Stand and Be Counted

In the spirit of Nick Sieger's short statement on the recent uproar over Matt Aimonetti's "pr0n star" talk, I'm posting my one and only blog response to the whole thing.

Unlike Nick, I too often have used this blog as a soapbox. And too often I've ground my personal axe against projects that may or may not have deserved it. I'm human, I'm passionate and proud of my work, and I'm defensive of what we've accomplished, so I don't think this is surprising. I also see the same passion and pride in the Ruby community at large, and it's why I'm much more interested in attending Ruby conferences than Java conferences, where many attendees just seem to be going through the motions. And I know I've crossed a line at times, making or taking things too personal, and hopefully I've apologized or corrected myself whenever that's happened. If not, mea culpa.

But there's a disturbing trend in the Ruby community I haven't had to deal with since high school: in preference to open inclusion, more and more Rubyists seem to choose exclusivity.

This recent firestorm has continued in large part, I believe, because of the poor initial response by folks involved. Rather than recognize that there are people with different views, taking offense at different ideas and images, some decided to say "fuck you, this is who I am" and further alienate those people. I certainly don't expect we as passionate individuals won't commit occasional faux pas, especially when trying to be funny or provocative and especially when coming from different backgrounds that may be more or less accepting of certain behaviors. But to claim no responsibility for an obvious mistake, indeed to claim it's somehow the fault of the offended, or American sensibility, or political correctness...well that's just sophomoric.

I think to some extent we can understand (but not excuse) such behavior by realizing that the Ruby (or perhaps the Rails) community is largely a very *young* community. That's a large part of why this community is so passionate, why they're so committed to their ideals, why they're so opinionated, why they're so much more fun to hang out with than many 30-year programmers from other communities who've had the life sucked out of them. It's also a reason so many in the Ruby (or perhaps the Rails) community seem to act like they're in high school, forming cliques, sitting at their own tables, snubbing the new kids or the weird kids or anyone they perceive as "trying to be cool."

Have you been invited to any exclusive Ruby communities? I've been invited to a couple, and without exception I've found the idea offensive every time. In some cities, there are now multiple tiers of Ruby group: one for the proles, where anyone is welcome and everyone is either new to Ruby, a little weird, or both; and then perhaps one or two levels of more "exclusive" groups, usually more "advanced" and sometimes invite-only but generally exclusionary in some way.

There's also a technical "coolness" exclusivity many projects have had to cope with. Folks working on JRuby and IronRuby, for example, have had to deal with perceptions that they're either less "cool" because of their platform of choice or at least somehow less "Ruby" because they're not following the same golden path everyone else follows. Or perhaps their employers are out to take over Ruby, or they're going to infect Ruby with a bunch more "new" people who don't "get it". All the while the folks that use and work on these projects are working just as hard as anyone else to bring Ruby to the world, staying true to what makes Ruby special, and largely going against the grain in their original communities as well. Being snubbed, mocked, or attacked is often their reward.

You start to see a pattern here, yes?

So let's spell it out. I like the Ruby community because it's filled with people who love playing with new technology, without biases and prejudices getting in the way. My closest friends in the community are people like me, who find it repugnant that being opinionated has been too often equated with being rude and boorish, exclusionary and sophomoric, or simply mean. We are all here because of our love of technology, all here because we didn't feel like we fit in other places that weren't so passionate about beautiful code and fresh ideas. We are all here because we don't care if you're male or female, religious or irreligious, young or old, experienced or inexperienced, beautiful or plain, conservative or liberal, tall or short, fat or thin, foreign or domestic, gay or straight, black or white, or any grey areas in-between. We are all here because we love that more and more people like us join the community every day...the same people some of us immediately judge and box into their own subcool subgroups.

I don't want to join your damn clique. I don't think it's ok to set people aside or treat them like dirt because they don't believe what you believe or because they have their own way of thinking and acting or because they're not as worldly and mature and oh-so-smug as you are. I don't believe in "rock stars" and I don't believe that dubious title gives anyone the right to be an asshole to others or to have free reign to act any way they choose. I don't care what kind of car you drive, what house you live in, or what clothes you wear...and I sure as hell don't care how many people follow you on Twitter.

What I do care about is whether you're interested in sitting down and hacking out some code, looking at new projects with an open mind, helping someone new (maybe me) improve their skills, being part of something larger than yourself. If you promise not to treat me like a weirdo or a rock star, I promise to talk openly about your ideas, to show you the heart and soul of my code, and to freely share my thoughts...no matter who you are. I hope you'll attend my presentations and/or try out my projects, and in exchange I'll try to do the same the same for you. I hope you'll walk up to me at conferences and tell me about whatever "crazy" or "stupid" idea you have, and I guarantee to listen since it's probably not as crazy or stupid as you think. And I expect you to do the same for everyone else in the community and not treat me or anyone else any differently.

Now, let's move forward and get back to hacking and having fun!