"Nice"

I've felt some of the same hostility. Sometimes it seems like "Matz is
nice so we can be jerks [...]

I suspect that part of the problem is, "nice" is nearly meaningless in English. "Might I suggest that the world would greatly benefit if you jumped off a cliff?" is, arguably, nice, because I'm being polite.

I gather that the Japanese word that got translated to "nice" in "Matz is nice..." has a more specific meaning.

I'm one of those folks who would rather have a proper code of conduct, with an explanation for how it would be enforced. But that ship has sailed here for now, I seem to recall.

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I suspect you are true on all counts. You have been polite, even when
my choices don't seem to make sense. You've helped me challenge my
assumptions. Thank you.

One of my concerns is about Ruby itself. The language is a great
general purpose tool and easy for people to learn. Yet the community
seems slanted towards ignoring or even pushing away new people.
There's probably no real way to enforce "don't be a jerk" on IRC as
it's real time and moderators are not always present. Not even sure
there's a way to do it on an e-mail list. The community quality is
impacted by our behavior. Some of that behaivor seems very negative.
If we discourage new Ruby-ists and watch currenty Ruby people move to
Go, Elixir, or whatever, we seem to be losing both quality and
quantity.

What can we do to bring that ship back to port and scrub off the
barnacles so she can sail futher and faster? Or has it sunk already?

···

On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 8:17 AM, Andy Jones <Andy.Jones@jameshall.co.uk> wrote:

I've felt some of the same hostility. Sometimes it seems like "Matz is
nice so we can be jerks [...]

I suspect that part of the problem is, "nice" is nearly meaningless in English. "Might I suggest that the world would greatly benefit if you jumped off a cliff?" is, arguably, nice, because I'm being polite.

I gather that the Japanese word that got translated to "nice" in "Matz is nice..." has a more specific meaning.

I'm one of those folks who would rather have a proper code of conduct, with an explanation for how it would be enforced. But that ship has sailed here for now, I seem to recall.

The play on words in Matz Is Nice And So Are We is that it spells “minasaw” which is very close to 皆さん (minasan) meaning something like “everyone” or “all of us” in Japanese.

···

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 3, 2018, at 21:17, Andy Jones <Andy.Jones@jameshall.co.uk> wrote:

I've felt some of the same hostility. Sometimes it seems like "Matz is
nice so we can be jerks [...]

I suspect that part of the problem is, "nice" is nearly meaningless in English. "Might I suggest that the world would greatly benefit if you jumped off a cliff?" is, arguably, nice, because I'm being polite.

I gather that the Japanese word that got translated to "nice" in "Matz is nice..." has a more specific meaning.

I'm one of those folks who would rather have a proper code of conduct, with an explanation for how it would be enforced. But that ship has sailed here for now, I seem to recall.

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The problem with a Code of Conduct is that it tends to pick up feature
creep very quickly. One language mailing list I am a member of had a
proposed Code of Conduct that was quite short and completely reasonable but
included points such as:

*. ) No top posting
*. ) How you should format your code

The first draft had already dragging in mailing list etiquette and code
formatting in an attempt to clarify what constitutes (un)acceptable
behaviour. These issues completely sunk the Code of Conduct. The main /
important points were pretty much uncontested but telling someone that top
posting and death threats were the same didn't sit well

Fortunately the person who proposed this wasn't so stiff necked as to force
them through, but someone more dedicated might easily brush criticism aside
as haters and stick to their guns

Even if you get past this issue it becomes too easy to add one more rule
each time things get a little uncomfortable rather than try and sort things
out. If you have a hammer and all that :frowning:

Pretty sure I would have been banned multiple times over the years if we
had a Code of Conduct :stuck_out_tongue:

I seriously don’t know what the problem is... The Ruby Philosophy has always been “make the developer happy.” Matz being that nice guy who would sit down with you and listen to your issues in the middle of a busy Ruby Kaigi was just a thing that inspired people to introduce minasaw.

I like using Ruby a lot, because it makes so many task so trivial.
I also started using elixir and I like how well the community responds to other developers efforts, but I don’t think the Ruby community is worse... It has just been around longer and certain questions have come up so many times that people just ask you to google, instead of asking the same thing over and over again.

