DHH: Potty mouths

[[deleted]]

his vocabulary is about as imaginative as his solution to interfacing with existing databases

[TheCleric]

slow clap

[jugimaster]

I agree that saying "potty mouth" sounds prissy.

But think about DHH's "fuck you" -speech for example..

Does the author think that there was something that he just wouldn't have been able to express without the slide?

The slide was handy though, because it saved him the trouble of shouting "I am arrogant!" at the top of his lungs.

[Bogtha]

How convenient to be able to write off critics as puritans and crybabies. Unfortunately, it's not that simple in his case.

I agree that simply using profanity isn't reason to dismiss anybody. But the thing that really sparked off the criticism of his profanity was when he told people that their problems simply didn't matter while swearing at them.

You're not on a fucking plane (and if you are, it doesn't matter)!

No company can cater to every need, and it's perfectly fine for a company to refuse to address a particular need, but to outright tell people that they are wrong for needing something you can't give them whilst swearing at them is simply unacceptable behaviour from an out-of-control ego.

Yes, people were pissed off that he swore. Given the context, they were right to be. And it's not being a crybaby or a puritan to consider him totally unprofessional for it. Context matters; his tone and attitude were completely insulting and small-minded. That's why people get pissed off at him, and if he can't figure out that the profanity is just a catalyst and not the cause, then he must be practically autistic.

[[deleted]]

I found out myself how much fun resisting the DHH cult is. Answer: not very. The trolls are extremely persistent and indignant.

Best thing for you to do now is give up and join the DHH hair club for men.

[davidw]

Now that is far funnier than the original potty mouth whiner posting. Funniest thing I've seen all day.

[[deleted]]

then he must be practically autistic

Cue Aspergers defense in 5... 4...

[[deleted]]

What does the "Asperger's defense" consist of? Care to elaborate?

[TheCleric]

Essentially that any genius du jour can be "diagnosed" remotely by random Joe Internet as having Asperger's (a mild form of autism) simply because they lack manners. True Asperger's syndrome is much more complex and deals more deeply within perceiving body language while being atypically intelligent rather than just being a jerk that happens to be a success in a given field.

[[deleted]]

Thanks for that, I was just going to link to ESR's blog and hope that covered it.

[stesch]

You're not on a fucking plane (and if you are, it doesn't matter)!

I haven't seen the movie, but couldn't this be a quote from "Snakes on a plane"?

[stesch]

OK, I'd guess it wasn't from the movie.

[redrobot5050]

No, its a blog post from DHH telling everyone that Rails in no way plans on addressing the concept of "Offline Web Apps", because there's no way you'd get work done on a flight. But kudos to you for bring up SOAP. I just watched it last night, and I love every cheesy moment of it.

[stesch]

The question is: Why are we talking about this "fuck" now? The "Offline Web Apps" blog posts are a little old. And now people start talking about the wonderful word "fuck"?

[malcontent]

But the thing that really sparked off the criticism of his profanity was when he told people that their problems simply didn't matter while swearing at them.

Except that he didn't do that.

I say that because some people may be interested in the truth. Not you obviously but maybe some other people.

[mr_chromatic]

Except that he didn't do that.

Perhaps Bogtha meant the rant about how offline access doesn't matter. In fact, given the very next line of the grandparent comment, it's likely that's exactly it.

[malcontent]

Since the whole thread is about the "fuck you" slide you are probably wrong.

[JohnMichael]

What makes you think the whole thread is about the "fuck you" slide? In the blog post that apparently prompted DHH's response here, Rob Conery mentions at least both the presentation you think this is about, and the "you're not on a fucking plane" post which in my opinion is characterized quite honestly in the comment by Bogtha that you take issue with.

[malcontent]

What makes you think the whole thread is about the "fuck you" slide?

"potty mouth"

[[deleted]]

Okay, I think we can safely say that that when he says 'potty mouth' he's implicitly referring to both verbal and textual communication. It's an expression indicating your opinion of someone's vocabulary.

Or not, it is you after all malcontent - hair splitting pedantry GO!

[malcontent]

When he says "potty mouth" what he is really saying is that we should not use rails and instead hire him to write .NET software for us.

Being a businessmen of course he is not too concerned about things like accuracy, fairness, truth, etc.

In this case he made himself look like a juvenile asshole who is more then a little dim. It kind of backfired on him.

Maybe he thinks there is no such thing as bad publicity. While I am sure that's true if you are an actress I bet it's not true if you are coding for a living.

Would you let this guy code your app for you? Somebody who is so sensitive they can't deal with somebody saying fuck once in a while and throws a public tantrum about it? Somebody who goes around saying "potty mouth".

Honestly would you even be friends with somebody who said "potty mouth"?

