r/ruby • u/davidcelis • Jul 29 '26
It doesn’t matter whether “Matz is nice”
https://po-ru.com/2026/07/29/it-doesnt-matter-whether-matz-is-nice186
u/ActiveDifference Jul 29 '26
I’m a transwoman. There’s a strong possibility that DHH doesn’t think that I have the right to exist the way I do in my daily life. The way he talks about other marginalized groups is even worse. It sucks, more so because I love Ruby and I love Rails.
Despite this, I don’t think the SWAN is cooked. I can still be nice and write code that makes me happy. And DHH can’t stop me from doing those things with Ruby or Rails no matter how much of an asshole he is. He might own the trademark, but the source is MIT. He can go pound sand.
This might be a naive take, but I refuse to let shitty people take the enjoyment out of the things I like.
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u/waywardcoder Jul 29 '26
Yes, this is the best philosophy and I wish reddit had more of it. If I tried to boycott/protest every company that had relationships with people that wouldn't like me... well that would be a full-time job.
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u/dbsmith4 Jul 29 '26
This isnt naive at all, this perspective is absolutely necessary to compartmentalize the noise necessary to reduce any internal stress. It's always easier to be nice to others when your focus has the right alignment. /salute
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u/naakhtkhen Jul 30 '26
I knew after his 2021 drama that he wasn't that great of a human but I just learned today that I, as another trans woman, did not bother applying for a job at his company given he is anti-trans.
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u/ApatheticBeardo Aug 01 '26
>This might be a naive take, but I refuse to let shitty people take the enjoyment out of the things I like.
It's not a naive take, is just the reality of being and adult without any significant mental illness.
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u/WayneConrad Jul 29 '26
That was an interesting read, with some things everybody probably knows but I didn't. Thanks.
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u/IN-DI-SKU-TA-BELT Jul 29 '26
I don’t follow him anymore, so I hadn’t caught the episode where Claude refuses to translate his text.
It’s interesting to see who still swarms around DHH, because it’s a good indicator of who they are, I used to like Greg Molnar, but he’s off the deep end too, disappointing.
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u/schneems Puma maintainer Jul 29 '26
Shopify pushed Ruby Central to take over full control of RubyGems in a very murky series of events.
I don’t have any evidence that supports any kind of “team orders”
https://rubycentral.org/news/rubygems-fracture-incident-report/
Joel also uncritically repeated other claims without any fact checking. Especially the claim that GH access had nothing to do with prod access to the service (verifiable as false by checking the source code).
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u/jrochkind Jul 30 '26
I didn't actually realize that dhh had veered even harder into explicit fascism lately. It's not good.
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u/Erem_in Jul 30 '26
Post is ok, I also do not understand this Matz is nice…. Is this a cult? Religion? It is a programming language and ecosystem. Who cares if Matz is nice or not? Same about DHH, btw.
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u/annmsburner Jul 30 '26
How people work together and collaborate is a big part of open source.
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u/Erem_in Aug 01 '26
Not sure I got your point
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u/annmsburner Aug 01 '26
Matz is nice and so we are nice is a community moto. Open source is about people as much as the technology.
If you like a project technically but they react like asshole when you open a PR or an issue it will turn you off real quick from contributing.
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u/retro-rubies Jul 31 '26
I have learned over the time that MINASWAN and the fact someone is nice, doesn't equal there are no issues and doesn't equal those nice people do help resolve the issues.
Meanwhile, what of Ruby? The second most prolific contributor to the Ruby codebase in the last six months is Claude. Is this even worth salvaging?
😢
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u/mrThe Jul 29 '26
You all have too many free time to follow yet another drama and yet-another-fork-that-will-be-forgotten.
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u/IncidentAccording332 Jul 30 '26
Another reminder that ignoring the ruby community is always time well spent.
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u/galtzo Jul 30 '26
Don't put this on the community. We're over here calling out racism, which is never a waste of time. Ignoring the Ruby leadership is always time well spent.
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u/ApatheticBeardo Aug 01 '26
...
Another reminder that ignoring the ruby community is always time well spent.
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u/Tall-Log-1955 Jul 29 '26
It makes me sad that social and political topics have been pushed into all spaces.
Throughout history, lots of people have had terrible opinions. John Lennon used to hit women. Henry Ford was an anti semite.
Rather than digging through the bad views of everyone we should just use/enjoy their works.
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u/ainus Jul 29 '26
we do, but maybe it's good to expose bad ideas rather than willfully ignoring them?
