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“(...) can change how I feel about the code”

Exactly! This is something we started to care about thanks to Ruby. Ruby looks beautiful and it makes us feel good when we see it. And what’s more important, it makes us wanna write beautiful code and that makes our code easier to understand for everyone.

We’re more of artists than them.

I agree with the arguments, but it was not necessary to bash on other languages and people to make them.

Any chance you can convert this into audio and publish it as a podcast?

Great talk David. Remarkable Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom ending!

I’d have preferred if the first feature you mentioned, (the “unless” keyword) wasn’t actually one of the many inherited-from-perl features, gh :)

Your arguments are also exemplified in the tools used by these communities of programmers, like TextMate (Ruby) vs. Eclipse (Java).

I recently had to ask a co-worker to show me how to turn on line numbers in Eclipse. The setting was buried three levels deep in the preferences. What a disaster.

Wow. If this talk is true, then Ruby fits my personal philosophy like a glove. My current drug of choice is C# (LINQ is incredible). But maybe it’s time I check Ruby out…

The complaint about the hackneyed aphorism “using the right tool for the right job” is spot on. A programmer is not a carpenter, and a programming language is not a hammer.

Since watching this video, I’ve now used .second twice…. I’ve never used .second before.

love watching videos from you guys… keep them coming.

Very good talk. Haven’t seen such a passionate speach on any other language like Java or PHP .

Stupid reasoning on the cigarette etc though since getting cancer, fat etc affects more than yourself. Wasted hospital resources, less tax money that goes to the state etc. If you pay for 100% of the consequences of everything you do yourself, then you can do what the heck you want. But, when other ppl suffer, due to your informed stupidity, then its a whole different story.

+1 for a podcast

Ruby became popular for four reasons: 1. Rails gateway 2. DHH ’s leadership 3. DHH ’s authenticity 4. DHH ’s communication skills

Excellent keynote.

Wow. Inspiring. I’ve been eyeballing Ruby for some time now, but I’ve been stuck doing actual development with PHP due to my tech environment. After watching this, I’m REALLY itching to get the IT support group to upgrade our servers so we can use some of these technologies.

The talk is hugely philosophical, though, and it’s incredibly refreshing to see code as not just science, but also art. The Ruby paradigm reminds me of JavaScript’s expressiveness—no typecasting, almost no restrictions, the ability to write really, really, really poor code or really really really amazing code.

David, are you by chance a Libertarian? I applaud your pragmatic approach to philosophy and your ability to practice what you preach. ;-)