “how do I use the zip method?” or “why do arrays give you an empty array if you slice them at the end, but a nil if you slice them at 1 past the end?”. You get that from the community at large. Forums, twitter, StackOverflow, etc.

  • Nick Portelli

    The only negativity I’ve really seen from the .NET community was usually from the ALT.NET community. It was probably just my perspective but it seems that they complain the most, especially about Microsoft and their practices. Which is fine, but it gives me that bad community vibe.

    I can attest to Mr. Hanselman responding to emails. He responded to one of mine years ago.

  • Rob

    Davy,

    For my day job I write code in C# but I too have started to venture into the ruby world. I’m right there with you. So far my experience in the ruby world has been a very positive one. My .Net experiences haven’t been exactly bad but its not quite the same vibe in the .Net world.

    Looking forward to your ruby newb resource posting…

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    and once again, everybody starts focusing solely on the emails :)
    though i guess i should be glad that at least most people don’t disagree on the negativity thing… that’s quite telling

  • Andy Vulhop

    I agree with @Nick Portelli.

    The only negativity in the .NET community I ever deal with is from the ALT.NET or NOT.NET crowd. They are the only ones I ever hear spitting bile about the ignorance of developers who haven’t been enlightened by their anti-Microsoft usage of Microsoft products…

    The 9-5 jobbers tend to keep to themselves and not interact with the community. They could be just as bile filled, but they are not trolling the blogs and forums yelling at people, so it hardly ever becomes a factor.

  • http://blog.cromwellhaus.com Ryan Cromwell

    Be careful making the jump from “people in my network of resources are unfriendly” to “the .Net community are unfriendly”. Opinions be what they may, we tend to think our little worlds are representative. They are not.

  • Mark Dykun

    I have to say I disagree with the .net community being unfriendly. I have from time to time posted/sent emails and have gotten responses from those that I would have never though would have the time of day for me. I sent an email to the ‘GU’ and shortly after not only did he respond, but hooked me up with an internal SDE to help me resolve the problem I was seeing. I was looking to jump into the 64 bit world and Scott Hanselman sent me emails on what to do, and look out for. On twitter responses happen to general questions and not rants, and I do not feel like anyone has made me feel like it was impossible to work with. The fact is I suspect that the number of devs in the .net world still out number the those in the ruby world so currently there is not as high a signal to noise ratio.

  • mendicant

    Seems to me the difference also comes down to the fact that the Rails community seems to push towards \Doing it right\ where-as the .Net community tries to push towards \Getting it done\.

    Let’s face it, Alt.Net was/is a very, very small percentage of the community and for every one of the Alt.Netters out there trying to say \Do it this way\ you’ve got 10 times the people saying \That’s too hard, just copy these 1000 lines of code and it’ll work\.

    I find, by contrast, in a Ruby community you ask a question everyone points to you the same 2 or 3 blogs/screencasts/etc. And if it so happens that resource is out of date, 80% of the time they have a link to their updated post or someone else’s updated post.

    That’s my experience anyway. Ruby = Easy to find GOOD guidance. .Net = Easy to find guidance, nearly impossible to find good guidance. (For Newbs)

  • http://www.58bits.com Anthony Bouch

    I think there is a difference but that maybe it runs closer to the FOSS and non-FOSS lines. I do know that after attending several MSFT/.Net events and meetups, and then a few FOSS metups like Barcamp and recently a Redis meetup – that there was a different vibe for sure. I was seriously impressed by the number of people whether by email or IRC whatever, that were willing to share their experiences and time.

  • Andy Vulhop

    @Mendicant

    I have a feeling that is a function of Ruby’s newness. If it gains widespread popularity, gets adoption in the enterprise, etc. etc. then you will see the same thing happen. There will be corporate-developers who make a living as script-kiddies copying some ruby script they found on the internet and slapping it into their system without understanding how it works, or writing any tests for it.

    I hope I’m wrong, but I have a really strong hunch that’s how it will play out, given a big uptick in Ruby adoption.

  • http://braincells2ixels.com Rams

    Davy,
    I dont think we can generalize based on a few negative or positive experiences. I can vouch for both ScottHa, ScottGu. Scott Ha has responded to every trivial email I sent him and Scott Gu picked up the phone and talked to me. Like Lukas says, you cannot find a more humble person than ScottGu. He could have given me the DHH F.U when I called him out of the blue but he was VERY nice. I have seen some strong reactions in the ALT.Net community but that kind of fizzled out. Phil Haack is another great .Net hero who responds to questions. I guess our mileage depends on who we run into.

  • Amit

    I agree with most of the other sentiments here, the ALT.Net community has been having it’s own agenda, they are so immersed most of the time in their own egos that they forget that being part of the community is to help it rather than belittle it. There is nothing wrong in switching to Ruby or Linux or Mac or whatever lets you get your job done better but don’t stand on the other side of the fence and start cursing the side you were on before you moved over. There is even nothing wrong with standing between the two fences, just be a good neighbor and start helping out your fellow neighbors and belittling them is not going to help.

  • Justice~!

    Wow, what a surprise, a post crying about the .NET community followed by people either leaping to the defense of the .NET community or crying about the Rails community.

    I don’t know about you, but I actually prefer delivering actual software to clients rather than this repetitive navel gazing either way!

  • mendicant

    @Andy Vulhop:

    You’re right. But at the same time, Rubyists will never have the mothership sending ‘guidance’ that’s actually crap the way MS does for .Net devs.

  • Andy Vulhop

    @Justice~!
    Says the guy who bothered to come to this blog post, read all 41 comments, and draft a whiny, condescending reply.

    @Mendicant
    That’s the sort of rhetoric that lead me to say before that I see as much, if not more, negativity and bile from ALT.NET, NOT.NET, and segments of the ruby communities.
    Microsoft makes a lot of tools for a lot of different uses. ALT/NOT.NET types see tools intended for specific use cases by specific demographics and blow it out of proportion. (see: WebMatrix, LightSwitch, etc.)
    I see plenty of .NET devs pushing really hard for the “doing it right” approach every day. You can’t generalize all of the .NET developers in the world as 9-5 jobbers updating bank software and filing TPS reports. It’s simply not the case.

  • mendicant

    @Andy:

    I didn’t say anything about developers, but we all pay the price when the entity that people look to for guidance can’t provide it.

    As for blowing things out of proportion (re: lightswitch), that may be the case. But the second someone gets handed a lightswitch app and told to improve it, the bitching will be justified. I’m the guy whose desk that shit lands on, and it isn’t pretty. It wasn’t when it was access. It won’t be when it’s lightswitch. You’re right though. There’s a market and a specific use case for those tools. Guess how many people are going to stick to those.

  • http://www.twitter.com/enome Pickels

    Discussions like this remind me of Youtube conversations about music.

    I mean come on guys quit the Ruby is better VS .Net is better crap already. Deep inside we all know Python is the best.

  • Bart Waeterschoot

    Hey guys, shouldn’t you all be answering email questions instead of posting comments? ;)

  • Justice~!

    @Andy Vulhop
    “@Justice~!
    Says the guy who bothered to come to this blog post, read all 41 comments, and draft a whiny, condescending reply.:

    Hey Andy, it took me literally about 45 seconds to write my comment. Let me know what in my comment you considered “whiny”. Condescending? That I’ll grant you.

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