Ruby On Rails, Design, Simplicity, Web 2.0, Ajax, Mac and Tons of Pizza.

Jun 10

Is DHH planning to step back?

Posted by Massimo Sgrelli in Ruby on Rails - 7 comments digg this add to delicious

I’ve been to Portland to the RailsConf 2008 and everything has been quite great. Great venue, a lot of people and good food too – and that was really a surprise :)

There’s only one thing that left me a bit confused: “David Heinemeier Hansson”. I mean, he’s a great speaker and hacker too, but this year he didn’t make any technical speeches at the conference. He left that role to Jeremy Kemper, who is for sure a wizard inside the Ruby on Rails community, but… he’s not David of course.

David has a unique role in the Rails community, and right now the Rails future and success is definitely tied to him. The community needs a leader and a mentor, and David is the man.

But what will happen if he stops having a technical leading role in Ruby on Rails?
That could really be a bad strike for all of us. The framework is too young and it’s still gaining a dominant position in the technology landscape. It needs its creator more than ever.

A second “bad” sign I picked up on was during the final speech, with all the Rails core team on stage, David did not seem to be completely up-to-date with the actual status of Rails – and Michael Koziarski had to correct him once.

That was not a good thing. Definitely not a good thing.
In the end, just to give us the final shot, he decided that “it could be a good idea” to leave the conference 15 minutes earlier to catch the flight :)

What’s up man?
Does it mean something is changing?
Is he planning to step back from his role?
I hope not, because in that case Ruby on Rails could be threatened very quickly by its competitors, risking to lose its rising star role in the technology landscape.

So David, please stop evangelizing and show us the light. We need you to make some code.

Permalink

Comments

  • DHH

    Posted on June 11

    Hahaha. Good one. Sorry to disappoint, I'm not going anywhere ;) But Rails is a team effort and has been so for many years now. It's only healthy that we bring more of the core contributors into the limelight.

  • SoftMind Technology

    Posted on June 11

    Hi, First of all.. let me clarify your doubts on your last lines, where you said... --------------------------- Is he planning to step back from his role? I hope not, because in that case Ruby on Rails could be threaten very quickly by its competitors, risking to lose its rising star role in the technology landscape. -------------------------- DHH is a real man, who invented Rails and will always remain the same, even if other frameworks goes more faster with time. "Graham Bell" is still considered and respected as a Pioneer person behind Telecom, even though mobile have reached the iphone generation. The current frameworks are absolutely based on rails, taking full inspiration and improving it better, where DHH could not reach due to lack of time or more inspiration from others. Its like... Merb < Rails where Merb and other frameworks shall always play a role as a subclass. DHH has played his role and offered us a platform, now let others build something on that solid platform. Whats wrong, if he finds time to relax, even Bill Gates has retired at a young leaving Steve Ballmore to manage MSFT. Do you ever think..Bill Gates will not be remembered...? Juts my few Cents SoftMind

  • Massimo Sgrelli

    Posted on June 11

    @DHH I'm really glad to heard that from you personally. I know that Rails is the result of a team effort and I'm really happy that people like Jeremy or Micheal or Rick take care of it. We, as many other Rails start ups, are continuously betting a lot on its success - right now we have sponsored Ruby Central/O'Reilly RailsConf on earth for two years In my opinion your continuous contribution to the growth of Ruby on Rails in terms of future technical prospective guidance is a guarantee for all of us. In any case, you must admit that many people expected that you would talk about code ;)

  • DHH

    Posted on June 11

    Massimo, that expectation was exactly why I didn't talk about code ;). I hate giving people what they expect. That's such a boring way out. So when I don't have something like the switch to REST to shock people with, I'll try other ways ;)

  • Luca

    Posted on June 12

    @SoftMind. Graham Bell, respected as a pioneer? Oh my God! Antonio Meucci is probably turning in his grave...

  • Massimo Sgrelli

    Posted on June 12

    @DHH Hahaha. Good one ;) I understand that you are present on a lot of stages around the world for the whole year, and I guess not every time can be a memorable experience. I liked very much the speech you have given at the Startup school: funny, useful and in scope. Anyway, thanks for your work and thanks for Rails. Keep shocking us.

  • Luca G. Soave

    Posted on June 25

    I came across a "comment" you absolutly have to reed guys (core rails staff specially). That's really a "Pindaric fly" which explain the insight of a great experienced developer ( Tom, founder of Hobo project ) which decided time ago to switch on rails, coming from “other frameworks”. It was responding to a reader who asked “why did you decide to go with rails…”, commenting an itself declared off topic post about “time efficiency” ... Hey we get a “meta off topic” here  … Anyway it’s an intresting, even actual, decisional thinking process by Tom! Enlighting retrospective. I personally think you guys rocks, “… rails is a team effort and has been so for many years now …” and you are going to rocks any later, in the measure of how you will be able to accept the new challenges coming from Sinatra, Ramaze and othes frameworks or languages, piking up the newer and working ideas and leaving the old which didn’t compete any more. Exatly what you are doing now with RAILS 2.1. So keep on doing the good job guys! Read the the comments number 6 and 7 ( by Antonio and Tom ) to the following post: http://hobocentral.net/blog/2007/03/16/in-praise-of-slowness/ bye Luca G.Soave

Post a comment

Categories:

Tags:

Powered by Mephisto, Valid XHTML 1.1, Valid CSS - Supported by Wave Factory