If someone feels that the overall tone in the Ruby community has become worse, then please don’t just complain... What exactly is the problem? What kind of answer would have been nicer? Or how should people change their way of answering things?

To be honest, a lot of people might call me an arrogant a*hole because of how I answer questions. I don’t want to be that guy! Please, teach me how to do better! I really don’t know what else to do anymore :frowning:

···

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 3, 2018, at 23:23, Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@googlemail.com> wrote:

The problem with a Code of Conduct is that it tends to pick up feature creep very quickly. One language mailing list I am a member of had a proposed Code of Conduct that was quite short and completely reasonable but included points such as:

*. ) No top posting
*. ) How you should format your code

The first draft had already dragging in mailing list etiquette and code formatting in an attempt to clarify what constitutes (un)acceptable behaviour. These issues completely sunk the Code of Conduct. The main / important points were pretty much uncontested but telling someone that top posting and death threats were the same didn't sit well

Fortunately the person who proposed this wasn't so stiff necked as to force them through, but someone more dedicated might easily brush criticism aside as haters and stick to their guns

Even if you get past this issue it becomes too easy to add one more rule each time things get a little uncomfortable rather than try and sort things out. If you have a hammer and all that :frowning:

Pretty sure I would have been banned multiple times over the years if we had a Code of Conduct :stuck_out_tongue:

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Fabian, for me the heartburn came from trying to do basic stuff in
Ruby, on an old version because that's what I needed to use, and
people kept telling me over and over to upgrade even when I explained
that I could not. They spent a lot of time telling me to upgrade and
very little answering the actual questions. I gave up on trying to
grow enterprise Ruby usage at that point.

It led me to a blog post:
http://leamhall.blogspot.com/2016/08/using-ruby-187-for-fun-and-uh-fun.html

The funny part happened a few weeks ago. Someone told me to go to an
older version since I'm now using 2.6-dev. :slight_smile:

Leam

···

On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 11:02 AM, Fabian Zitter <fabian.zitter@gmail.com> wrote:

If someone feels that the overall tone in the Ruby community has become worse, then please don’t just complain... What exactly is the problem? What kind of answer would have been nicer? Or how should people change their way of answering things?

To be honest, a lot of people might call me an arrogant a*hole because of how I answer questions. I don’t want to be that guy! Please, teach me how to do better! I really don’t know what else to do anymore :frowning:

I well remember my first pull request to Rails, and how I felt when the feedback assumed I understood -- deeply -- how the patch I was introducing would interact with some other part of the framework. Part of me wanted to crawl under a rock, because there was no way I was going to get that smart any time soon. (I know, Rails isn't Ruby.) If I had listened to that part of me, I would never have gotten any better. I could easily imagine someone with a thinner skin being so disheartened that they never tried another thing. Ultimately, that's what we as a community risk if we assume everyone knows as much as we do: we don't remain open to new ideas, or questions that allow us to re-think what we know.

Walter

···

On Aug 3, 2018, at 11:02 AM, Fabian Zitter <fabian.zitter@gmail.com> wrote:

I seriously don’t know what the problem is... The Ruby Philosophy has always been “make the developer happy.” Matz being that nice guy who would sit down with you and listen to your issues in the middle of a busy Ruby Kaigi was just a thing that inspired people to introduce minasaw.

I like using Ruby a lot, because it makes so many task so trivial.
I also started using elixir and I like how well the community responds to other developers efforts, but I don’t think the Ruby community is worse... It has just been around longer and certain questions have come up so many times that people just ask you to google, instead of asking the same thing over and over again.

If someone feels that the overall tone in the Ruby community has become worse, then please don’t just complain... What exactly is the problem? What kind of answer would have been nicer? Or how should people change their way of answering things?

