Jan 04

The Zed Shaw Interview

Ajax, Ruby, Tech with tags: , , , 2 Comments »

Rob kindly kicked in some podcasting time when he was at RailsConf, and I sat on the content for far too long. It didn’t really fit right on Ajaxian, since Zed only talks about Ajax a little bit, but it was fun content and I wanted to get it out there, so I finally published the interview with Zed Shaw on the Rails community, the role of the Enterprise, the state of Ajax, JRuby and Rubinius, documentation, tests, tooling, the role of patents in software, and a whole lot of opinion.

it is interesting to listen to Zed in the wake of his Rails rant, as you see some of the seeds of that rant, but hearing them with a real voice is a lot different to the harsh medium of the pen. It is softer to hear someone jabber on, even if he still swears and has very strong opinions indeed.

People like to pick sides, but I am trying not too. There is some truth in there, and things that the Rails community can learn from at the very least. Then again, I haven’t been personally abused in his rant so it is easier for me to take than someone who was directly attacked.

A few quotes:

  • On Semantic Web: Einsteins brain on a crack whores body isn’t going to happen
  • I’m waiting for someone to blind-side the entire Web stack
  • Some people hate me, but love Mongrel
  • Where is the XP for managers

Listen to the interview directly, or subscribe to the podcast.