johan-hal-se-85n0as.txt (7868B)
1 [1]JohanJohan Halse 2 [2]GitHub[3]Mastodon[4]GitHub profile[5]Mastodon profile[6]GitHub profile[7] 3 Mastodon profile 4 5 2025-09-26David, please stop posting 6 7 Let's be realistic: DHH isn't going anywhere. He owns the trademarks, he 8 controls the Rails Foundation, he sits on the board of Shopify, and he doesn't 9 give a shit about you. In fact, he seems positively giddy at the idea of people 10 being driven away by his occasionally repugnant blog posts and xeets. I'm sure 11 he'd very much like an ideologically pure userbase for Rails, the same way he'd 12 love for Britain to only contain native brits, wink wink. If that means the 13 "Rails community" becomes a small stagnant pool of people getting paid to cheer 14 for him and Tobi, that's clearly a price he's willing to pay! He'll be staying 15 on, whether you like it or not. 16 17 But be that as it may, I sincerely wish he would just shut up. He has a severe 18 case of [8]American Brainworm and like most of that parasite's hosts, he's 19 absolutely determined to infect everyone else with their culture war. He 20 actually managed to recognize how harmful it was to his own company, and banned 21 political discussions as a consequence. But somehow, he has yet to grasp the 22 fact that in a bankshot way, everyone working with Rails is working with him at 23 their day job, and it's exactly as corrosive to the Ruby community as it was 24 inside Basecamp at the time. It's sort of unreal to me that he can't wrap his 25 head around that, having gone through what he did and having taken so much 26 obvious psychic damage from it. To the best of my kremlinology it seems like he 27 views these posts as some fun harmless sport, where he goes off to "[9]annoy 28 people on the Internet" as a way of blowing off steam, to then sit back and 29 guffaw to himself at how he really pwned the woke-ass SJWs this time, won't 30 they get their panties in a twist, haha roflmao pepe the frog meme dot jpeg. 31 Then he can't refrain from diving into the backlash and escalating the conflict 32 even further. I wish he'd stop. It's unseemly. It's destructive. 33 34 Run me on a need-to-know basis 35 36 I have no idea what political views John Hawthorn, Xavier Noria, Jean Boussier, 37 or the rest of the core team hold. You read something from Byroot or Tenderlove 38 and it'll be all [10]competence and [11]excellence and sometimes very bad dad 39 jokes and I can respect these people for what they do and how they conduct 40 themselves both online and in real life. I really don't need to know if they're 41 paying members of the Charlie Kirk fanclub, or if they think people with ADHD 42 should just stop fidgeting and get over themselves. I don't need them to air 43 their grievances with DHH in public, either–I don't know whether they've patted 44 him on the back and said "good one" every time he's spat another slimy gob of 45 far-right politics at everyone, or whether they've privately told him to please 46 stop because they're collateral damage in his tiresome rants. And not knowing 47 is a splendid and magnificent thing, because it means we can all project our 48 beliefs onto the core team and they can remain paragons of Ruby virtue to 49 everyone. [12]Recent events have also shown pretty conclusively that anyone who 50 fails to show Dear Leader enough respect will be promptly replaced by some 51 AI-assisted Shopify drone. The current economy is heavily tilted towards the 52 people holding the bags of money and they're squeezing that for all it's 53 worth—I have a lot of sympathy towards people who just want to do their job and 54 avoid getting fired because they're not enthusiastic enough towards the mad 55 king. 56 57 But I really do think that being a leader and a public figure, in open source 58 as well as in a company, comes with a price of admission: it requires some 59 goddamn decency. Elementary shit like being able to contain your glee when you 60 feel the political winds blowing your way. Not antagonizing others for the 61 lulz. Not broadcasting virulent American schisms to the rest of us sorry fucks 62 who are already