How Duplo (and I) offended people
Written by matt on March 20th, 2008
My recent and certainly provocative post generated a lot of noise. Just by reading some of the comments on my blog or on reddit I could only notice that some people took offense and some people tried to push the metaphor way too far. At the same time, it generated a lot of interesting discussions even outside of our small Ruby community.
A few clarifications:
Rails is an awesome framework, and to be honest I really like the fact that it's accessible to newbies while offering great tools
Rails Plugins that I like calling Duplo blocks are great and I use a bunch in most of my projects
I, myself wrote a bunch of plugins and gems never as great as the one mentioned in my post though
No, I don't think you are dumb if you don't have a clue how Rails or Rails plugins work
I also agree that the 
metaphor is very limited and doesn't stretch... but who cares.. it's funny.
What did I mean to say
Rails plugins are useful, use them and ABUSE them. Even though most of them are very well written I strongly believe you would become a better developer if you understand how they work.
A Duplo doesn't do exactly what you want it to do, don't bitch about it. Try submitting a patch or if you can write your own plugin.
If you are using a plugin on a regular basis, give it some love. Submit some documentation, write a blog post, send a thank you email.
A great framework and a bunch of nice plugins are awesome tools for developers but they won't replace your brain.
So, there you go, this time around I tried to be more straight forward and I even apologize if I offended you.
Finally, I don't believe the Rails community is a bunch of obnoxious-arrogant-wannabe-rockstars, and certainly not a ghetto. We all started as newbies and I hope a lot of newbies will join the fun and learn through Rails and later provide the community with a lot of awesome Duplos!
Comments
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My son likes duplo - should I be teaching him rails already then? He's 1.5 years old.
- anon.
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I totally agree with your previous post's sentiments. This isn't a new concept (remember that cargo culting thing?). It annoys me when people ask questions about issues with plugins out of ignorance rather than a simple mistake on their part. There are a lot of Rails developers who basically refuse to learn the in's and out's of Ruby and Rails, and thus end up cargo culting nearly everything they build.
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Say it straightforward and in small, easily digestible words or don't say it at all. When faced with a choice of interpreting writing as literal or figurative, the masses will always choose the one that angers them the most. There's simply no place for tongue-in-cheek posts (or comments) on the interweb.
;)
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@Dr.Nic: Yes. I'd normally say you might want to wait a few more months, but if he already enjoys building block type stuff then he's probably a bit ahead and would be ripe to start learning concepts like separation of responsibilities and "lambda calculus":http://worrydream.com/AlligatorEggs/.
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I agree with you because, with your duplo metaphore, you are encouraging people to contribute. This is the right point, not complaining about a bunch of kids in the community but teaching and talking to them, contrictively thinking is the way to make a better community (instead of write useless rants).
Sometimes it's needed a great flash of light to take people attention.