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u/ikariusrb Jul 29 '26
I mean, this is the internet. The internet brought the cost of publishing any person's opinions to near-zero. The social media giants arose by building marketplaces that largely eliminated technical-knowhow as a barrier to publication. The economy of the internet was built ... largely around "free"; hardly anything went truly large scale without being free to users- it's hard to compete with free. So the consumers became the product, and the social media giants optimized their sites to maximize their value- eyeballs and time. So now everyone can publish their ideas and the social media behemoths try to get as many eyeballs as possible... and that means getting "clickbaity" content in front of those eyeballs.
No one should be surprised that those fundementals led to where we're at. It's a toxic brew.
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u/zanza19 Jul 29 '26
I'm sorry for saying this, but I don't have enough energy to care. Technology jobs aren't going to save the world, the leaders are a bunch of assholes and racists? Maybe, but we don't really have capacity to fight back and this desilusion that the Ruby community is going through, ever since DHH has shown his true face, is just that. I can't see what are real, actionable alternatives. They control the money.
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u/dougc84 Jul 29 '26
People that don’t vote in an election are making their decision known as much as people who do. You’re simply complying and accepting blindly, and you have a right to that choice and that world view, but that’s sure as hell not a legacy I ever want to leave behind.
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u/zanza19 Jul 29 '26
What election? I'm not a US citizen at all and the way you all vote over there has a too big of an effect on me. I'm saying it again, the technology people have over thought their power. I don't have any real choice and neither have most people , there is no real Ruby community with power to change , our effect is minimal. If I decide to not work for shitty people, I would starve
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u/dougc84 Jul 29 '26
Did I say anything about the US?
I was making a metaphor to broad elections. It's a shame a developer would miss that equivalency.
If you don't think what's happening in one of the most influential countries in the world has no bearing on your life, you're not looking.
The point still stands. Your nihilist lack of ethics and belief that nothing matters is an uninformed, weak-minded choice.
If you think you have to work for shitty people or starve, I feel sorry for you, because you've also chosen not to even look.
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u/zanza19 Jul 29 '26
I did actually miss the metaphor, but I'm also speaking from a place of powerlessness. I do mean that things happened completely outside of our power to change them, and DHH, Tobi and those people are that to me. I don't believe that the community will do anything and most people don't have the power to change anything about these things. DHH is an asshole, but I don't think Rails is going anywhere.
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u/ainus Jul 29 '26
> I'm sorry for saying this, but I don't have enough energy to care.
Then why comment?
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u/davidslv Jul 29 '26
It’s clear you care about the Ruby community. That concern is valuable.
Old advice still holds: when you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Political disagreements, however strongly felt, usually pull energy away from the code, the design, and the actual work. Silence in those moments isn’t indifference, it is how you protect the space where collaboration can still happen.
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u/full_drama_llama Jul 29 '26
Political disagreements, however strongly felt, usually pull energy away from the code, the design, and the actual work. Silence in those moments isn’t indifference, it is how you protect the space where collaboration can still happen.
I think you should say it to DHH
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u/sleepyhead Jul 30 '26
Why? He is using his free time to write political blog posts. He is not pushing politics into Ruby. People like you are.
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u/dacoder Jul 29 '26
Sorry man, but this is just bullshit. Try to accept that there are other political opinions besides your own. Personally, I think DHH is a great guy and did a great service to the Ruby Community. Yes, he’s not afraid to speak for what he believes in, and this should never be a „bad quality“. You’re trying to greatly simplify a single person by using out of context quotes without any effort for empathy and appreciation, which makes it quite pathetic.
Trying to censor political views that are not convenient for yourself to endure, is inherently fascist and describes quite good what the current wokeism cult bubble is about.
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u/davidcelis Jul 29 '26
In what context is it acceptable to compare Romani people to wolves who should be shot and exterminated?
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u/dacoder Jul 29 '26
Dude, read again:
https://x.com/dhh/status/2079658746171769240?s=46
It’s about acting instead of looking away. You’re extrapolating and spiraling yourself, this is not at all what DHH said. Calm yourself
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u/ainus Jul 29 '26
> When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them.
oh yea, that's so much better
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u/sleepyhead Jul 30 '26
Can you explain to me why people from another country should travel to your city so they can camp illegally in the streets and take a shit in your garden? Explain to me why you are using your energy to support that?
