Zed Shaw created quite a stir in the Ruby and Rails communities recently with the release of his rant Rails Is A Ghetto. Zed was the primary driving force behind Mongrel, the web server written in Ruby (and C) that is used by many to run their Ruby on Rails sites. He also spoke at RubyConf 2006 about security and another library he wrote: RFuzz.
So why would such a valued contributor turn on the community in such a public way? It turns out Zed has his reasons. In this podcast we talk about Zed’s rant and the affect it had on him and those in the community. We also discuss his thoughts about subjects from what he wants to see from conferences to how to "fix" Ruby to sacrificing golden cows. Zed is always interesting to listen to, and I’m glad he was gracious enough to talk with me.
Zed has some points to make and does so with much colorful language. I normally bleep out expletives, but with Zed it didn’t feel right (and there are so many it would have taken a long time). If you are offended by potty language, you may want to skip this one.