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DHH: The great surplus

Posted by Annalisa Afeltra in Ruby on Rails - 2 comments

David Heinemeier Hannson’s Keynote talking about the great surplus that Rails has above other mainstream languages

He says that Ruby on rails is still a tiny community but we already have this surplus above mainstream languages.

Why do we have this surplus? What is the surplus and how can we maintain it?

DHH says that there is still something missing from mainstream languages that gives Rails this surplus above them.

Mentioning Joel Spolsky that touched on it this, what makes rails a blue chip above other mainstream languages. RoR is not a unique environment to have these characteristics, for example if it also had Smalltalk, Lisp but these miss something to make it more economical.

How did rails get the surplus??

Rails is continuing to grow and new people are interested and joining the community. We have grown in the last 5 years in the Rails environment

Developers that believe that they are special, it becomes a negative point.

He also says that there are so many different industries in RoR, and even in the same industries things are never the same in web applications. Programmers are not so unique, we all have something in common.

We ceded flexibility?

“People like choices better than having to choose.” We like having the choice but when we come down to choosing. In the rails community we don’t like having to choose but we want to have the choices to choose from. We don’t want 50 plugins to choose from but we want one that is in the framework.

From this the convention over configuration is derived; we don’t want to have to choose every time inside the configuration of my webapp.

1. ERb like template language base
2. ActiveRecord like ORM
3. Prototype like the JS Framework

These are not unique alternatives but default choices but it is great to give the programmer the opportunity to choose, they show that they care and that we as programmers decide what matters in technology

With RoR you get more things done than in the mainstream environment. He quotes the statement that “Great people rarely fail because of poor technology” and comments great people can do more than not fail, they can do great too.

Another reason why Rails has a surplus is because he feels that we care about ourselves. He also says that “Ruby is designed to make programmers happy” : which is an awesome saying to sum up programmers. We have momentum, we have a lot pushing for us. But he says that there is some bad news.

Bad News

1. mainstream copies rails: but that is highly unlikely (java being able to do scaffolding)
2. dramatic alternative arrives, a new approach. just as rails got rolling with more than 5% advantage over mainsteam development.
3. Rails becomes mainstream, loosing the surplus by becoming one of the others.

DHH adds that if everyone used rails it would be cool. Although the famous question “does it scale” he says, so what if it doesn’t he adds, does that mean that they wont switch. You want people to use bad (he actually says crappy) tools so that you have an edge over the others. We want to rescue people from bad tools.

Therefore before our surplus reduces we need to spend it.

It is only a job

DHH comments that there are so many people that use the saying when quoting on their job “it’s just a job”. He continues to say that within the Rails community, this language is not only a job. It is not possible to sacrifice 1/4 of your life to something that you don’t enjoy. For him that is a sad phrase.

How do we spend our surplus?

He says that we need to blow the surplus at every opportunity that we have. Running at 110% at all time, pushing out features and completing the projects as soon as you can. Investing in ourselves to grow with knowledge.

DHH says that programmers are 1:10 that outlast other people by 10 times but no-one is born a Rock star programmer, we learn as we go on.

Investing in ourselves he doesn’t just mean programming 24/7 but he points out the following techniques that he uses in investing in himself to become better:

1. Recharge tangentially: sitting in front of the screen all day, does not make you a better programmer, do something in your spear time. Activating parts of your brain to work like a muscle. The best programmers do something else than just program, engaging parts of the brain brings people to the next level.
2. Sleep more: more than 5/6 hrs of sleep. It becomes a waste when you not functionalling properly. projects are not dependent on what happens in one day. Stop working full hrs, use your peak performance hours.
3. Read paper. Keep reading books and not just technical books but also other kinds of books.

1. Gerarld M.Weinberg – Secrets of Consulting
2. Kent Beck – Implementation pattens

DHH points out a few important point for us programmers which are:

• that we must move more towards understanding the business (to its concept) and design, we must have the capacity to understand what we are working on is valuable or not. We must program less but program the right stuff.
• at times start from scratch, you learn more when you start a new project as you can apply what you learnt from your previous project.
• share your code, participate in blogs and talks. Sharing is not about other people, you get more out of it from spreading the message.

Concluding this he quotes this phrase: “The purpose of playing this game well is to be able to get the best position on the next game.”

DHH tells us about a new concept that 37signals have introduces: a 4 day work week, people ask “how can u afford it?”, “how can you program in 4 days”. He points out that it is only 20% less, which is not much change in productivity and that actually production has gone up. He says that working as many hours as possible is irrelevant, the amount of time put in is a weak colloration from the amount of time that comes out.

He confirms that his new approach is working at 37Signals and he actually feels he is more productive.

DHH concludes that the surplus will not last forever therefore invest in yourself and become better programmers.

Annalisa

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