From: Francis Hwang Date: 2005-03-31T20:17:54+09:00 Subject: Re: Respect and Disappointment My .02 cents: I'm a self-professed Mac snob, myself: I'm typing this on a Powerbook 12", and a few weeks ago I posted a job description that included the phrase "Apple and Unix snobs highly encouraged to apply." I've never spent my own money on a computer that wasn't made by Apple, and I've got an iPod that follows me everywhere I go. Like Paul Graham, I have been pleased to note that many of the techie events I go to have a high Powerbook quotient. I find the Linux desktop interface sort of clunky, and the idea of wrestling with system config issues in Linux doesn't seem like it's worth the time. And personally, I find the whole design of the Wintel platform vaguely insulting. But: + To say that you have "run all but dry of understanding for programmers that willfully pick Windows as their platform of choice" to me seems to imply a complete disinterest in understanding how other people make such decisions in the first place. For one thing, I know plenty of people who have never made the switch out of cost-consciousness, and I live in New York, not a very cost-conscious place to begin with. + Apple's legal moves, of late, have not been very accepting of open principles, and those moves should give its supporters pause. There have been lots of lawsuits and cease-and-desist orders regarding trade secrets, iTunes hacking, etc., and of course I take this all a bit personally, considering that Apple shut down my own iPod parody auction last December on eBay. (I was able to call their bluff and sell it on my own site; see http://fhwang.net/art/uiuvnse/ for the whole story.) + Not every super l33t h4x0r is giving Apple love these days anyway. In fact, Tim Bray just posted an interesting rant to his blog: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/03/29/Switch . Now, DHH is a smart guy, but if we're going to start making techie appeals to authority, I think inventing XML trumps inventing Rails. In a nutshell: There is no such thing as a self-evidently perfect platform. Until there is, I'm certainly not willing to judge a programmer by such a silly thing as what platform he uses. In fact, in my recent job interviews the question never comes up. There are lots of other, less ham-handed ways to find if a programmer is the match for your company ... For me, they're questions like: How familiar are they with the values of simplicity and power embodied in Ruby? How familiar are they with the principles and ideas that might be gleaned out of agile methodologies, design patterns, and refactoring? Do they have cool shoes? ( Just kidding about that last question. Sort of. ) Francis Hwang http://fhwang.net/ On Mar 31, 2005, at 3:39 AM, Josef Pospisil wrote: > Hello Curt, > > cause you don't have comments and David stop comments of this story, > I'll put my opinion here, even if everybody has this thread in > ignored. > > I fully agree with David and reaction like he is lame, unprofesional > and so are blind in my eyes. It was just his personal view (as I feel > it, but I'm not native speaker as you can see around, so maybe I've > missed something), and maybe reaction like this speaks more about > people writting it (and many of them are authorities for me). I think > that not so many people in our little software world are bigger > proffesinals and totaly seeing forward people like David is. We now > have (as I can see it) one of the best domain specific language for > free, do you think it should happen if David was using wintel? I'dont. > > And for funding. I'm living in Czech Republic, and macs are sooo > expensive here (30pc more than in states) and wages are.... guess, but > year ago I've managed to get 12" PB from USA through one friend (funny > she was in Vegas on IBM yearly conference). It costs me half year work > in my university job, but I'm still feeling that it worth every penny > and I get my money back, from work I've done on it. Surely I could do > it on my freebsd machine too, but ... not with such leisure and > happiness. And with no flame, it's just like changing the way you work > on computer (butler, witch, growl ..), I feel like my computer is > working for me (same with ruby and rails), not that I'm working for > him. I think, that if I didn't buy one I never know about Rails, cause > I didn't have time to explore it. > > So it's my really long, bad written, late.... and so comment. Sorry > for disturbing, it was just on my mind and I had to say. Even if I'm > wrong. > > See ya in Prague one day :-). Do you know that czech republic has the > most advanced net (km/person) of railroads in the world? > > -- > Ing. Josef Pospisil > On 30.3.2005, at 17:21, Curt Hibbs wrote: > >> I've finally started a blog. I really didn't want to go public with >> it until I was sure I keep it up, but DHH posted a entry to his blog >> that I feel compelled to comment on. >> >> You can read about it on my blog: >> >> http://www.bloglines.com/blog/CurtHibbs >> >> Curt >> > > >