The DHH hate is absolutely crazy on HN.
I don't understand how people can be so out of touch.
I don't understand how people can be so out of touch.
Like, if you have something you regularly spend a lot of money on, it might be worth spending 2min on the Wikipedia article about it’s manufacturer to verify that it’s not made by child slaves or someone who sends all their profits to the KKK or whatever.
Doing that seems like basic prudence for an interconnected world, and a far cry from like … digging around Reddit threads looking for reasons to be outraged.
I have no opinion on DHH. I do think it’s good, actually, that lots of people are incorporating politics into their product use/purchase choices these days. Those decisions always had political consequences, so it’s good that people are now considering that.
Some people definitely have rubrics for making those decisions that I think are stupid, and some people do it dishonestly (e.g. performative public outrage over a random OSS contributor’s transphobic tweet while spending money on Harry Potter shit). But the fact that people are increasingly considering the social context of product use is still good, dumbasses would find other ways to be dumb regardless.
DHH has always been very outspoken in his opinions. That’s why he bashed Heroku so badly when he introduced Kamal. It’s what makes Rails such a clear minded framework.
In his political blog, he’s raising an issue that’s occupying all of western politics. And he’s very aggressive about it - just how he was very aggressive when he said “stop paying ridiculous amounts for stupid managed clouds”.
Instead of arguing where he’s wrong, people - including the blog post you cite - write “that’s hateful and racist” and refuse to engage beyond that. That is the very shut-up mentality he writes about.
It frustrates me so much to see this here on HN. HN is supposed to be a place to discuss, not blame others. This resistance to engage in a constructive discussion, even if the person with the differing opinion isn’t articulating them well, or has errors in their reasoning that upset you, is super harmful. It’s what gives all these far right parties their rise to power. They occupy the subjects then that their voters have on their mind, because everyone else doesn’t dare to talk about it.
We could have constructive discussions around such topics. But if we don’t, all that happens is that those who don’t feel heard - in this case rightfully so, because we chose not to hear them - will develop more and more extreme ideas.
What a weird statement. He has a platform, people that think his content is hateful and racist don't have a platform. He writes about kicking out normal people living their lives from places that he is not even from. Antagonizing people in position of power with this kind of mentality is what every sane person should do.
I’m coming from a different angle. I grew up in Germany, and we banned any Nazi content - rightfully so! - to make sure that shit isn’t spread again. But the political left - to which I consider myself more drawn to than the right, just for the record - has increased the amount of things that cannot be talked about bit by bit. That’s dangerous.
Now, we have a situation where many people feel they cannot air their frustration without being labeled a racist.
Here’s DHHs core argument:
“In 2000, more than sixty percent of the city were native Brits. By 2024, that had dropped to about a third.”
Now, when I lived in London - 2016-2019 - London was full of people from all kinds of countries, and I LOVED it. It’s what made London so special to me. But as his numbers suggest, that’s been a fairly recent development, and how could I blame people who preferred the status before?
He then goes on to imagine how he’d feel if Copenhagen changed the same way, and shows that it didn’t. He says this is the result of more restrictive immigration policies. He quotes a Danish prime minister from a left-ish party to underline that point.
As a side note: Denmark is the only country in the EU, or at least the only one I’m aware of, that doesn’t have a massive problem with new extremist right wing parties is Denmark.
I think there’s a valid political debate to be had, and DHH has some reasonable arguments. We can’t be lazy and just shout “you can’t say that”. That doesn’t solve anything. His post is not a “Heil Hitler” manifesto. It may not be perfect, and he sure would be wise to choose different words when talking politics instead of technology. But he has reasonable arguments - reasonable as in, you can reason with them, they’re not made up or illogical. And they are worth engaging with instead or cancelling him.
He is probably at a KKK level of racism.
I know that there are other people contributing to Rails, and that's their choice. Other people stopped contributing once DHH showed his true nature.