Geeks just don’t have time for ignorance and misinformation. If someone is posting information that is false or misleading, we will call them on it. If that’s rude, then so be it.

You said:

“Is Rails too hard to set up and administer, or is Dreamhost just being whiny? I don’t know; it’s not my area of expertise.”

Well it is “our” area of expertise, and that is why the Rails community gets angry when people who do not know what they’re talking about spread false and purposely misleading information.

If you base your decisions on how rude you think the developers are, then you will be missing out on a lot of great stuff. A lot of people think Richard Stallman is pretty rude, but they still use the GNU tools. Developers are passionate about their tools, and thus are going to have emotional responses when clueless people try and spread false information, or when companies try and pass the buck because they don’t want to put in the time and effort.

As well, I find it funny that you’re accusing me of being rude, when the original post by Dallas was _full_ of unneeded insults at Rails and the developers. Why do you think there was such a backlash against it? The Rails community’s response to Dallas’ original post, is for the same reason you don’t like my posts.

You would do much more for the Rails community by learning when not to speak.

As a self described “outsider to the whole Rails thing”, you’ve obviously failed to see that the criticism wasn’t constructive. It was just a way for Dreamhost to _attempt_ to cover their own asses after taking quite a bit of heat in the blogosphere for horrible Rails support. This attempt included insults at both Rails, as well as the developer community. The very same community who attempted to help them. What did Dreamhost do? Ridiculed their proposed solution. There is no ’cause’ here jussive, just right and wrong. What Dreamhost did was wrong.

What I don’t understand is why people like you are defending them? If you believe that a host who charges $5 a month is a quality host, then you need to re-evaluate your deductive reasoning skills.

James: Hush now. This vituperative crap is just hurting your own cause.

You’re right. You don’t have anything constructive to add. At least when I attack someone for their ignorance, I attack their arguments along with it. Nice try though.

@phaylon

I think you should read the original article Dallas posted, because it’s full of passive aggressive insults. If you can’t see that, then you should get your eyes checked.

The Rails community reacts in proportion to how they are attacked. People don’t attack PHP this way. Why isn’t Dreamhost posting about Java since J2EE apps would be MUCH harder to deploy and run on shared hosting. No, they only go after Rails. But the funny thing is, Rails developers don’t really care, because we all know to just host on a VPS, or pay for a GOOD shared host like Mosso. No one expects $5 a month hosting to be good for anything but serving up static html pages.

“These guys are maybe some of your biggest supporters, don’t blow it. Rails wouldn’t be the only one to take a hit. Every open source project after you will probably receive a small splinter of that bullet too.”

Do you really think anyones cares whether Dreamhost support Rails, or any other framework for that matter? If you need hosting that works, there are quite a few GOOD hosts that provide excellent suppport for Rails and any other framework you might want to use. DH is irrelevant. What matters is that they are blaming the Rails guys for lack of shared hosting support, when in fact it is their own responsibility to make it work just like many other shared hosts have. If that means charging more than $5 a month, then so be it. Dreamhost is pretty much the WalMart of the hosting industy. A ton of customers, and rock bottom prices. But if you’re looking for quality, do you shop at WalMart? Of course not! Quality costs money. That applies just as much to the hosting world as it does to retail. Do you see WalMart complaining that Gucci won’t make discount handbags for them?

Concerning what Curtis said: Yes. Especially since that’s the behaviour you’re complaining about. The difference is that the DH guys didn’t insult you. In my impression they didn’t say anything other than stating their problems. The interpretation of it is yours.

Quite frankly, if a bunch of HQ rails guys would show up here and would’ve just said “Yea, we know, but thanks for the comment. If you’d want to discuss it in detail, you can contact me/us at $mail_here,” it would probably be a bright sunrise for rails’ community PR. Honestly, if you accuse everyone who makes a comment you don’t like of insulting you, you just won’t get feedback from them anymore. This is as I can see one of Rails’ biggest problems and the Ruby guys are probably also taking a few hits because of it. I personally (and at least a handful of other people I talked to, which where even really interested in Rails and Ruby at first) keep clear from the Rails/Ruby communities because of this behaviour.

As most of you, I earn my living with software development. And I simply refuse to include myself and my job into a community that reacts to critics that way. Even if you’d have been impolite, but answering honestly, and not saying “It ain’t so,” it would’ve been 10 times better for everyone.

Some of you might feel attacked from the article, but theirs no attack in there. It was probably written by someone who _wants_ DreamHost to support Rails in all possible ways. Do you think you’re reaction, your insults and denials are going to change anything higher up in the management?

Sure, other’s can do it, so why can’t DH? There’s surely a simple answer if we’d know DH’s management, facilities, staff, business plan or information about all other projects going on there. To me (and just me) the ranting in the comments sounds like you guys want DH to drop everything and fix it, just because you guys are so valuable. There is a lot of self-illusion in the Rails community about their size, I think, but I have no numbers. But I do know that when someone would ask me (as a non-Ruby dev) where to host his Rails site, I’d tell them to try DH. And I’m not even a customer yet.

These guys are maybe some of your biggest supporters, don’t blow it. Rails wouldn’t be the only one to take a hit. Every open source project after you will probably receive a small splinter of that bullet too.

I have nothing constructive to add to the conversation.

Given that, comments like “your ignorance shows through yet again”, and “do some research before trying to sound smart” make you sound like a self-absorbed dick. Just FYI. Not going to win any arguments that way.

As Kenn said, those sites you listed are blogs. VERY easily cached and MUCH more reads than writes. If you understood anything about databases and web applications, you would know that the more writes (interactivity), the harder it is to scale. So that basically makes your argument null and void.

@Tim,

Your ignorance shows through yet again. Here is what I said:

“37 Signals may need 30 servers, but I would guess that Facebook needs hundreds of servers, and they use PHP.”

That means that I am NOT comparing 37signals to Facebook. That means that Facebook is MUCH larger (e.g. HUNDREDS of servers). But that fact remains that you are trying to fault 37signals for having a full time sys admin and 30 servers. For an application suite such as that run by 37signals, 30 servers isn’t that bad. A comparable PHP app would need just as much.

Oh and how did you come to the conclusion that Facebook was worth $10 billion, because pretty much every economist on earth would disagree with you. Let me guess, it’s because MS bought a 1.6% stake for $240 million right? But did you also know they were able to extend their advertising partnership as a result? All that means is that they valued 1.6% AND an advertising deal at $240 million.

Moral of the story, do some research before trying to sound smart.

Also don’t forget staging environments, load balancing, and everything else that comes along with serious web application development and deployment. 30 servers sounds about right for what 37s is doing. I recently worked for a much smaller (in terms of traffic/user base) company who ran about a dozen machines, including web app, mail, database, and file servers.

Incidentally, how are you privy to how Techcrunch, et al, are running their sites?