Staggering displays of ignorance
I hate the title “architect” when it comes to technology, even though it’s in my “title” for work. Hate it because it conjurs images of people who have no clue how to do anything useful, and often spout their opinions from the wrong orafice. Take James McGovern’s latest screed and the dazzling display of ignorance on parade:
6. Ruby is going down a path of creating their own Virtual Machine. It seems to me, that they should simply put Ruby on the Java VM and not waste efforts in reinventing the wheel.
Yes because Java works so well for dynamic languages. That would be why it’s on Sun’s roadmap for the future. If they wanted to pick a VM, Squeak would be a much better fit given the similarities between Smalltalk and Ruby. If you want that attrocity, it’s available.
8. Ruby seems to be missing something that is otherwise fundamental in other languages which is support for Regular Expressions.
Holy crap on a stick. Anyone who typed “ruby regular expressions” into Google would find out this is nothing but an ill-informed lie of the deepest kind. Ruby has regular expressions as a standard type. In addition, there are nicer, more object-oriented approaches available. Did he even bother to do research with Google, or does he just make this stuff up as he goes along?
9. Does anyone agree that the notion of packages / namespaces should be a part of every modern language?
Yes, which is why Ruby has both. Perhaps it doesn’t use them in the lovely ‘com.sun.java.foo.bar.blah.i.am.tired.of.typing.periods’ way that Java does, but then, don’t we all love periods?
10. I also couldn’t find the equivalent of instance variables. Wouldn’t that make reuse at an enterprise-level somewhat problematic?
Did you really just say something that stupid? No really, did you? Is this a dadaist attempt at satire?
11. Shouldn’t the notion of methods being public, private and protected also be a part of every modern language?
Yes, which is why Ruby has it. I use it all the time, and Rails uses it to help control access to Controller methods via the web. Really, Google is this great creation, you should investigate it.
12. Let’s say that Ruby steps up to all of the things I listed above and does so in a rapid manner, wouldn’t that break all applications that used Rails? I believe the answer is that it would cause a trainwreck for any enterprise application that was built on top of it?
Amazingly, Matz stole Guido’s time machine and it was already finished.
13. Does anyone in the community acknowledge that software vendors and even many large enterprises don’t build on top of scripting languages because they don’t want their intellectual property so discoverable?
Does anyone in the Java world acknowledge that Java started with a dancing animation, and therefore the seriousness with which one can take it is asymptotically limited? Seriously, it’s not a scripting language. Bash is a scripting language.
Seriously, I hope this is just a parody gone awry, because if people actually pay this man for this tripe, the industy has sunk to lows hither-to unobtainable without speaking with Gartner. Hell, this guy makes Gartner look competent. Please tell me this is a joke that just got out of hand.
[more from Justin Gehtland]
Update: Mr. McGovern has changed his post, expunging some of his stupidity, leaving some others without any comment on his blog as to the nature of this change. Poor form, if you ask me, but there it is. I’m sure the caches somewhere have copies before the ignorance drips down the memory hole.
This entry was posted at 3:19 pm on 21 March 2006 and is filed under Ruby. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.
not to worry; just b/c he feeds us information doesn’t mean we have to agree with it. i’ve disagreed with his notions here from the beginning – here’s my latest:
So, if you work for a large enterprise, why don’t you create a case study on your enterprise usage? I assume it is preferable to comment on his posting rather than changing the perspective of others who also haven’t considered Ruby?
Would be interesting if you would respond to the following as your next entry whether the latter half of his posting had merit
I appreciate Stephen’s comments and view the fact that RedMonk—who Mr. McGovern advises, is tracking this as a “good thing,” but for someone raised in the Socratic method of discourse the complete fallacious nature of Mr. McGovern’s supporting “ideas” dilute the relevance of anything he says further. There are many issues with Ruby, but by first talking about how much he loves it and wants to help, and then demonstrating a complete, total and staggering lack of any understanding of even basic syntax, much less actual implementations, he demonstrates with utmost clarity that he in point-of-fact only interested in generating 1) publicity for himself, 2) a pathetic straw-man argument that can be taken down, rather than the more interesting discourse that might result for an intellectual analysis of the situation.
This is no different than saying “the world is flat, and here’s why that matters.” Perhaps there are observations that are relevant when viewed in a different context with a different supposition, but I refuse to even acknowledge them when they are prefaced by such staggering incompetence. That someone randomly gets a point right doesn’t demonstrate skill, simply the nature of odds.
Mr. McGovern fails the “Google sniff test,” whereby I type the most obvious core words of his statement into Google, hit “search” and find clear and crisp counterveinang examples in the first page of answers. This demonstrates a total and complete lack of intellectual curiosity and further reinforces the artificial straw-man that is so popular with people. Such persons deserve ridicule and scorn, not consideration.
well, i can’t speak for my colleagues on the matter, but i would say that the subsequent undisclosed revision and editing of the post in question changes fundamentally the way that i view information from him.
also bear in mind that he was just one of the voices we listened to – you could count Ryan Tomayko and lesscode among other members of the RedMonk Information community as well.
we do our best to listen to lots of voices, until they give us a reason not to.
This is Not a Community Problem…
I’m sorry, but when you put yourself forward as a thought leader, you’re held to a higher standard than other people. When you start throwing stones at another community, you can expect a rebuttal. James failed to live up to the stan…
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The most disturbing thing, is that he’s a ‘member of the Redmonk information community’. This guy doesn’t just screw up the hartford, he feeds opinion into an analyst firm so he can hurt other companies too.