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April 19, 2007
The scaling rails brouhaha
There has been a *little* bit of heat directed DHH's way on comments he has made regarding the problems Twitter were having trying to scale their application. Mark Pilgrim's contribution is the funniest I've seen so far
DHH does seem to have a colossal ego. All the same, it's undeniable that he has initiated a framework that has legs and I am looking forward to where it goes in the near future (speed of development has been astounding)
However, I think the main problem with all of this is that DHH is not Linus Torvalds. Linus is a great leader. He knows when to ignore people, he knows when to say no and he is excellent at handling conflict, getting people talking, overcoming the issue and moving on to a brighter future for all.
As I said DHH is no Linus. That is the only problem here. Any technical issues can and will be overcome. In fact the Twitter issue was largely solved by a plugin developed by a member of the Rails community. Great!
All technical issues will be overcome in the same manner, I guarantee it.
What rails needs now is not more good developers or more work put into x, y or z (well, it does, but..), the area that is most lacing for rails is leadership. DHH seems to be the de-facto leader, but, he has not excelled in the post. I'm not saying he can't - he just hasn't yet. Probably due to the fact that he is more interested in getting on with his life - being a leader takes a lot of time.
If DHH doesn't rise to the occasion, or if someone in the Rails community doesn't see the problem and either call an 'election' (herding cats anyone?) or stage a bloodless coup, then I can see the success of Web2.0 companies based on Rails generating more and more high-profile conflict and divisiveness - maybe even a fork, which would be bad news (or maybe not...)
This can only result in FUD for those considering adoption, and crumble the patience and respect of those already in the community.
In conclusion, what I am saying is - shit or get off the pot, Dave!
Posted by dottie at April 19, 2007 1:42 PM
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Comments
I agree with you completely.
DHH's attitude in respect to scalability is incredibly simplistic. Scalability isn't just a question of throwing more hardware at the problem, it's a hardware /and/ software issue. Throwing your toys out of the pram because the developers of a Twitter highlight some deficiencies in your framework doesn't address that issue.
On one hand DHH says scalability is a non-issue, on the another he says the problem has now been addressed by the community. If it was a non-issue in the first place, then why did it need to be addressed?
Posted by: Derek Lawless at April 20, 2007 11:00 AM
I guess the main point I was trying to get across was muddied a bit.
Yes DHH's approach is simplistic but that is not the key problem here. The technical issues can and will get dealt with and in this case there was a happy ending fairly quickly.
The problem I have with the issue is that DHH actually *stood in the way* of allowing Rails to move forward to prove some point to himself.
He's a feckin eejit - regardless of whether he is arrogant or not - he needs to separate himself from Rails now that it has matured beyond his years or he needs to do some growing up.
Posted by: dottie at April 20, 2007 11:10 AM