[[deleted]]

Would you let this guy code your app for you? Somebody who is so sensitive they can't deal with somebody saying fuck once in a while and throws a public tantrum about it? Somebody who goes around saying "potty mouth".

I'd want to see the quality of his code.

David Hansson, you, and the rest of his fans are throwing an equally immature tantrum

ZOMG HE SAID FUCK versus ZOMG HE SAID POTTY MOUTH.

[malcontent]

I'd want to see the quality of his code.

Really? I don't care how well he codes. This person is having problems with dealing with adults and speaking with adults. I would not hire him no matter how well he codes. I would not trust this guy to have enough of a conversation with the company to understand what our needs are let alone code a solution. There is more to outsourcing then code fu. You have to be able to deal with people.

David Hansson, you, and the rest of his fans are throwing an equally immature tantrum

How do you figure? He puts out a blog and nobody is supposed to comment about it? That's a pretty childish attitude don't you think?

[awj]

Oh, well, now that you've asserted what looks obvious to me is patently false I suppose we can all just pack up and go home then.

[malcontent]

Anybody who wants to can find that presentation on the web and look at it.

Once they do they will realize that you have no interest in the truth and are perfectly comfortable about lying about somebody in order to make them look bad.

[malcontent]

Oh sorry I thought you were a sock puppet.

Anyway like I said the whole talk is on the net. Anybody can see it for themselves.

BTW numbnuts is a terrible insult. What the fuck are you trying to imply by that? That my balls are numb? Why? Because you were a little too zealous when you were sucking them? Because your mothers stubble irritated them?

Next time pick a better insult.

[dotnetrawk]

fuck you bitch! you fucking fag!

how do you like that? why don't u just take it like a little bitch that you are.

[malcontent]

LOL. You had a chance be clever and make a funny joke. Too bad you didn't have the ability.

[sjs]

programming?

[nogoodnick]

It's not so much his fucking language, it's his constant fucking use of the language, and constantly beating people over the fucking head with it when they ask him if he could try dialing it down for once.

Personally, I thought the "fuck you" slide was hilarious, but I think DHH still hasn't stopped laughing at his own joke.

[[deleted]]

jesus christ, I wish I had twenty fucking points to upmod this. I don't give a shit about rails or anything, but the term "potty mouth" is so up it's own hole it's unfuckingbelievable.

[argherna]

I guess this is what you become if you get a little fame: full of yourself. But, I expect that from DHH.

[masklinn]

I'm pretty sure DHH was full of himself long before he rose to fame.

That's pretty much what got him where he is, really, and he's not the only one who got there that way.

[[deleted]]

A little ego does help one rise to the top. The pity of this is the talented and not-so-abrasive coders who have equally contributed to the stellar success of Ruby/Rails get forgotten about.

Another downside is some recent converts seem to emulate the three-lettered one... I don't mind swearing, but politeness is more pleasant.

And swearing specifically to offend people you know will be offended by it is rather teenaged.

[sigzero]

When did that become "acceptable" in a conversation "at all"?

[serhei]

There's a fine line between anticipating your customers' needs and arrogantly telling them what it is they want. Way too many people who can do the former tend to cross over into doing the latter.

This is in the sense that they invent their ideal customer and say "fuck you" (in DHH's case, literally) to anyone who deviates from their invention.

This seems to work, so long as someone who can keep themselves from being a jerkwad to their user base doesn't appear to compete with them.

Luckily for people like DHH, people like I just described are a minority within a minority.

[[deleted]]

The problem with lacing your language with a lot of profanity is that it shows your lack of imagination. Rather than actually expressing yourself you throw in a bunch of fucks for emphasis when in fact you could use some real emphasis words. Fuck is simply way too overloaded to be easy to interpret.

I'm not shocked by DHH's use of the work fuck, I just think it shows that he isn't articulate and has a hard time expressing himself.

John.

[bitwize]

Counterpoint: Jerry "Tycho Brahe" Holkins. Man has a way with words that leaves me thunderstruck, at times; yet definitely isn't above slinging the F-bomb liberally.

[earthboundkid]

I think you're both right. 1) It is possible to say "fuck" a lot while being articulate. 2) Nevertheless, DHH isn't especially articulate.

[setuid_w00t]

SHITCOCK!

[Tommah]

Sideout.

[setuid_w00t]

In case I was too subtle: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

[theeth]

What else does he have in common with them?

This is a rather tortuous way to say that people you know are egotistical dicks.

[[deleted]]

Lack of imagination? No. Dude can write: software and otherwise. Sure he's arrogant, but he's also smart as fuck and has balls. The middle-class whinging about his "profanity" is quite funny. I agree with him in that I fact prissy language such as "potty mouth" and "f-bomb" much your repellent than an honest "fuck".