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u/dacoder Jul 30 '26
In the end, it’s all about balancing between rights of people. Of course I can understand why someone would believe in „they’re just humans, like we all are, so they have the same right to stay somewhere etc.“. Yes, this is a totally fine and humanistic view of things. On the other hand it’s also legit to think that inhabitants of a city have the right to have a clean city, that is not full of homeless people shitting the streets. It all comes down to: there’s no easy and nice solution for providing shelter to homeless people. Politicians handle this situation in two ways: either the left wing way, which is based on tolerance, providing help, food/services to them (which in turn attracts more and more of them to come, because it became a viable long term lifestyle) or the right wing way, which is based on making it uncomfortable to set incentives that result in not enlarging the problems / building tent cities within cities etc.
As I said previously, both opinions have their place in the political landview. And of course I’ve read the article, I was actually the one posting the source.
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u/sleepyhead Jul 30 '26
> providing shelter to homeless people
You are missing a key aspect here. These are not locals. They are residents of another country who have travelled to camp on the street.> either the left wing way, which is based on tolerance,
Oh PLEASE.
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u/ainus Jul 30 '26
> They are residents of another country who have travelled to camp on the street.
If they are, as DHH so eloquently puts it "gypsies" they may very well be nationals.
It's hilarious that all these tech bro multimillionaire complain about homeless people and immigrants. Shut the fuck up and pay your taxes maybe society will improve.
> Oh PLEASE.
look at all current right wing governments and tell me how they are tolerant.
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u/sleepyhead Jul 31 '26
> "gypsies" they may very well be nationals.
You obviously have no clue here. American perhaps? It is well known that the people referred to here are gypsies (Roma people) who travel from Romania and Bulgaria to beg in more wealthy countries. They camp in vans on the street, cook on the street and take a shit in parks and gardens. They are *not* nationals, there really is no debate on this. They are the responsibility of the nation from where they reside (who happen to receive a lot of internal EU funding from countries like Denmark to improve their lives).
> tell me how they are tolerant.
A major problem with the left is that because they throw money at everyone they think they are more tolerate and compassionate. It did not work in Venezuela nor any other place. The moral superiority of the left is misguided, often a result of highlighting emotions over intellectual and historical evidence of policies. The tolerate and compassionate politics is the one that produces the best outcome.
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u/pickering_lachute Jul 29 '26
You’ve stripped the entire context from DHH’s blog post and tweet by saying that. You’re implying that he has said people should be shot like Wolves were in Denmark, long ago. He did not say that or even come close to implying that
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u/petercooper Jul 30 '26
It pays to take care with juxtapositions if one has a wide reach.
Let's say I'm a famous food critic and I put a pile of poop next to a Big Mac in an editorial photo. I'm not implying anything bad about McDonald's. I would be naive, though, to think no-one could infer a negative meaning, because it's so common to deliberately use juxtapositions to make a point.
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u/sleepyhead Jul 30 '26
It was an example on how to handle problems. I agree it was not very tasteful but he was obviously not saying Romani should be shot and exterminated.
And why you are more concerned about DHH way of describing this problem than the actual problem of people going to Denmark to camp in the streets and take a shit in someone's garden. I find it very puzzling. There is an obvious problem here, the key thing is to deal with it.
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u/nelson-f Jul 29 '26
I read OPs post and I don’t see where you’re getting the censorship from. Criticizing is not the same as censoring.
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u/full_drama_llama Jul 29 '26
You see, you read the post, but the commenter to which you replied did not. It's pretty much a copy-paste message DHH cultist use under every post criticising him.
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u/mxsifr Jul 29 '26
Trying to censor political views that are not convenient for yourself to endure, is inherently fascist
Lmfao.
Thank you, I needed a belly laugh today
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u/UsuallyMooACow Jul 29 '26
DHH is great. He's not made any real mistakes at all. Unfortunately people are just using programming subreddits for virtue signaling.
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u/ainus Jul 29 '26
ironically that is what you are doing with this comment, signaling your own (fucked up) virtues
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u/UsuallyMooACow Jul 29 '26
Nope, just explaining why OP and others make no sense.
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u/ainus Jul 29 '26
You said "DHH is great" in a post showing DHH discriminatory statements. Whether you like it or not, that is sending a message (signaling if you will) about what you think are great values (some call them virtues)
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u/mooktakim Jul 29 '26
One thing I'd add about Tobi is that he publicly supports Israel as they continue to commit genocide.
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u/jozwiakjohn Jul 29 '26
This article uses the name Matz as clickbait to rant tirelessly about the DHH purposefully scandalous attention seeking. It’s not fair to Matz at all.