inundated with FAR TOO MUCH OF IT on top of all the mass 63 layoffs, AI shenanigans, and russian drone strikes we wake up to every day. If 64 you can't extend this kind of basic courtesy to the people who work with you, 65 you're just not a good leader. He gets called a fascist and bristles at it, but 66 the fact is that he picked each and every one of these fights himself. And 67 again, it's mind-bendingly strange how someone like DHH, given his long history 68 of [13]telling others to [14]keep it private and [15]not get political, doesn't 69 get this. The rest of Rails core seem to understand it perfectly well. 70 71 The deal 72 73 Rails has been a successful project for literally decades now, and with [16]a 74 few [17]tweaks it's still a great choice for anyone who wants to build solid 75 web applications. Ruby as a language and ecosystem has benefitted tremendously 76 from it, too. People can get paid to write in what often looks like magical 77 pseudocode, that's a lovely thing, and I believe David's personality was a big 78 part of its early success. Going up against what he calls the Merchants of 79 Complexity with their onerous but well-funded Java and Microsoft stacks 80 required a strong mix of courage, arrogance, and grit. But those kinds of 81 qualities can really curdle when you make the journey from underdog to 82 incumbent—especially if you end up rich and untouchable, and surrounded by 83 yes-men with blue ticks. To the rest of us, it looks like a real beast of a 84 mid-life crisis, and it's playing out on an open stage. Everyone wants to look 85 away, but he insists on putting his cringe right in front of us and 86 gesticulating over it. It's terrible. 87 88 I think most rubyists would be pragmatic enough to just accept things for what 89 they are and let them settle, if he'd just let them. If he stopped posting 90 inflammatory rightwing nonsense then we could all pretend he wasn't drunkenly 91 stumbling towards the open arms of QAnon and the manosphere with tears of joy 92 on his face. The deal is this: if he can shut his mouth, we can hold our noses. 93 Then we can all make this work despite our differences. The alternative is that 94 Rails keeps shrinking and sliding into irrelevance as Shopify's Backend, some 95 parts of which are open source. 96 97 I'm Johan Halse: web developer, feared duelist, renowned lover, compulsive 98 liar. I made this fat footer because that's how footers are supposed to look 99 these days! 100 101 While you're here, consider following me on Mastodon. Am I always correct on 102 Mastodon? No. But am I always hilarious? Also no. But I'm angling for enough 103 followers to credibly call myself a "thought leader" and retire to a quiet life 104 of picking shameful public fights with JavaScript celebrities. 105 106 If Mastodon's not your jam, maybe star one of my GitHub repos. It's really the 107 least you can do. 108 109 Also: if you found my technical writing interesting, you should know that I 110 founded a company called Varvet many years ago and they're still going, so give 111 them a buzz if you want help with web stuff. 112 113 Copyright © Johan Halse 2025 114 115 116 References: 117 118 [1] https://johan.hal.se/ 119 [2] https://github.com/johanhalse 120 [3] https://ruby.social/@hejsna 121 [4] https://github.com/johanhalse 122 [5] https://ruby.social/@hejsna 123 [6] https://github.com/johanhalse 124 [7] https://ruby.social/@hejsna 125 [8] https://johan.hal.se/wrote/2023/01/13/twitter-didnt-need-fixing/ 126 [9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vagyIcmIGOQ&t=11655s 127 [10] https://byroot.github.io/ruby/performance/2025/08/11/unlocking-ractors-generic-variables.html 128 [11] https://tenderlovemaking.com/2024/09/29/eliminating-intermediate-array-allocations/ 129 [12] https://joel.drapper.me/p/rubygems-takeover/ 130 [13] https://world.hey.com/dhh/meta-goes-no-politics-at-work-and-nobody-cares-d6409209 131 [14] https://world.hey.com/dhh/make-politics-private-again-9b47aaaf 132 [15] https://world.hey.com/dhh/linkedin-71ee75d9 133 [16] https://johan.hal.se/wrote/2024/11/19/turbo-considered-harmful/ 134 [17] https://www.phlex.fun/