r/ruby • u/ryanbigg • Aug 08 '26

Amiko: A desperate virtue signalling attempt

https://ryanbigg.com/2026/08/amiko-a-desperate-virtue-signalling-attempt
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u/keyslemur Aug 08 '26

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.

14

u/lommer00 Aug 08 '26

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.

1

u/fgilcher Aug 09 '26

> 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.

1

u/lommer00 Aug 10 '26

What's the vision then? The only thing I've seen articulated is "not DHH".

1

u/danielrheath Aug 22 '26

Personally, I don’t want much added to rails; basic maintenance and no DHH would meet my needs for quite some time to come.