To be honest, a lot of people might call me an arrogant a*hole because of how I answer questions. I don’t want to be that guy! Please, teach me how to do better! I really don’t know what else to do anymore :frowning:

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 3, 2018, at 23:23, Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@googlemail.com> wrote:

The problem with a Code of Conduct is that it tends to pick up feature creep very quickly. One language mailing list I am a member of had a proposed Code of Conduct that was quite short and completely reasonable but included points such as:

*. ) No top posting
*. ) How you should format your code

The first draft had already dragging in mailing list etiquette and code formatting in an attempt to clarify what constitutes (un)acceptable behaviour. These issues completely sunk the Code of Conduct. The main / important points were pretty much uncontested but telling someone that top posting and death threats were the same didn't sit well

Fortunately the person who proposed this wasn't so stiff necked as to force them through, but someone more dedicated might easily brush criticism aside as haters and stick to their guns

Even if you get past this issue it becomes too easy to add one more rule each time things get a little uncomfortable rather than try and sort things out. If you have a hammer and all that :frowning:

Pretty sure I would have been banned multiple times over the years if we had a Code of Conduct :stuck_out_tongue:

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I seriously don’t know what the problem is... The Ruby Philosophy has always been “make the
developer happy.” Matz being that nice guy who would sit down with you and listen to your issues in
the middle of a busy Ruby Kaigi was just a thing that inspired people to introduce minasaw.

I'm really bad at people.

Perhaps that's why Leam is referring to me as "polite". Because to compensate for being bad at people, I have a rule: I assume that everyone else is just as entitled to be where they are as I am to be where I am.

I'm pro codes of conduct etc, but I have no idea how we would enforce them, or get from here to there, because I'm so bad at people. But I'm convinced that the ultimate truth is this: no amount of rules or codes will ever be better than Everyone Acting Like A Grownup and treating other folks like they were folks, not walls or stepping stones.

It's hard to act like a Grownup sometimes, and I fail as often as the next guy. I've worked in places that were much worse than most Ruby folks I know. We could be worse. But we could always be better.

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That is not a Ruby specific problem though... Ruby before 2 is just not feasible anymore, it is like asking a Mercedes-Benz car shop to fix your 1901 Benz Oldtimer. There might be a few specialists, but the technology has advanced so far, there is literally no one in the community who could answer your questions.

If the company you were trying to do that for is stuck on Ruby 1.8, and they are not willing to upgrade, the they have to developer their own solutions.

···

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 4, 2018, at 0:10, leam hall <leamhall@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 11:02 AM, Fabian Zitter <fabian.zitter@gmail.com> wrote:
If someone feels that the overall tone in the Ruby community has become worse, then please don’t just complain... What exactly is the problem? What kind of answer would have been nicer? Or how should people change their way of answering things?

To be honest, a lot of people might call me an arrogant a*hole because of how I answer questions. I don’t want to be that guy! Please, teach me how to do better! I really don’t know what else to do anymore :frowning:

Fabian, for me the heartburn came from trying to do basic stuff in
Ruby, on an old version because that's what I needed to use, and
people kept telling me over and over to upgrade even when I explained
that I could not. They spent a lot of time telling me to upgrade and
very little answering the actual questions. I gave up on trying to
grow enterprise Ruby usage at that point.

It led me to a blog post:
http://leamhall.blogspot.com/2016/08/using-ruby-187-for-fun-and-uh-fun.html

The funny part happened a few weeks ago. Someone told me to go to an
older version since I'm now using 2.6-dev. :slight_smile:

Leam

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I know the feeling. I have been there, I have done that. My first pull request ever was totally stupid, trying to do everything I thought was good practice at once, while introducing a new feature.

I was asked to separate those 2 things, which I did... The feature pull request went through without questions, the code style / architecture thing I submitted was compared to “stuffing your mess into a bunch of different boxes, instead of dealing with the mess in your room.

I was pretty devastated... They have redone the gem in a more refined way, but similar style I suggested back then.

Do I feel a certain kind of satisfaction? Yes... Did it hinder my development as a programmer? No! It gave me a new perspective I had to think about and made me more humble.

···

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 4, 2018, at 0:10, Walter Lee Davis <waltd@wdstudio.com> wrote:

I well remember my first pull request to Rails, and how I felt when the feedback assumed I understood -- deeply -- how the patch I was introducing would interact with some other part of the framework. Part of me wanted to crawl under a rock, because there was no way I was going to get that smart any time soon. (I know, Rails isn't Ruby.) If I had listened to that part of me, I would never have gotten any better. I could easily imagine someone with a thinner skin being so disheartened that they never tried another thing. Ultimately, that's what we as a community risk if we assume everyone knows as much as we do: we don't remain open to new ideas, or questions that allow us to re-think what we know.

