David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH)

generally believe in the efficient market theory that if someone comes up with a better mousetrap or better idea, others will eventually copy them to such an extent that perhaps the original mousetrap is no longer even remembered.

No one has been able to copy that essence of Ruby.

They borrowed elements and that's totally fine, but Ruby still stands taller than everyone else on these metrics, on this trust in humanity and programmers.

And the machinery of it.

Worse is better.

I mean, that's actually the name of a pattern in software development and other ways of how do... It's the pattern of Linux.

Linux was quantifiably worse than, I think it was Minix at the time.

Other ways of it that were more cathedral, less bizarre.

And...

is still one, that there's something to it that the imperfections can help something go forward.

It's actually a trick I've studied to the degree that I now incorporate it in almost all open source that I do.

I make sure that when I release the first version of any new thing I work on, it's a little broken.

it's a little busted in ways that invite people to come in and help me.

Because there's no easier way to get the collaboration of other programmers than to put something out that they know how to fix and improve.

But Ruby is somehow, or was at least, a little bit different in that regard.

Not in all regards.

Matt's got the ethos of the language, the design of the language just right, but the first versions of Ruby were terribly slow.

It's taken...

I mean, hundreds of man years to get Ruby to be both this beautiful, yet also highly efficient and really fast.

Yes.