S,KISS

I've spent the last couple of months learning the lovely language of Ruby. It has many lovely features, and I can see why all the cool kids are using it. Convention over configuration works often enough to be very useful. The language itself is, mostly, wonderfully concise and easy to read. Built in support for testing and deployment makes life so much easier. The amount of time it takes to create an application and get it into a usable (by users!) state is astounding for those of us coming from a Java/PHP background.

I guess the problem I have with the cool kids is that they are so good at working out new and exciting ways to do things that Ruby has become full of new and exciting ways to do things. Which means as someone learning the language and its best practices I am constantly confounded by funky ways of doing the same thing.

It makes me think of being in the kitchen. I love to cook, I do it a lot. People always ask me what my favourite thing to cook is, and my answer is that I like to cook whatever I haven't cooked yet. Trying new things is fun. Often when cooking something new there are new techniques involved which can be made easier with the purchase of a new tool or gadget or receptacle. If I bought one of those every time I tried something new I would be on the next episode of one of those hoarding shows. Pretty much everything you need to do to cook a meal can be done with a good knife, a heavy based pan, patience and skills.

There are so many things about Ruby that are great. As someone who is not one of the cool kids but loves working with them I'd like to remind y'all - Seriously, Keep It Simple Sweethearts.