Walter

On Aug 3, 2018, at 11:02 AM, Fabian Zitter <fabian.zitter@gmail.com> wrote:

I seriously don’t know what the problem is... The Ruby Philosophy has always been “make the developer happy.” Matz being that nice guy who would sit down with you and listen to your issues in the middle of a busy Ruby Kaigi was just a thing that inspired people to introduce minasaw.

I like using Ruby a lot, because it makes so many task so trivial.
I also started using elixir and I like how well the community responds to other developers efforts, but I don’t think the Ruby community is worse... It has just been around longer and certain questions have come up so many times that people just ask you to google, instead of asking the same thing over and over again.

If someone feels that the overall tone in the Ruby community has become worse, then please don’t just complain... What exactly is the problem? What kind of answer would have been nicer? Or how should people change their way of answering things?

To be honest, a lot of people might call me an arrogant a*hole because of how I answer questions. I don’t want to be that guy! Please, teach me how to do better! I really don’t know what else to do anymore :frowning:

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 3, 2018, at 23:23, Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@googlemail.com> wrote:

The problem with a Code of Conduct is that it tends to pick up feature creep very quickly. One language mailing list I am a member of had a proposed Code of Conduct that was quite short and completely reasonable but included points such as:

*. ) No top posting
*. ) How you should format your code

The first draft had already dragging in mailing list etiquette and code formatting in an attempt to clarify what constitutes (un)acceptable behaviour. These issues completely sunk the Code of Conduct. The main / important points were pretty much uncontested but telling someone that top posting and death threats were the same didn't sit well

Fortunately the person who proposed this wasn't so stiff necked as to force them through, but someone more dedicated might easily brush criticism aside as haters and stick to their guns

Even if you get past this issue it becomes too easy to add one more rule each time things get a little uncomfortable rather than try and sort things out. If you have a hammer and all that :frowning:

Pretty sure I would have been banned multiple times over the years if we had a Code of Conduct :stuck_out_tongue:

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We have 1.8.6 code still in production, along with the requisite Rails 1.X
so questions will still need answering for the poor soul that has to
maintain it. You cannot realistically upgrade that big a gap, you have to
throw it out and start again

But currently it works and I have other fires to fight

So if all you have to say is "upgrade" then you have nothing to contribute
to the conversation. Then say nothing

If all your questions are similarly dismissed with "upgrade" then you are
only going to stop asking question because everyone is being a jerk about it

We need to stop this version shaming :stuck_out_tongue: Maybe a Code of Conduct is in order
:slight_smile:

···

On 3 August 2018 at 16:28, Fabian Zitter <fabian.zitter@gmail.com> wrote:

That is not a Ruby specific problem though... Ruby before 2 is just not
feasible anymore, it is like asking a Mercedes-Benz car shop to fix your
1901 Benz Oldtimer. There might be a few specialists, but the technology
has advanced so far, there is literally no one in the community who could
answer your questions.

Yes, the grand idea is:

If you know more than someone else, teach them.

If they know about the same, have a conversation and exchange knowledge:

If they know more: thank them for teaching.

If your realized you can not go through the step you are currently in, the take a step back, try to remember what it was like for you back in the days and remember the good old: “If you ain’t got nothing nice to say, then ask them if they really want to deal with this community” :wink:

···

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 4, 2018, at 0:15, Andy Jones <Andy.Jones@jameshall.co.uk> wrote:

I seriously don’t know what the problem is... The Ruby Philosophy has always been “make the
developer happy.” Matz being that nice guy who would sit down with you and listen to your issues in
the middle of a busy Ruby Kaigi was just a thing that inspired people to introduce minasaw.

I'm really bad at people.

Perhaps that's why Leam is referring to me as "polite". Because to compensate for being bad at people, I have a rule: I assume that everyone else is just as entitled to be where they are as I am to be where I am.

