Hello Ryan,
Sorry about the delay in response. As I understand, you are a very busy and important person in the Django community, quite obviously more than what I am in the Rails community. I respect you taking the time to comment about the post. As I understand, your work is used by many people, and I'm sure every single one of them appreciates the effort and time you have spent developing these things. I have read some of your posts and I was instantly under the impression you're a very learned many when it comes to Django and Python in general.
Thanks, I appreciate all that, but I think you're massively overestimating my importance! I'm just another developer like you who's enthusiastic about open source.
A friend, Brett Goulder, tells me you host a podcast. Perhaps if I were to ever jump ship, your code or your podcast may one day assist me. As the Heavy from Team Fortress 2 would say: "Engineer is credit to team!"
That would be awesome :)
My original thought when I read your tweet was of course, a feeling of negativity. This is natural human behaviour and should be shied away from; I'm learning.
It's my fault for being so negative. I could have been more constructive rather than destructive--for that, I am sorry.
The next logical step, for myself, would be to think about why you have written such a comment. Why do you claim that it "has a heavy smell of Axe Body Spray"? Well, it's probably the language in the post. The word "fuck" (or its derivatives) are used 3 times in the post. The word "bullshit" is used. The word "bastard" is used. And this, I assume is what makes the post "ha[ve] a heavy smell of Axe Body Spray". I used words that an angsty teenager (I assume these are the people who use "Axe Body Spray") would use.
But I'm not a teenager anymore, not far off, but not anymore. I use these words very, very carefully. I use them to convey a point, to convey emotion, and, quite honestly, to provoke a response.
What irked me about the post wasn't about language, it was the tone and the intent. You're attacking the very set of users that could potentially be doing the contributions, and for those who aren't Rails users yet, you alienate them so that they don't want to be part of that community.
Imagine that I'm a newbie web developer and I come across your post. I'm already self-conscious about my coding abilities, and now it looks like there's some sort of implicit contract that I have to dive into Rails development in order to use the framework, and if I don't do that, then I'm an asshole.
But yes, the language doesn't help either--it also makes the Rails community seem childish, and people who are looking to join a community usually don't want to join one that is seen as childish.
The reality is that people use open source projects *all the time* that they don't contribute to. Have you ever submitted a patch to OpenSSH? How about WebKit? To Ruby itself? When these tools have bugs, or don't have functionality that we want, we complain about it. Instead of bashing those complaints, we can find much more constructive ways to respond.
Text is such a poor form of communication, when done wrong. Voice I feel is the most effective, when done right. If you're able to see the person talking, then all the better. When you're reading a blog post though, you are unable to see the person. Sometimes, you cannot tell if they're being sarcastic, serious or just plain silly. This is why I think text is such a bad medium to portray this kind of point, but I do try to write to the best of my ability in order to convey my points. I can recognise that this does sound quite the angry post, but really it is a cry for help. I want people to be helping on Rails rather than being armchair critics of release cycles. These people have the absolute power to do these things with Rails, but they just do not. This is a rallying cry for them, to do something about it rather than criticising.
I agree, text is hard to get right. It's *extremely* difficult to convey nuance. If a rallying cry is what you wanted, though, then respectfully, I think you've missed the mark.
And yes, I attempt to provoke a response. And what a response this has provoked! This has been the most piece I have ever written, and what a varied response! I have been writing to people all day about their thoughts on the post and then comes yours. This made me re-evaluate my post. What could have I done to convey the point in less of an angsty way? Well, I could lay off the swearing for one. Some say I'm a talented writer (I laugh at those people), so shouldn't I be able to convey my point without resorting to harsh terminology? Should I perhaps instead of communicating in the way that I have done in the post, that I should appeal to people's greater motives, much like Dan Pickett did. He explained that if people contribute to Rails, it looks great on a CV / Resume. He did that all without swearing. Without getting angry. But that's his style, and this, mine.
There are lots of reasons to contribute to Rails. It looks great on a resume, it legitimately gives you experience with web development, you can make friends with other developers, it is fun, it can help you get your work done, you get to see your name listed as a contributor, etc. These are the positive things to appeal to, instead of the negative.
I was making a presentation based on my post to do at Railscamp (next weekend) and I think I will change tack all due to your one, simple, comment. I have already explained how people are "doing it wrong" (again, perhaps using the wrong terms), and now I think I should show them how to do it right. How they can get started on working with Rails. How they can find a ticket to work on. How they can submit a patch. How they can become a valuable asset to their community, to become someone like you. In "How to Win Friends and Influence People", a book I should probably study a little more, Dale Carnegie lists 8 things all people desire. The 8th thing is: "A feeling of importance". By contributing to Rails, people can gain this. They can hopefully see that they are making a difference to the community.
That's awesome! Sounds like it will be a great talk. But that said, you probably shouldn't let strangers with 140 characters on the internet influence you so much :)
Django holds "sprints" periodically where we try to get as many people involved from the community as possible. It happens online, and in local locations all around the world. We make it clear that even just triaging bugs is very valuable, and sometimes newcomers often do just that.
Django has a very scratch-your-own-itch mentality for feature additions and enhancements. If a core developer isn't interested in a feature, and nobody has enough interest and knowhow to implement it, it won't be implemented. The same cannot be said for bugs, these are mostly triaged and addressed much more quickly, both by core developers and by contributors.
I am very interested on your thoughts as to better manage this effort and thank you again for taking the time to read my post and comment about it.
Thank you too, for caring about open source, and for respecting my opinion :)
Thanks,
Eric Florenzano