Please Call Me a Fanboy

Jan 05, 2009 5 comments

Reading the latest in Git fanboy criticism has felt like a time warp back to when I started learning about Rails. Just for fun here’s a quick run-down of my life for the last few years:

  • Four years ago I was a J2EE webapp author when I discovered Rails. It turned out writing Ruby was way more fun; I told the world about it, was promptly dismissed as a fanboy, but I stuck with it.
  • My Rails skills landed me a well-paying job.
  • Last year I was a Subversion user when I discovered Git. It turned out using Git was way more fun; I told the world about it, was promptly dismissed as a fanboy, but I stuck with it.
  • My Git skills landed me a spot in a successful startup (for those wondering, this was ultimately the goal after college).

I understand that your mileage may certainly vary jumping on bandwagons, but I don’t know why people are immediately dismissive when there are crowds of really enthusiastic developers.

Assuming their opinions are genuine, there’s a good chance there’s something to what they’re saying even if it isn’t always done with the greatest of tact.

This isn’t fashion design, when developers get excited about things, it normally means it’s helping them become better developers.

I’m a Rails fanboy and a Git fanboy and I don’t give a fuck who knows it.

5 comments


crayz said about 2 hours later:

A-fucking-men. The blub paradox applies far beyond programming languages

Sohbet said about 5 hours later:

Thank’s and happy new year

Pire said about 7 hours later:

Thank’s very nice

Wyatt said 1 day later:

Why are people sometimes dismissive? If it’s a paradigm shift, then some people don’t suspend judgment long enough to fully learn the new idea before coming to an opinion. Also, sometimes people use heuristics to quickly form an opinion that’s not based on specifics. Thirdly, they may equate the new idea to a similar idea they’ve encountered in the past and project the old idea onto the new. Finally, sometimes new ideas are so cool that adopters get very excited. This activates people’s “too good to be true” warning system, and they start looking for “the rest of the story,” which fuels criticism of the new idea.

Marcin said 2 days later:

PJ, you’re not a fanboy, you’re an early adopter of next gen technologies ;)

this is fanboyism at it’s funniest: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/92328?utm_source=embedded_video

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