12.07.07
What is it about Ruby that makes everyone so happy?
As I become more familiar with the Ruby language I have also become more familiar with the global Ruby community (though it will be quite some time before I am familiar to them).
As in all language spaces there are the founders, leaders, thinkers, personalities, corporate players, and random people you’d drink with (if the opportunity presented itself).
What’s interesting about this community, though, is the theme of happiness that everyone keeps talking about.
As in other communities people discuss language features, benefits, failures, frameworks, productivity, metrics, performance, blah blah blah. But this whole notion of happiness, as a language feature, is new to me.
I worked on a commercial compiler for several years early in my career and not once did the word “happiness” come up in design discussions or feature lists. “Tolerable”. “Correctness”. “Performant” (one of my favorite made up words). Absolutely.
But not happiness.
I’m trying to let it soak in slowly. People seem to be happy for basically the same reasons. It boils down to the “feel” of the language. The expressiveness of it. The ease at which things happen. Least surprise. Agile principles. BDD/TDD. RSpec. Lots of good stuff.
And, of course, Rails (and all the MVC, ORM, pluggable goodness it brings to the table).
For me, though, it’s none of those things. Those same things exist in other languages (and will in future languages).
Those things are brick construction, crown modeling and custom paint. Solid. Attractive. Welcoming. Stylish. Fun. But there are other well-made and attractive homes. In the future there will be new well made attractive homes.
Why this one? Why Ruby?
Just like when we picked the neighborhood for our home - it’s the local community. The Raleigh-area Ruby Brigade (Raleigh.rb). Sitting in on the meetings and learning from others. Hearing their stories about past, present and future projects. Listening to their excitement around Ruby and Rails. Learning from them and talking about development topics over laptops and burritos.
Associating with people who are smart, passionate, excited, and who get things done is infectious.
Even just for a few hours a month.
It gets me going. Pushes me to work on my own projects. Revitalizes my spirit. Inspires me to try out new things.
Seeing talented developers with a flare for design pushes me to improve my design skills. I’ve begun reading about graphic design, typography, print layouts, usability and photo processing. I’ve started to draw again. I’m sleeping less (in a good way), thinking more, and generally more excited about my day-to-day work (C#, not Ruby). I’m reconnecting with that person I used to be before I got trapped in the clutches of a monolithic corporate machine. He is much cooler than I am. At least he had better taste in socks.
None of this is really about Ruby as a language, though. It could just as well be Python or a Linux fetish. I’m sure there are some great local groups for those technologies.
But I’m not in those groups. I’m in Raleigh.rb. Maybe I’ll check them out some other time. Maybe not. I’m still having fun here.
So go now. Seek out a local Ruby Brigade in your community. If you can’t find one then start your own.
Sit in the back. Don’t say a word. Or sit up front and chat the place up. Doesn’t matter. Just find one and go. If you’re in the Raleigh area come by to the local meetup. I’ve found it to be a friendly, open group who enjoy seeing new faces.
Make it a New Year’s resolution.
You’ll be glad you did.
I promise.
Tim Lucas said,
December 8, 2007 at 1:42 am
It’s always refreshing to see people rediscovering their passion and excitement for what they do. The local Ruby community here in Sydney is a lot of fun and there’s some absolute brainiacs… and if you can get along to stuff like the railscamp we had a few weeks ago you’ll be even more stoked.
Josh Nichols said,
December 10, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Excellent post. I’ve been thinking about the very same thing lately.
I suspect that people that are passionate about software development in general are at least playing with Ruby nowadays. This is resulting in a Ruby community that is full of passionate people.
I’ve been attending my local Java User Group (the New England Java User Group) for the past year or so, and only very recently have been getting involved with the local Ruby community (the Boston Ruby Group).
Let me tell you, the difference is night and day. The JUG meetings are pretty huge on average (100-300 people usually), but it lacks a certain spark. You feel that most of the people there are day-only coders who aren’t necessarily to into what they are doing.
The Ruby meeting I went to, there may have been 20-30 people, but you could tell they were all into what they were doing.
Is that to say there isn’t passion in other communities? Certainly not, but the concentration feels much higher in the Ruby community.
josh said,
December 18, 2007 at 12:36 am
Indeed. After years of slogging through projects in C++ and Java I’d basically given up on writing software and was doing management. Being able to program in Ruby lets me be happy being a programmer again, something I haven’t really had since I got to work in Smalltalk. I think there’s something to the nature of the language that attracts the kind of community we’re so lucky to have. Or maybe it’s just Matz. Anyway, yay Ruby!