Or, perhaps he simply finds it amusing to post his ever-odd thoughts and watch the reaction. Does that have to be cocky?
Or, perhaps I give him a pass for whatever he does, because I enjoy his personality. In any case, it doesn't seem to me that such vitriol is necessary toward another human being, and fellow hacker. If you find him so annoying, why are you paying so much attention?
No. You you do your thing. I'll do this. I don't want to have to run another command to see what lines have changed in my file. I want small, non-intrusive icons in the gutter without doing a damned thing.
I use both. If I need a full diff, fugitive is great. Sometimes I just want to scan to see what lines I changed in a a file. In other words, it is impractical to use this plugin to find out what _files_ you've changed. It is great for finding out what lines in whatever file you've opened have changed.
It's actually a lot easier, unless you have next-to-zero traffic, to ask _them_ to take an action that puts the info in your inbox, rather than dig in logs, which could have that specific user's information buried amongst hundreds of other entries. It's a time-saver.
What if you have insufficient logging (Heroku sans a decent logging plugin, for instance)? What if you built the thing, but it's hosted by a third-party that limits log access? What if you want some non-technical or not-that-technical person to handle the issue?
As hackers, we tend toward "do-it-yourself", but there are a lot of cases where that isn't practical or economical.
I think, essentially, he is saying that you end up spending time maintaining your template, losing much of the benefit of the template, depending on how often you start new apps. I have found this to be true at a certain threshold of complication in the app template. However, if you are indeed starting a brand new Rails app every month, as you said, you likely don't have the same cost, as maintenance to the app template happens on a more regular basis. Even as a consultant, I don't start new Rails apps that often, and side projects tend to involve experimentation outside of what I might consider my "stable" stack.
If he is near Indianapolis, it could help to get involved in the local hacker scene. We have a pretty decent number of meetings and the like he could attend. See the calendar at http://indyhackers.org.
I like to think we're pretty merit-based here, but it is a largely conservative state (though this city can be pretty "blue" compared to its surroundings), so I could be wrong. Knowing people is a significant portion of the battle, and just showing up to events can go a long way.
What I took away from this, which, reading the other comments, is not at all what everyone got out of it, is that a bunch of graphs can be a great, but a system that automatically makes recommendations based on those graphs (taking some of the decision-making out of the equation) is closer to ideal.
I might be projecting, though. I talk regularly with the people behind Pirate Metrics (http://piratemetrics), which does that sort of thing. (Records, displays, but makes suggestions as well.) S, that sort of idea has been on my mind.
They're both good. My open source repos are on Github. My private (thus client-related) repos are on BitBucket. I've been pretty happy with this configuration.
Perhaps it helps that I know a few other companies and developers locally using BitBucket for private repos.
Incidentally, reliability and price are both valid reasons to "use an also-ran copycat", in my personal opinion, if that also-ran copycat is pretty damn good.
I don't think "mentioning Github" is the only piece people are using when deciding to question your communication skills. The word "microcontroller", except in certain extremely specialized situations, should probably not be used with a client. I understand it's a hard pill to swallow. I mean, you're both speaking English. Why does it seem like you're not speaking the same language?
In a way, you're not speaking the same language. Try assuming your clients have no concept of not just programming, but any of the process of building an application or solution to a problem that uses technology. Don't discuss details. They are probably paying you so that they don't have to worry about the details.
By way of example: I have the reverse problem with my wife. She is a nurse. When telling me about her day, she used to fly through a great deal of technical details using an amazing number of acronyms and abbreviations that I found not just unintuitive, but completely incomprehensible. I genuinely care about how her day was, but I found myself exclaiming in exasperation, "I have a clue what any of that means!" She now explains only what is necessary to get the point across, and defines acronyms as she goes along, if necessary. That works, but, in your situation, I'd abstract my communication at least one more level than that.
Though it'll be interesting to see where this goes, it ultimately doesn't make me think better of TNW. It can only affect how I view Mr. Gross. Even then, it won't affect me much; the TNW author was a lesser character in the post, where the TNW CEO was the star.
It could've been nice. I don't have links to back this up, but I seem to remember getting patches accepted for it was difficult. I am assuming that is because there wasn't anyone on core that really cared about keeping it up to do with the rest of the Active(.*) universe.
I have been thinking the same thing while reading the article and comments. I haven't been to any of the larger conferences, so I thought I'd keep my mouth shut in case I'm simply missing something. There are a couple monthly tech meetings in Indy that either are at a bar, or go to a bar afterward. I don't recall having seen a single intoxicated person at one of the local events, let alone a majority of the attendees.
Unsubstantiated, un-sourced theory: football players are helmeted, and that helment makes them feel as if 1) they are risking no head damage to themselves, and 2) there is no risk of head damage to others. Thus, lots and lots of targeting of the head and/or usage of the head as a lead component in making or breaking tackles.
On top of that being probable, players try to hide concussions (resulting in compounded head injuries the next time), and players rebel against the NFL's attempts to legislate fewer dangerous head-related hits and tackles. Actually, even fans and the media have the tendency to pine for skull-crushing, cringe-inducing hits at high-velocity.
I could probably have summarized the problem in one word: "culture".
Internet Explorer 6 was released in 2001. I realize this is not central to the article, but "A lot of products were made in the end 90s that only worked in Internet Explorer 6" bothered me. Perhaps it simply made me feel old, but I'd like to think its some sort of noble sense of historical correctness.
Nice! Would it be possible to add Ruby as a language example? I could likely figure out more-or-less how the code would appear using one of the other languages with which I am familiar, but it would be quite useful to see the changes to code similar to what I am most often writing.
> But I will say this, do you think this guy made up his post about using Ruby to try to write this game? If you don't think it fabricated, do you think he's alone?
I neither think his story is fabricated, nor do I think he's alone. (I didn't say I really thought your story was fabricated, either.)
> While I appreciate that none in your Ruby group would think this, I'd also ask why do they believe this?
I don't know that we would all choose C++, were we building a game, but the performance of Ruby is frequently a topic of discussion. We are lucky enough to have several members that have significant experience working with/around Ruby performance, and they share their knowledge. In other words, were you to choose one of us at random, we would more likely be able to tell you why Ruby is not a good idea, as opposed to why C++ is.
For what it's worth, I help to organize a fairly active Ruby group, and I am certain that, if not zero, nearly zero of us would make this proclamation. In fact -- and I mean not to attack you, but just to illustrate how incredulous I am -- I tried to think of a reason there might be for you to fabricate or exaggerate that story. I don't really think you did, but my mind went there.