On a fanatical community

I’ve just finished Why Ruby on Rails won’t become mainstream, an interesting article with a theory about why the Ruby on Rails web framework won’t become mainstream. I’ll set aside all the arguments you can read for yourself except one, the one about fanaticism.

Regular readers of my blog know how strongly I feel on this topic. There are exceptions, of course, but the attitude of Ruby on Rails users toward Ruby skeptics or critics has been less than kind. This is a crowd convinced that it has found the ultimate answer to everything, and they are not afraid to let you know. I only have a simple advice for these people: you might be right, but just be humble. It never hurts.

It isn’t the first time I’ve heard that view of the people around Ruby or Rails. It’s a broad generalization, of course, and I don’t want to offend the reasonable people. There are plenty of them, as our podcast about Ruby and Rails shows. Still, there’s probably some truth to it. I’d say the fanatics are partly the price of success and rapid adoption, and partly a sign that the Ruby and Rails community hasn’t quite matured.

We weren’t any different. I smile when I remember how fiercely I defended PHP against .NET a long time ago. It’s a shame for Ruby and Rails, though, because the label will be hard to shake. I don’t think either needs people like that. The technology is successful enough on its own.

I’m glad that our Czech and Slovak Java community has managed to steer clear of that kind of fanaticism, at least in the forums I follow. Take the next CZJUG meeting, on a subject some Java developers might find controversial, alternative languages on the JVM such as Groovy and Jython.