I disagree

With you. With my wife. With my kids. With my parents. With my boss. With everyone I work with. With every other Rails developer. With everyone on BlueSky. With everyone.

At least, on some things.

And that’s ok.

I should print this entire article out and hand it to everybody I know. Required reading for anyone who is trying to understand how to articulate the meaning of empathy.

One thing I’ll add: I recently listened to a podcast where they talked about the significance of music played in a church. Basically, at any point prior to the last ~150 years, if you wanted to hear music, you either had to make it yourself or physically go somewhere to experience it.

There was no permanence about music other than maybe sheet music and your memory of it.

Any time prior to 2010, I loved hearing Ignition (Remix). I heard it again the other day and had a visceral reaction against it. I turned it off and moved on.

It’s okay that I used to like the song, and it’s okay that I do not want to listen to it now.

And it’s okay that if I do hear it, I can choose to remember the good times happening all around me with that song as a background track instead of the artist.

This part was also fantastic:

When I type rails c it sure doesn’t feel as if I’ve just given a big thumbs-up to whatever shit-take DHH has just published on his blog. I’m not over here running bundle install fascism.

The thing is, I don’t care about literally anything DHH has to say that isn’t 100% about Rails. I don’t care what sort of moment he’s having or which extreme view he’s decided to cosy up to today. I don’t care about his social commentary. I don’t follow his blog or subscribe to his feeds. I’m only aware of any of his views when those outraged by it decide to push it into my life. It’s those people who are giving him more power, and elevating his status, outside of the one narrow place where he might deserve it.