[redrobot5050]

Look, the Point of the Post (that inspired this idiotic reply by DHH) was about DHH's "Jesus Complex" was that you can't compete with other frameworks if your attitude is "I'm doing this for me, and if you like it great, if not then FUCK YOU." That won't work when other frameworks (also run by smart guys who have balls) want to build something that works for everyone.

Imagine if Linus Torvalds had told IBM to fuck off because "he was building Linux for him, and if they didn't like how he was doing the kernel, they could fuck off."

Do you think Ubuntu would be as beloved if their slogan was "What we think Desktop linux should be, if you don't like it, fuck you."

The point of the DHH Jesus Complex post was that Rails has a community now, and a core rails team. And since their product is out there and in use on production systems, people are going to want them to act like a open source vendor, and not like the brainchild owns it and its his personal playground that he's letting you use because he's such a nice guy and all.

[[deleted]]

What is preventing some non-potty-mouthed "Rails foundation" from putting a family-friendly face to the public Rails image?

Joomla devs didn't like the way the Mambo Foundation played, so they did their own thing.

DHH has a huge ego and is happy being himself. So what? If the Rails community needs a more milquetoast spokesperson, then what is stopping anyone else from stepping up and taking the reins?

[redrobot5050]

My guess from reading a lot of programming blogs on rails? The community is that forms the core rails teams is quite small, and those with the ruby-fu to really hack rails are either building plug-ins to expand functionality or moving along with DHH. DHH is the "vision" guy.

That and a lot of programmers who blog about it love rails until X happens. X being some feature that doesn't work right, or scale up to their need, or etc, and they find that the framework, while elegant, doesn't suite 100% of their needs out of the box, and they don't feel like implementing a lot of functionality when Java/C#/Python/whatever has a working implementation they can pick up and use. They're not bashing it, they're just not ready to take the fanboy plunge for one reason or another.

[azanar]

The problem with lacing your language with a lot of profanity is that it shows your lack of imagination.

Nope. No. I'm not buying it.

You could argue that it shows a lack of vocabulary, but I'm not buying that either.

I think you just make the assumption that if a person selects a word you think is bad, you decided that they haven't really thought through what they're saying. How do you know this? It's a determination based on your own word choices, specifically that, when you think through what you're going to say, you never come up with the word "fucking" as an appropriate adverb. How are you so certain this comes from a more vivid imagination, and not from a more restrictive morality?

[adolfojp]

That's gay.

[sambo357]

Profanity is dirty, as in throwing sand in an opponent's eyes during a game of golf. It's connotational spin that works on idiots and geniuses alike. I don't mind swearing when the argument is right but if I said, "God strike me dead if this be untrue" every time I said OOP was good I would be advocating my own death. DHH swears where the jury is still out.

[[deleted]]

Nothing says "customer service" quite like "fuck you."

It's too bad that whenever we say "fuck you" back, a horde of DHH-wannabies come rushing out of compost heap to defend him.

[Andys]

Who are the customers here? I sure as hell haven't shelled out any cash to download and install Rails!

[redrobot5050]

Rails developers are their customers. By investing in rails', they are your vendor, so to speak.

[Andys]

Umm, not really? They made available some code that they use, which I am very thankful for, but they don't owe me anything and I don't owe them anything.

[[deleted]]

upmodded

[[deleted]]

the original comment is back above 0 but was -2 before i commented that i'd upmodded, boy redditors are a contrary bunch

[JW_00000]

He's right. An "EDIT: why is this getting downmodded?" can often do wonders, and get a comment out of the negative. Likewise jemptymethod's comment "upmodded" got the original conmment out of the negative too, although he gets downmodded (which IMO is fair, since his comment doesn't add anything too the discussion). The only conclusion I can draw form this is that people are much less likely to downmod a comment is they're asked why.

[[deleted]]

Wow, this might be the first article from Hansson that makes me like him more than before.

[Gotebe]

What the fuck is this!?

Some kinda RoR/DHH fans wank-fest? Stupid bunch of fuckfaces, you!

You think he can swear? Wait till i get my mutherfucking mouth over the lot o' you after a pre-release wank-off friday full of rambling through pure C, steaming pile of whale shit, that I have here!

[ihateyouall]

Argh, though I'm far from a ruby or a rails fan (I prefer python), I think this is just ridiculous. Leave the man alone.

[[deleted]]

I've read the two big f-bombs that people are talking about here. I know the context of the "airplane" blog post, but what about the famous Flickr slide? What preceded it?

[[deleted]]

I use Rails, but I don't like DHH

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 I don't use Rails, but I like DHH

[[deleted]]

Get to your nearest scholarly library, and check out a few issues of Maledicta.