Sean Collins

Ruby & Elm programmer, Hanakai (npub105y…5c7n) core team (Hanami, Dry, Rom)

Last Notes

2025-05-19 14:18:29 UTC

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I do object to that framing, and I understand we disagree. Again, reducing a wide range of opinions into a contrived trichotomy of extremes is overly simplistic and obscures more than it reveals. I don’t assign any inherent value in being moderate, which I think is another difference here.

2025-05-18 00:46:25 UTC

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My point is that you’re creating and maintaining this extremist ternary logic. I am not putting you in the extremist camp, I am arguing for a more nuanced view.
And yes, there are extremist versions of those: people who think tobacco sales should be illegal, people who think gun manufacturers should be executed, people who think possession of illegal drugs should result in death penalty. But not everyone in those camps is an extremist.

2025-05-18 00:09:25 UTC

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I am familiar with it and I don’t think you’re inventing it.
You’ve proposed a 3-pole spectrum of extreme pro-AI, moderate, and extreme anti-AI (which is overly reductive IMO). Then you place yourself in the middle as moderate, without referencing anyone else’s perspectives other than Simon’s and potential saboteurs. There are many other perspectives.
I dont think it’s reasonable that someone who rails against AI regularly would be considered a “moderate”.

2025-05-17 23:17:14 UTC

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I'm engaging in good faith and you're sarcastically rolling your eyes.
You didn't reference any other people talking about the harms, you just flatly declared your position to be moderate (why? I don't know).
I did read your post. That person just took your logic and went one step further. I have no interest in engaging with random people advocating violence; I have no connection to them and I'd like to keep it that way. I'd care if people were advocating violence in my mentions.

2025-05-17 21:59:00 UTC

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A public expert contesting the semantic slippage for a popular term of art in a fast-moving field feels more reasonable than your attempt to shift the entire Overton window single-handedly. You aren’t even engaging with his argument, you just say he’s wrong and wave it away.
In your replies on here, someone is arguing that you don’t go far enough and they’re promoting physical violence against people. How does that sit with you?

2024-12-19 18:38:21 UTC

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That's Eileen's argument too.
The point I'm making is that the two are so intertwined that saying "it's cultural, not technical" doesn't make sense to me. It's both! The culture affects the technology and vice versa.
At a high-level, static and dynamic languages have trade-offs. I'm saying those trade-offs have cultural impacts in organizations.
Rigor and discipline are important yet, but the technological decisions guide how people interact in that organization

2024-12-19 06:08:45 UTC

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Architecture and culture are similar
Back to the original metaphor of software "architecture", physical building architecture is also cultural. You feel different and interact with others in a different way when you're at a mall vs when you're in a bedroom.
I contend software architecture has a similar effect on people. The poor boundaries that Rails allows (and packwerk fixes partially) with the implicit interfaces that Ruby uses, may be a part of the cultural issues at large Rails orgs

2024-12-19 06:02:36 UTC

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I think the concept of "Technoculture" is useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technoculture
Responding to the question "Why are people mean on Twitter?", would it make sense to say that's a cultural problem and not a technical one? Would it make sense to say that's a technical problem and not a cultural one? It's obviously both and they both affect each other. Technology and culture are dialectical, not dichotomous.

2024-12-19 05:54:32 UTC

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For those who prefer to read rather than watch, here's a summary & transcript: https://testdouble.com/insights/rails-world-eileen-uchitelle-team-culture-over-architecture

2024-12-19 05:53:41 UTC

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“Why should Rails provide tooling for modularization when the complexity, lack of structure, and friction-filled development environments aren't caused by the framework itself?”
In my opinion, major benefits of a framework ought to include:
- helping manage essential complexity
- providing structure
- reducing friction during development

2024-12-19 05:45:17 UTC

This talk was super informative. Eileen's experience with some of the world's largest Rails apps is invaluable, but she makes a mistake to speak of a dichotomy between "cultural" vs "technical" problems and solutions.
In software organizations, I don't think it makes sense to speak of them as distinct spheres: they exist in relation to each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olxoNDBp6Rg