Those of you who remember his rant from the start of the year, Rails is a Ghetto know that’s he’s had some bad experiences with startups. Although that rant might have led you to believe that he was unemployed, Obie Fernandez explained in a blog post (which reads like the half-hearted explanation made by someone trying to excuse his drunk friend’s violent behaviour at the party last night) that Zed “is happily employed by a major, household-name financial institution in New York City, where he comes into work everyday with a nice shirt and tie”. The problem is that the financial institution in question is even more of a household name today: it’s Bear Stearns, the biggest victim of the subprime meltdown. You can find out more on Zed’s blog (which alas, has no permalinks).

I can’t help but wonder if, what with Zed Shaw’s talk of switching to Python and Django, if Guido and Adrian view him the way Barack Obama is portrayed as viewing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton in The Obama Files…

The resemblance is uncanny, isn’t it?
Zed Shaw photo by Adewale Oshineye — click the photo to see it on its Flickr page.

By now, most Rails developers — and even a number of people who couldn’t care less about Rails — have read Zed Shaw’s infamous rant titled Rails is a Ghetto. It’s given me a lot to think about, and as a result, I’m changing my presentation topic at Tuesday’s TSOT Ruby/Rails Project Night to Rant Said Zed: I’m Too Sexy for my Rails (or: Lessons and Challenges from Zed Shaw’s Rant). I promise that it’ll be both informing and entertaining.

• Want to know more about Tuesday’s TSOT Ruby/Rails Project Night, which takes place this Tuesday, January 8th? See this entry.
• Want to sign up? Email me!

Aside: A Quick Trip Down Memory Lane

How can I reference Right Said Fred without showing you the video for their one hit?

If you’ve been following the usual programmer and tech new sites, you’ve probably read (or at least heard of) Zed Shaw’s rant, titled Rails is a Ghetto. If you haven’t read it yet, go there now, give it a quick read and come back. I can wait.

High-spirited stuff, isn’t it? As you might expect, there have been a number of interesting responses to Zed’s polemic, but only one made me laugh out loud — it’s this entry in Jesse Stay’s blog:

Ruby on Rails is weak right now, it’s breaking apart from the inside. Now is the time for the Perl community to show its strength and unite in an effort to make Perl once again the most used platform on the web!

Perhaps it’s time for Larry Wall to update his maxim about the great virtues of a programmer: it should now be laziness, impatience, hubris and revenge fantasies.