I'm pro codes of conduct etc, but I have no idea how we would enforce them, or get from here to there, because I'm so bad at people. But I'm convinced that the ultimate truth is this: no amount of rules or codes will ever be better than Everyone Acting Like A Grownup and treating other folks like they were folks, not walls or stepping stones.

It's hard to act like a Grownup sometimes, and I fail as often as the next guy. I've worked in places that were much worse than most Ruby folks I know. We could be worse. But we could always be better.

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This is something that I think Mike Dalessio gets especially right. Many times, the first line of his reply to a question about Nokogiri is "Thanks for asking this question." It acknowledges the value that a question brings to the one who answers it, because it provides a jumping-off point for explaining how something works, and thus bringing value back to the community. I've answered many many thousands of questions on mailing lists over the years, written enough prose to fill many of the fat O'Reilly books I used to devour. But if you set me down to write about any of those topics, I would be lost without those questions to guide me toward what people needed to know.

Walter

···

On Aug 3, 2018, at 11:38 AM, Fabian Zitter <fabian.zitter@gmail.com> wrote:

I know the feeling. I have been there, I have done that. My first pull request ever was totally stupid, trying to do everything I thought was good practice at once, while introducing a new feature.

I was asked to separate those 2 things, which I did... The feature pull request went through without questions, the code style / architecture thing I submitted was compared to “stuffing your mess into a bunch of different boxes, instead of dealing with the mess in your room.

I was pretty devastated... They have redone the gem in a more refined way, but similar style I suggested back then.

Do I feel a certain kind of satisfaction? Yes... Did it hinder my development as a programmer? No! It gave me a new perspective I had to think about and made me more humble.

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 4, 2018, at 0:10, Walter Lee Davis <waltd@wdstudio.com> wrote:

I well remember my first pull request to Rails, and how I felt when the feedback assumed I understood -- deeply -- how the patch I was introducing would interact with some other part of the framework. Part of me wanted to crawl under a rock, because there was no way I was going to get that smart any time soon. (I know, Rails isn't Ruby.) If I had listened to that part of me, I would never have gotten any better. I could easily imagine someone with a thinner skin being so disheartened that they never tried another thing. Ultimately, that's what we as a community risk if we assume everyone knows as much as we do: we don't remain open to new ideas, or questions that allow us to re-think what we know.

Walter

On Aug 3, 2018, at 11:02 AM, Fabian Zitter <fabian.zitter@gmail.com> wrote:

I seriously don’t know what the problem is... The Ruby Philosophy has always been “make the developer happy.” Matz being that nice guy who would sit down with you and listen to your issues in the middle of a busy Ruby Kaigi was just a thing that inspired people to introduce minasaw.

I like using Ruby a lot, because it makes so many task so trivial.
I also started using elixir and I like how well the community responds to other developers efforts, but I don’t think the Ruby community is worse... It has just been around longer and certain questions have come up so many times that people just ask you to google, instead of asking the same thing over and over again.

If someone feels that the overall tone in the Ruby community has become worse, then please don’t just complain... What exactly is the problem? What kind of answer would have been nicer? Or how should people change their way of answering things?

To be honest, a lot of people might call me an arrogant a*hole because of how I answer questions. I don’t want to be that guy! Please, teach me how to do better! I really don’t know what else to do anymore :frowning:

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 3, 2018, at 23:23, Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@googlemail.com> wrote:

The problem with a Code of Conduct is that it tends to pick up feature creep very quickly. One language mailing list I am a member of had a proposed Code of Conduct that was quite short and completely reasonable but included points such as:

*. ) No top posting
*. ) How you should format your code

The first draft had already dragging in mailing list etiquette and code formatting in an attempt to clarify what constitutes (un)acceptable behaviour. These issues completely sunk the Code of Conduct. The main / important points were pretty much uncontested but telling someone that top posting and death threats were the same didn't sit well

Fortunately the person who proposed this wasn't so stiff necked as to force them through, but someone more dedicated might easily brush criticism aside as haters and stick to their guns

Even if you get past this issue it becomes too easy to add one more rule each time things get a little uncomfortable rather than try and sort things out. If you have a hammer and all that :frowning:

