Curious, why would DHH trigger a mass exodus?

A mantra in the Ruby community is "Matz is nice so we are nice". By contrast, DHH is the type of person who would use the hey.com domain[0] to post rants about London being only 1/3rd white, "Pakistani rape gangs", etc. His racist tirades used to be limited to his twitter, but he's shown he's very willing to use business resources to push his racist politics. More discussions here:

- https://lobste.rs/s/fpri94/dhh_problem_2014

- https://old.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/1no4zu2

[0] https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

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dymk 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ignoring DHH's politics (which are enough to make me look for alternatives), he makes breaking technical decisions to tooling with little to no community involvement. E.g., https://github.com/hotwired/turbo/pull/971

He makes it difficult to trust that, were he in charge of Ruby, he wouldn't just take the reigns and stubbornly do whatever he thinks is technically right for "aesthetics" at the cost of all else.

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brigandish 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Ruby "community" has long been dogged by politics and culture war stuff. This comment[0] on a flagged submission has lots of links for getting up to speed.

Maybe they're right, there would be an exodus, I just wonder if other languages' communities will want the trouble. The Japanese Rubyists don't care for a second, a nice by-product of Japanese insularity. Ruby would continue in Japan just fine without westerners, don't worry.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45379652

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throwaway48921 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd much prefer Jeremy Evans[0] taking over rather than DHH. Jeremy is a Ruby core committer (and much more pleasant person), unlike DHH.

[0] - https://github.com/jeremyevans

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brigandish 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Anyone who won't discriminate against others for their politics would be an improvement, because that's not what's been happening in many core projects.

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throwaway48921 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I am not suggesting Jeremy Evans simply because of politics. I think he's very underrated in the community and the work he does is incredible. Having interacted with him a number of times, he's been really helpful and pleasant. I think those qualities make him a good candidate.

Fun fact: Jeremy won the Ruby Prize 2019: https://rubyprize.jp/19_iv-nominees01-2-en.html

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brigandish 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I agree. He has scolded me before though, for submitting code he didn't like the look of. Felt a tad harsh at the time, that's the kind of thing that puts people off contributing. However, he's a better programmer than me so if he didn't like it he's probably right. Could improve his bedside manner a bit though. I'm sure others have said that about me too, perhaps I'm a hypocrite.

Regardless of that, anyone who doesn't discriminate against others for their politics would be an improvement.

Edit: a improvement on the other westerners in the core team who might be touted as the next benevolent dictator, as I doubt that benevolence would maintain.

	▲	jeltz 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		In every interaction with Evans I have had he has been super nice and welcoming to contributors. Maybe he had a bad day.
	▲	throwaway48921 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> I agree. He has scolded me before though, for submitting code he didn't like the look of. Heh, do you have a link to the PR?

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throwaway48921 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Curious why this suggestion was downvoted to hell.

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igravious 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've no idea Jeremy ;-)

	▲	jeltz 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That is clearly not Jeremy Evans. Maybe a funny joke if that innocent commenter had not been downvoted to hell.

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jeltz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No idea, Jeremy Evans is a really good coder and a nice person. Also a much more influential voice in the Ruby community than DHH.

	▲	4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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flykespice 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Would you keep using a programming language leaded by a racist? I wouldn't

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npteljes 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If programming is just my hobby, then maybe. But would you, for example, quit your current job and look for another, just to change the programming language? I know I'm not that sort of person.

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chipotle_coyote 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think it's not as much "if this guy becomes the lead I'm immediately quitting my Ruby job to return to PHP" as much as "if this guy becomes the lead I'm probably going to return to PHP for my next job."

	▲	npteljes 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I have my doubts, even for this softer version. These are things where one might feel very strongly in a moment, or even for a longer time, but facing a real life decision, there are so many other factors. Of course we will never know the outcome of this, it's just my two cents.

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yes1would 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yup, I quit Shopify because the CEO and COO are both Nazis, and coincidentally Tobi is good friends with DHH.

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6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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jeltz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Ruby is not and has never been led by DHH.

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dudeinjapan 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is exactly why we shouldn't use KKScript either. Plus it has 1-based array indexes.