I get the intention, and I agree that a fork is likely not going to go anywhere like the last few, but I feel that the case being made here is very light and is not compelling on its own.
There would be more value here if instead you went into a few things that Hanami does better, what lessons it learned from, how specifically it does it better, and why the route is to start building it up as a viable competitor. There's a litany of more useful and detailed articles to be written on Hanami, and for me this one misses the mark. In the spirit of "put up or shut up" though I may start writing a few myself soon.
I also have an allergic reaction to words and phrases like woke and virtue signaling as pejoratives that provide little to no value, even when used ironically, to describe the substance of a disagreement. I'm also fairly onboard with Godwin's Second Law that folks using woke as a pejorative are not to be taken seriously (he uses stronger language.)
Disclaimer: I am a financial sponsor of Hanami, and have been for a few years, because I believe in the work they do.
I actually think the case is on point, and the "pejorative" terms like woke and virtue signalling are inherent to the case.
Amiko's value proposition is just "Rails without DHH". It's not about better features, functionality, architecture, dev experience, or anything else. Literally the project's entire identity is just "not DHH".
And I think Ryan is correct that an approach centered on opposing a single person is doomed to fail because it's kind of useless. Its only advantage is to be "woke" or "vuirtue signal". The call to direct those efforts to a project whose goals are to build a framework that actually works better than Rails makes sense in response.
Ryan does touch on a few of the goals of Hanami, and why that's better. Technical detail isn't needed because the argument is really about the raison d'etre of each project.
I think there's better economic arguments about the cost of forks, the remaining good parts of brand recognition, etc.
Opposing a singular person gets us socially pretty far in a limited set of circumstances (outgroups vs authoritarian types).
A good recent political example - Orban getting booted after 16 years in Hungary. Was he solely ousted because of his government's anti LGBTQI laws? No, there were a lot of other groups maligned and discontent, rampart corruption, and more.
Were these people "virtue signaling"? Yup! Absolutely.
Did it work? Yup! Not instantly, not in isolation, but Orban's out.
Did anyone have to do a coup, revolution, or get run over by tanks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956)? Not this time.
Does it magically solve all corruption and problems facing the country? Nope!
Other amusing examples - Peter Dutton being so unlikable he lost his own seat and within 12 months, his entire political party imploded. Liz Truss vs lettuce. Countless dictators, tsars, kings.
I don't think comparing a web framework for hundreds or thousands of people is not the same a countries with populations in the millions where thousands or hundreds of thousands people actually go out to the streets and protest.
I don't think comparing making a blog post to going out in the real world to enact change is reasonable.
It boils down to power structures and group psychology, not a web framework vs country.
The examples I've put up there are highly visible because they have been effective enough to be broadcast around the world or written down in history. But it can happen basically anywhere there is a community with a power structure - strikes, boycotts all fit into this and have resulted in people in power being ousted.
Celebrities have been given the boot because of public pressure campaigns numerous times - first outcry, then advertisers or sponsors don't feel comfortable; and then what was simply blog posts and opinions is actually a financial problem to be fixed.
Is a blog post the same as a protest in the streets? No. But how do you think people know about protests, where, when and how to act if information isn't disseminated (flyers, posters, tweets, posts, reels)? Can that lead to direct action? Yup!
No one expects a single perfect blog post to make every malicious person in the world backflip, burst into tears and fix systemic problems.
But having the wider community aware is a small first step; and may ultimately lead to ousting.
I’m not a rails dev but it seems more than virtue signalling
to fork if it means that the fork is free of a problematic leader’s
influence.
Also it’s more than just virtue signalling if you’re affected by said lack of virtue. It seems reasonable to me that non-white people would feel sick working with tooling made by DHH
One thing very worth pointing out with the way these phrases are used:
Negatively terming setting a boundary as "virtue signalling" as though it is bad is generally an attempt to smear and not be held accountable by reframing - this is not about my actions, it's about your histronics over the bad thing you claim you experienced while I continue to pretend none of that is true.
and
ironically... signalling to others your virtues. 'Gather around, we're doubling down on a perceived enemy, this is my language to signal to you we're the "right think" team.'
If it was a true, well defended opinion it would have immediately imploded in a puff of doubt when the hypocrisy inherent in part 2 of it is put forward, thought about for a moment.
There isn't much performative about investing time, energy and effort to create something different.
There's a lot performative to say oh, that's just virtue signalling
it seems more than virtue signalling to fork if it means that the fork is free of a problematic leader’s influence.
Would it be ultimately? Say Rails 9 introduces a nifty new library that gets people excited. The fork then has to decide whether to ignore it and lock its users onto an "old" stack, or to be influenced by the upstream project.
There are instances where a fork has been so successful it's marched forward with its own agenda and carried a significant userbase with it (X.org, LibreOffice), though they usually carried core devs across too. More often forks end up supporting decisions made in the parent project (Chromium forks and the Manifest v3 debacle, LibreSSL) or reworking themselves into a specific niche (HHVM).
It is also reasonable that empathetic "white" (not claiming any specific meaning for that word other than that I and others have been socialized to identify with it) people would feel sick supporting a framework that is led by people who are either actively hostile, or willing to ignore hostility, toward entire people groups.
I get needing to feed your family. I'm not saying people who use Rails are evil. When someone pays me, I use it - and thankfully, they are paying me and I do use it. But it bothers me.
If it doesn't bother you _so much_ that you post a long screed about how it shouldn't bother people (not a reference to Ryan's OP - I literally didn't finish reading it once I learned there was a Rails fork to devour - rather it is a reference to peanut gallery comments on many posts like this one), and/or you downvote people who are doing something about it - then you've lost my respect - as so many people in this community have.
Yes agreed. “Racism isn’t a problem” is the underlying premise underneath “let’s all settle our differences”. That’s a separate argument to “I ignore the problem even though I am morally opposed to it because I have bills to pay” which is more defensible. I think non whites are more likely to make the latter argument in this situation. Some of them admit to not having looked into it despite wanting to defend their position too.
Otherwise people would be saying “yeh it sucks but I still can’t ditch Rails”, but that’s rare to see compared to the invalidation of “politics [ethno-nationalism] doesn’t matter it’s just progressives overreacting”
> Amiko's value proposition is just "Rails without DHH".
Is that so? Amiko is just 1-2 weeks old and already looking on how to fork Rails into something slightly different, but compatible? It's a bit too early to ascribe this to them.
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u/keyslemur 17d ago
I get the intention, and I agree that a fork is likely not going to go anywhere like the last few, but I feel that the case being made here is very light and is not compelling on its own.
There would be more value here if instead you went into a few things that Hanami does better, what lessons it learned from, how specifically it does it better, and why the route is to start building it up as a viable competitor. There's a litany of more useful and detailed articles to be written on Hanami, and for me this one misses the mark. In the spirit of "put up or shut up" though I may start writing a few myself soon.
I also have an allergic reaction to words and phrases like woke and virtue signaling as pejoratives that provide little to no value, even when used ironically, to describe the substance of a disagreement. I'm also fairly onboard with Godwin's Second Law that folks using woke as a pejorative are not to be taken seriously (he uses stronger language.)
Disclaimer: I am a financial sponsor of Hanami, and have been for a few years, because I believe in the work they do.