From: Francis Hwang <sera@...>
Date: 2005-04-01T23:59:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Respect and Disappointment


On Mar 31, 2005, at 2:31 PM, Dick Davies wrote:

> * Mark Probert <probertm@acm.org> [0318 20:18]:
>> The question that I personally ask myself is, given these comments, 
>> why would
>> I want to use Rails when there are lots of alternatives?
>
> The simple answer is 'because it's really good.'
>
> The next question that springs to mind is:
>
> 'what the hell does the developers personality have to do with your 
> choice
> of tools?'

Talking more theoretically: It does matter. Most software is a process, 
not a product.

If you're doing anything interesting, a new software lib is not going 
to do 100% of what you need. Even a heavily patched, highly used 
framework like Rails. So you'll need to submit patches or bug reports 
and generally communicate with the folks that can make the changes. 
(You can always patch yourself, of course, but for some gnarly bugs 
that can slow a newbie down quite a bit.) You'd like to know that those 
people are considerate and responsive and have a little bit of 
humility.

I'm just speaking theoretically here. I don't use Rails--I don't find 
its way of thinking a good fit with mine--but if I were considering it, 
I wouldn't let DHH's blog post change my mind. But it is possible, in 
general, for a software maintainer to be such a repugnant personality 
that it makes me think twice about using his code.

Francis Hwang
http://fhwang.net/