Pretty sure I would have been banned multiple times over the years if we had a Code of Conduct :stuck_out_tongue:

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Wading into the fray a bit…

The reason “Upgrade” isn’t useful, even if it’s the best solution is that it’s one that really doesn’t answer the problem statement at hand. Do we KNOW that the upgrade of languages would fix it? Or is that a presumption? And if upgrading is not possible, then assisting in troubleshooting or saying nothing at all is most useful. Now - if there’s a statement saying “man, I’m sorry, the only way I know how to fix that is to upgrade and that’s because of x, y and z” then sure! That’s useful, because it may help you think through the next step of a problem. But just “upgrade”…no...

All that being said, I’m now in JS framework-land and I’ll say that the people who have answered my questions when I was learning Ruby (on the web and in person) were far more polite and helpful than those in JS-land.

I’m not sure how much help Codes of Conduct are, but we should remember as a community that none of us were born knowing how to code in language x (or even how to code at all), and snarky comments don’t make us look any smarter… helpful ones do.

Cheers,
Bevin

···

On Aug 3, 2018, at 10:46 AM, Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@googlemail.com> wrote:

On 3 August 2018 at 16:28, Fabian Zitter <fabian.zitter@gmail.com <mailto:fabian.zitter@gmail.com>> wrote:
That is not a Ruby specific problem though... Ruby before 2 is just not feasible anymore, it is like asking a Mercedes-Benz car shop to fix your 1901 Benz Oldtimer. There might be a few specialists, but the technology has advanced so far, there is literally no one in the community who could answer your questions.

We have 1.8.6 code still in production, along with the requisite Rails 1.X so questions will still need answering for the poor soul that has to maintain it. You cannot realistically upgrade that big a gap, you have to throw it out and start again

But currently it works and I have other fires to fight

So if all you have to say is "upgrade" then you have nothing to contribute to the conversation. Then say nothing

If all your questions are similarly dismissed with "upgrade" then you are only going to stop asking question because everyone is being a jerk about it

We need to stop this version shaming :stuck_out_tongue: Maybe a Code of Conduct is in order :slight_smile:

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I am sorry but you are still the guy bringing in a vehicle that has not been produced for decades and whining about regular car shops not being able to fix your car. If the problem is that the fuel you need is no longer produced, you should ask yourself what the real problem is.

Or, once more, to be straight forward: Unless your company is willing to pick up the ancient Ruby version and fix whatever your problem is, then don’t complain about people not being able to fix problems in a version that is so out dated that even an upgrade might be really difficult. What exactly do you expect from ANY language here? I don’t want to deal with 1996 Basic, just because someone is not willing to upgrade.

···

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 4, 2018, at 0:46, Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@googlemail.com> wrote:

On 3 August 2018 at 16:28, Fabian Zitter <fabian.zitter@gmail.com> wrote:
That is not a Ruby specific problem though... Ruby before 2 is just not feasible anymore, it is like asking a Mercedes-Benz car shop to fix your 1901 Benz Oldtimer. There might be a few specialists, but the technology has advanced so far, there is literally no one in the community who could answer your questions.

We have 1.8.6 code still in production, along with the requisite Rails 1.X so questions will still need answering for the poor soul that has to maintain it. You cannot realistically upgrade that big a gap, you have to throw it out and start again

But currently it works and I have other fires to fight

So if all you have to say is "upgrade" then you have nothing to contribute to the conversation. Then say nothing

If all your questions are similarly dismissed with "upgrade" then you are only going to stop asking question because everyone is being a jerk about it

We need to stop this version shaming :stuck_out_tongue: Maybe a Code of Conduct is in order :slight_smile:

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That would be an appropriate response if the differences were as
significant as a hundred years of automotive engineering and practice.
However, if the question is about syntax that hasn't changed, why not
answer the question. Or, as Bevin suggested, decline to answer. The
active shaming of telling someone to upgrade, expecially after they
explain why they cannot, hurts the community and the person.

What do you think of my blog post?

One of the things a Ruby book author pointed out to me was that many
Ruby-ists aren't familiar with older versions of Ruby. Another funny
point is that the Ruby certification exam is based on Ruby 2.1;
unsupported since April 2017. I think we, and I include myself, can do
a better job of encouraging others.

