[LRUG] DHH, Rails, and London

[Tim Diggins]

Thanks for this initiative and also for this thread (I don't read a lot of
social media or hacker news or dhh posts, so I have been
blissfully ignorant of what's been going on in Ruby and also in dhh's
writing in the last couple of months - it's a lot!).

It's great to hear this ray of light in the darkness. I love London,
because of the diversity of people, behaviours and viewpoints (even those I
disagree with, or find slightly annoying, or uncomfortable), and I do love
the Ruby community (as far as I've experienced it from LRUG, Brighton Ruby
especially and Bath Ruby (RIP)) and have always thought that the "nice"
part of MINASWAN means not only "behaving respectfully to others" but also
that you must call out when you see that others are not doing this (which
is explicitly part of these orgs code of conducts).

I think it's good to want to get on with people and work together despite
one's opposition to their politics or other beliefs (that's part of what
diversity is about), and I've found it challenging and also interesting in
the past to work with people who had some wildly different political
convictions to myself. Belief and *behaviour* are different things however,
and behaviour *can* include speech/writing, particularly when tied together
with power, as in the case of dhh.

I'm not sure if the initiative will succeed, or will even lead to good
outcomes, but as you say, it has to be worth trying.

Thanks again all for everyone's considered contributions.

Tim



On Fri, 26 Sept 2025 at 03:23, Najaf Ali via Chat <chat at lists.lrug.org>
wrote:

> These conversations have already been happening in Ruby spaces, but I
> suspect you wouldn't notice them if they weren't directed at you or your
> friends.
>
> We had stangate back in the day on this very list, great fun! I also seem
> to remember a conference organiser telling me how lucky a POC speaker was
> to be chosen despite their race. Once I had a lead for Happy Bear that said
> "I don't think I would be OK with working with a black developer" or
> something to that effect. Other people's "political views" do actually
> matter if they're directly insulting you or have economic consequences.
>
> There are many, many more examples of this, but I got tired of writing
> them down. For a non-white person, these are pedestrian, every-day
> happenings in the Ruby community.
>
> Looking back, all of this behaviour seems juvenile and provincial. It's
> lovely to be in an environment with a lot less of it.
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