The Problem
Every time I go to look up something on Ruby, I'm flooded with Fanvoyism, Fanboyism, Fanboyism.
Every time I want to find something technical, I'm flooded with so much fucking fanboyism I can barely find what I'm technically looking for.
In software programming, it is extremely essential to have two eyes, not one. Every time I look into something new, I always want to see this:
- this is good because it is a layer of abstraction that saves time in some cases
- on the other hand, this is bad because...
I never ever wish to see only one sided fanboyistic nonsense. Every fucking Ruby article I read is so one sided that it reminds me of some cult, religion, or brainwashing. It reminds me of propaganda.
Every Ruby article out there starts out with:
Ruby is my lover and is so beautiful, and is so much better than everyone else, and it let's me do this in 1 line of code and no configuration and is perfect perfect best perfect perfect. Ruby ruby ruby love love love perfect perfect nothing wrong ever. Everything done perfectly elegantly blah blah blah Ruby is my Mom.
Not one person ever comments on the possible side effects or the possible problems with Ruby.
Well, actually, there is one thing people bring up.. they do bring up the speed issues sometimes. That's the only thing supposedly going against ruby according to the fanboys. This is how almost all Ruby people see Ruby: "well ruby is perfect, but the speed isn't the best.. but everything else is perfect"
Ruby is the God who saved us all and brought us to heaven, where naked angels ask us to be hugged and kissed each and every second that we move a limb. Yeah, right. Get a bloody clue!
What Should Be
All brilliant programmers have a critical eye. All brilliant programmers wish to see two sides of the story. All brilliant programmers love in depth critical analysis, including both negative and positive points of discussion. Ruby, unfortunately is propagated by one-sided fanboys who all have almost zero clue about what it takes to be a successful programmer. Being a successful programmer means being a skeptic and constantly being aware of things.
The last thing a programmer should do is put a blindfold on and become a brainwashed fanboy spreading overly positive propaganda about anything and everything stemming from Ruby. I've seen similar nonsense with Python crowds.. but Ruby seems even worse.
I guess part of the reason these Ruby people are so naive is because some of them are tired of messy languages like Perl. Maybe. that's just a guess. The sad irony is that I've seen regexes embedded in long two page ruby functions that look exactly like two page Perl line noise. The beauty of Ruby makes people write perl in a nicer way - which is dangerous. So people think this is okay, and even congratulate their fanboy friends for writing such nonsense. Every other fanboy pats the other fanboy on the back without ever stopping and critically analyzing the fanboy.
I wrote another article on this wiki about how some Ruby fanboy told another Ruby fanboy to use a Regex if he wanted By Reference ability in the language since Ruby only offered By Value. And the fanboy actually made it a point that it was good that Ruby offered us this workaround through regexes (even though regexes had nothing to do with the question the other person was asking). When does fanboyism go too far?
But am I a Modern Pascal Fanboy?
I myself do not constantly talk about how modern pascal is so perfect in all and every way possible.. I'm constantly criticizing it for poor things like disorganized exceptions, lack of contract programming, lack of a strong community (there's only two freepascal websites in the universe), lack of a really easy way to create DLL's, over use of objects, copying delphi too much, bloated sysutils unit, etc. etc. etc.
I have some fanboyish articles on modern pascal, but I also have equal (or more) critical harsh articles. I have two eyes. Two critical eyes.
Negativity and Critical Analysis is Essential
Being critical and extremely skeptical is essential in programming. It's how you find bugs, and its how you come up with better ways of doing things. Never, ever ever ever blindly follow some fanboyism. Never put Ruby sunglasses on or any other fanboy glasses on.
I hate this 'overly positive about everything' fanboy attitude. I'd rather see someone half pessimistic and half optimistic than constantly talking about how "great the world is and there is nothing wrong with slave labour in china and blah blah". Being overly positive about anything is extremely dangerous and unhealthy.
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