···

On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 11:58 AM, Fabian Zitter <fabian.zitter@gmail.com> wrote:

I am sorry but you are still the guy bringing in a vehicle that has not been
produced for decades and whining about regular car shops not being able to
fix your car. If the problem is that the fuel you need is no longer
produced, you should ask yourself what the real problem is.

I referred to you as "polite" because you stuck through my learning
curve, even though I'm a bit slow sometimes. Okay, most of the
time....

···

On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 11:15 AM, Andy Jones <Andy.Jones@jameshall.co.uk> wrote:

I seriously don’t know what the problem is... The Ruby Philosophy has always been “make the
developer happy.” Matz being that nice guy who would sit down with you and listen to your issues in
the middle of a busy Ruby Kaigi was just a thing that inspired people to introduce minasaw.

I'm really bad at people.

Perhaps that's why Leam is referring to me as "polite". Because to compensate for being bad at people, I have a rule: I assume that everyone else is just as entitled to be where they are as I am to be where I am.

Thank you for that data point. Am I correct in assuming that if
your Rails 1.x app is ever replaced, it would unlikely use Ruby?

That's my experience, at least :<

Fwiw, I'm trying to do everything I can within the core team to
ensure we don't go through another 1.8 -> 1.9 transition again;
or worse, something like Python 2 -> 3.

···

Peter Hickman <peterhickman386@googlemail.com> wrote:

We have 1.8.6 code still in production, along with the requisite Rails 1.X
so questions will still need answering for the poor soul that has to
maintain it. You cannot realistically upgrade that big a gap, you have to
throw it out and start again

If just a part of the application fails, we will replace it with whatever
works. Having multiple versions of Ruby within the same project is a pain
so another language will look like an easy win (Python would be the most
likely choice, Lua would be a good second)

Should the whole application fall apart or require a significant update
then we would go with the latest version of Ruby and Rails (or perhaps
Sinatra)
We have in excess of 40 Rails projects and tend to use the latest stable
version of Ruby and Rails when starting a new project. So we have almost
all versions of Ruby from 1.8.6 (yes 6) up to 2.4.4, Rails from 1 to 5

We tend to stick with Ruby unless there is an exceptional reason and by
default go with Rails. Although cases where Sinatra makes a better fit are
starting to become more common as our Sinatra skills improve

If anyone experiences issues on IRC in #ruby or #RubyOnRails related
channels, my handle is baweaver. Ping me and they will be dealt with
appropriately. I can't promise I'll always be online, but I'll always read
what I'm sent.

Now as far as being nice, the goal is to improve a little every day. I'm
not going to go after someone making a concerted effort to improve, we grow
together. I still have lessons to learn myself, quite honestly, and there
have been people in the community that have helped me become a better
person.

The first step is being willing to admit you need to improve. All of us do,
but being brave enough to say it for the first time is worthy of praise.
The biggest thing is to be aware, and always consider how the things you
say and do may be taken by someone else. Develop empathy, and you'll find
life to be far more enjoyable as a result.

There's a secret to being an amazing programmer, and one that quite a few
miss: people. How you interact, the connections you make, the problems and
challenges you face and solve, all of it.

Being the most amazing Ruby programmer ever matters not one cent if you
refuse to acknowledge the continual need for growth and networking.

···

On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 9:36 AM, leam hall <leamhall@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Aug 3, 2018 at 11:15 AM, Andy Jones <Andy.Jones@jameshall.co.uk> > wrote:
>> I seriously don’t know what the problem is... The Ruby Philosophy has
always been “make the
>> developer happy.” Matz being that nice guy who would sit down with you
and listen to your issues in
>> the middle of a busy Ruby Kaigi was just a thing that inspired people
to introduce minasaw.
>
> I'm really bad at people.
>
> Perhaps that's why Leam is referring to me as "polite". Because to
compensate for being bad at people, I have a rule: I assume that everyone
else is just as entitled to be where they are as I am to be where I am.

I referred to you as "polite" because you stuck through my learning
curve, even though I'm a bit slow sometimes. Okay, most of the
time....

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