They're rebuilding the Death Star of complexity

Kent Sharkey

David Heinemeier Hansson[^]:

When I started my career in programming during heydays of Java Enterprise Edition (J2EE), there was a rich ecosystem of enterprise vendors hawking application servers, monitoring tools, and boxes upon boxes of other fancy solutions.

Anyone have a phone number for the Bothans?

obermd

Obligatory [xkcd: Algorithms](https://xkcd.com/1667/)

BillWoodruff

Wow: What an eloquent take-down ! The inclusion of a reference to the classic fable of the "Emperor's New Clothes" at the end is the coup de grace. Of course, never having used Java, Kubernetes, and other tooling he reviles ... how can I respond to ... the substance of the article ? Puzzling: the author saqys he created Ruby on Rails, but, never uses "ruby" in the article, only "rails:" does that mean something other than framework vs. language ? Wonder what author thinks about Python.

«The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled» Plutarch

obermd

Ruby on Rails is frequently referenced as simply "Rails".

Dan Neely

BillWoodruff wrote:

Puzzling: the author saqys he created Ruby on Rails, but, never uses "ruby" in the article, only "rails:" does that mean something other than framework vs. language ?

THe best explanation I've ever seen is James Iry's:

[A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages](https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html):

1995 - Yukihiro "Mad Matz" Matsumoto creates Ruby to avert some vaguely unspecified apocalypse that will leave Australia a desert run by mohawked warriors and Tina Turner. The language is later renamed Ruby on Rails by its real inventor, David Heinemeier Hansson. [The bit about Matsumoto inventing a language called Ruby never happened and better be removed in the next revision of this article - DHH].

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius

obermd

It's instructive to see who is behind the complexity and associated costs. They're the only ones who will profit from this.