Ryan Singer

Hi, I’m Mike. I’m with UGtastic here at Windy City Rails. I’m sitting with Ryan Singer, who has been around pretty much since before there ever was a Rails community. Thanks Ryan for taking the time to talk. Obviously, you’ve been around with the Rails and the Ruby community for a very long time. What I’m looking for is some perspective on what you’ve seen, how the community has grown through its inception through to where it is now today where we have people who are now just coming in years later starting to learn and adopt it. It’s growing beyond what it used to be. Different conferences you’ve spoken at, what have you seen in the community over the years? Well, I actually don’t think it’s changed so much, except for the fact that in the beginning it was clearly an insider group. Yeah. Of people at the edge, right? Right. Yeah. Early adopters. Yeah, early adopters more. But from my standpoint, I’m not part of the core team. I just see more of what’s going on. The cool thing for me is that I see the same kind of people actually coming to conferences, even today, how many years later. There’s new faces, but same spirit. New faces, but same kind of spirit. Somehow, it seems to attract people who are practical, who really like to get results. Somehow, it seems that the crowd is usually people who are motivated by progress more than arguing about what you shouldn’t do or something like that. And it’s been cool to see that as a consistent factor. So more of the make things work than, “Oh, how can I obsess over this tweaky little thing?” Or, “Is this parenthesis in the right place?” But as far as the engagement from … Have you ever spoken at any user groups? No, I haven’t really. Actually, the Rails community is a special case for me, because I usually have been invited to talk at design-centered things or user experience things and stuff like that, because that’s kind of my niche as a design and product person. And the Rails events, I’ve always been able to go and talk to the technical audience about other stuff, about product or user experience or design or whatever. And that’s also been a really cool side of this community, that they’re interested in that. Yeah, and that’s one of the things Jim Remsick was talking about earlier, is he runs Ruby Madison and UX Mad. And the difference of talking to a more designy, a little bit more artistic bent group versus a group that’s more nuts and bolts. Do you have to kind of change … I like talking to the programmer groups so much more, I have to say, because you can use … It’s kind of like I get to have fun because I can use all these abstractions and all these comparisons to coding concepts. You can get together with a bunch of programmers and you can talk about factoring, and it means something. But if I get together with a bunch of designers, I would have to spend a half hour to try and describe what factoring means, but it really concerns them, because you could make even your HTML in such a way where if you make it one way, it’s going to be impossible to change, and if you make it another way, it’s going to be really easy to move this and keep that where it is and that sort of thing. So it’s a matter of vocabulary. Absolutely. The thing is that ultimately, everybody at the party has to be able to speak basic programming concepts, and the design world is still, I think, a little bit immature in the sense that it hasn’t totally gotten closer to the programming world. We still have a lot of designers who are more concerned with the style, and they’re happy to make a wireframe and then give it to a programmer. With the programming community, you can just dig into the details so much more, because at the end of the day, we’re all making software, so it’s really helpful to have a common vocabulary with the same abstractions together. Whether it’s HTML markup, or it’s a Ruby app that counts for the same thing. Or the product design. Yeah, but it’s still making a thing, and it’s still code. It’s just different approaches towards it. Yeah, and you know, software designers have been struggling for decades with how to do it in the best way, you know, and how to deal with all these different kinds of complexity, and a lot of designers are doing really good stuff, and at the same time, they haven’t, as a culture, been fighting with complexity and talking about these things, you know? Could it be because they’re able to work on it, and then they hand it off, so they don’t necessarily have to deal with living with the ramifications of a design decision? I think a lot of it has to do with the tool set. Before–got some ice being poured, the party’s getting prepared. Yeah, yeah. It’s good ambience, party preparation in the background. Before Rails came around, it was really, really hard for a designer to get involved. Yeah. Because, I mean, like, take Objective-C for an example. Like, as a designer, it’s really hard to get into the code there. Right, right. You know? It’s like, whoa, what is going on here? But when Rails came around, it was like, you had all these web designer people who weren’t programmers, but they could at least do a little bit of design. Right. I mean, they could do HTML, you know? And now, because they could do HTML, they could get into the code base because Rails just has ERB templates. Right. And it was like this open door for them to get involved. It wasn’t like, learn some crazy, you know, learn Java or something. Right. Or learn Objective-C or whatever. It was just like, hey, put your template here, and then, like, here’s little bits of Ruby sprinkled in. And it created the, I think it created the conditions for designers and developers to work together. Yeah. And that, you actually don’t find that in, like, .NET or Java or Objective-C, because the borderline between the parts of specifying the interface and the way that the code is written, it’s just, like, such a big separation, you know? Yeah. And that reminds me of, kind of, a moment from a few years ago when you were presenting also at Windy City Rails, and you mentioned something about your perspective on Haml. And, you know, that was… Which turned out to be a little bit of a dated perspective, ‘cause… But still, it was, I think it was still relative to the point, and it’s something I’ve also recently experienced dealing with a designer, where they speak HTML. Yeah. And then trying to ask them to look at Haml, and it’s just, that’s gobbledygooked to them. Yeah. I mean, one of my arguments at the time was that I don’t see, if you’re gonna create a hurdle for somebody, if you want the designer to be involved, but then you’re taking them further away from what they’re used to, there should be a good benefit there, you know? And some people see a lot of benefits in Haml, but I would be saying, “Is there a benefit for the designer?” ‘Cause they’re the ones that has to bear the cost. Right. Right? Of wrapping up and then starting to translate those… And that’s a question to make on an individual basis. It used to be that in the early days of Haml, if I remember right, you couldn’t, they actually had a, kind of, anti, they had a philosophy against putting logic in your template, being able to run arbitrary… Yeah. …arbitrary Ruby code. Mm-hmm. And I think that that freedom is really important. Fortunately, it turned out that eventually they relaxed about that. Yeah. Now you can do whatever you want in there, you know? Yeah. And… So that’s opened it up. Now it’s, I think, basically personal preference, if you see an advantage in doing it or not. Yeah. And I think it is one of those things that’s more programmer friendly, not necessarily somebody who’s gonna try to tweak a design and make it beautiful and make it work. Yeah. But, you know, I think that, that right now is, it’s kind of a symbol for the, kind of, of the mentality between somebody who’s coming from a design perspective to a conference, that they’re, they have a tool set that they’re used to working with, and developers are more likely to say, “What new tool can I work with?” Mm. You know? And I wonder how much that… It’s gonna be better because I have a new tool, right? Yeah, exactly. And I just wonder, you know, in a conference, if he really wants to get that ice. He does, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, dealing with a conference, I’ve just, I’ve just drawn a blank, but anyway, thank you so much for… Sure thing. …giving the time to you all, to speak with us… My pleasure. …and coming out and speaking at Windy City Rails. Absolutely. Thanks.