Conversations in Ruby: Zed Shaw and DHH

If I had any doubts about the power of social media, they've been alleviated this week. It all began when David Heinemeier Hansson (the creator of Ruby on Rails and more commonly known as DHH), began a series of blog posts debunking what he refers to as The Rails Myths --reasons why programmers are hesitant to use Ruby on Rails.

It seems simple enough, right? Well, it gets more complicated. In one of his posts, Myth #2: Rails is expected to crash 400 times/day, DHH implied that Zed Shaw's Mongrel caused Rails to restart up to 400 times a day. It wasn't Mongrel, though. It was FastCGI, a fact that Zed was quick to point out via (an angry) blog response.

If you read the back and forth posts, it's clear there's a complex history between Zed and DHH. Under "normal" circumstances, that history probably would remain between the two and their circle of friends, colleagues and acquaintances. But social media has made this anything but normal circumstances, making this an incredibly public conversation.

Twitter was tweeting away all week. Blog posts about the face-off proliferated, culminating in whytheluckystiff's post today, A Costly Parade. All the chatter is amazing and it's interesting to see how various people weigh in, but to me it's more fascinating to realize how powerful social media has become. Everyone can join the argument now, whether they should or not. I wonder: is this a good thing?