[DocSavage]

> I would much rather participate in a community of professionals who've organized themselves around sufficiently overlapping shared intents

I thoroughly enjoyed my involvement with early (US) Ruby and Rails folks from the first Rails conf to _why's unusual entertainment to Matz's calm and humble demeanor. People bounced ideas off each other and just enjoyed coding up interesting things. Dave Thomas and the Pragmatic Programmer group wrote what many of us used, not so much _why's guide which was still a fun read. I moderated a Ruby panel at the old Odeo HQ just before they pivoted. I didn't know the group gathering at that Ruby SF meeting would include not only Twitter but Github founders as well. At the time, tweets seemed pretty absurd to some of us but guess what happens when you try out ideas in a community that was into exploration?

[throwanem]

I mean, it's usually preferable to be part of an ingroup than of its outgroup, sure. Otherwise, what value in the distinction? But the iron law applies here, too.

I wouldn't be so quick to claim Twitter, either, even among zero-interest-rate phenomena more generally. It might be easy to forget these days, but that's been harmful to society on net since long before Musk bought it.

[DocSavage]

I think you're missing my point. The early Ruby and Rails community I remember was a collection of very smart and explorative programmers who wanted to build cool stuff with this interesting language. People were trying out DSLs -- sure they could've used LISP -- but Ruby's metaprogramming was inviting and was a reason for the succinct Rails syntax which was a selling point compared to say Java's cumbersome approach.

The speed of trying stuff out (even if it wasn't super efficient) why startups used it. So it was a community of highly productive people sharing their love of building new things. That's my memory of that time period.

[throwanem]

I'm not missing your point, but I don't see where it constitutes the counterargument that context and framing suggest you mean it to be.

What you're describing here is your perspective from within the small and insular group busily developing and advocating new technology, always focused on the next new thing that was cool and interesting and succinct and powerful. What I'm describing is my perspective from well outside that pale. Both can be true at the same time.

[DocSavage]

Then maybe you shouldn’t generalize your one viewpoint to say that early Ruby/Rails was not a worthy community for professionals or of use to people who practice jointly valued skills like entrepreneurship.

It’s also odd to see your long rant of whimsical vs professional when some of the most well-known companies were built with that community of so-called non-professionals. We have a difference in opinion on what constitutes “professional”.

[throwanem]

The entire point I'm making is that, however well that community may have fulfilled those roles for people embedded in the social context of its ingroup, it did a lousy-to-failing job of the same outside that circle.