The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Community Chronicles 2026-09-17

The life of a Ruby dev in 2026! I made an effort to post a recorded talk that I gave at my local Montreal Ruby meetup as a helpful gesture for the benefit of the Ruby community at large. And, I suddenly see a comment (included below) get posted in the Ruby subreddit, which reeks of hate and discrimination against me personally and has no respectful conduct of appreciation for a service done during my free time for the benefit of others. Who allows trash people like that into the Ruby subreddit?!! So, the commenter literally discriminates against me and expresses hate against me, saying he wants me to "drop out". I don't even know the commenter. I never did anything bad to hurt the commenter. Quite the contrary. I posted a helpful post for the benefit of the commenter and everyone in the Ruby community. Still, the commenter wants me to "drop out". Next, he mentions that the Montreal Ruby meetup has dwindled to a handful of people after I took over it with a very hateful negative tone, when in fact, without me, the group had ZERO attendees and was dead for years, and I revived it in 2022 with the help of another co-organizer, growing the group again to more than ZERO attendees. That's the opposite of what that commenter tried to allude to. Let alone, I am literally the most consistently present Ruby dev at those meetups, and I am the only Ruby dev from the Montreal Ruby community in the last 4 years who has presented at RubyConf multiple times and has supported many Ruby open-source projects while winning awards for 2 of them from Matz. 

Besides, even if the group had dwindled down to a few members compared to pre-Covid numbers. That is the responsibility of the attendees slacking and switching to other languages. I know a number of past attendees of the meetup who have switched professionally to Elixir, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, and other programming languages. While I am disappointed in their decision, it is 100% their loss not mine if they don't use Ruby anymore and don't attend the Ruby meetup. I still believe Ruby is the most fluent, expressive, elegant, productive, and maintainable programming language for general business application development, and I think that other languages are either inferior, like JavaScript & Python, or are considered premature optimizations that aren't truly needed in 90% of business usecases, like Elixir and TypeScript. Still, if that's what other devs chose, it's their responsibility alone.

The haters in the Ruby community have shown their face very explicitly now and it's no longer a matter of pretending to be non-haters while hiding under plausible deniability. The hate is very explicit, real, and fully exposed for everyone to see.

So, who allowed the haters into the Ruby subreddit community and encouraged their hate by tolerating hateful comments that have a very negative tone like the comment shared above?

I checked the list of Moderators, and here is what I found from among older moderators that have been around for a long time (not all of them, but some of them for sure, excluding the AutoModerator).

Those moderators have allowed hate to fester in the Ruby subreddit for years while giving a group of haters a free pass to post hateful disrespectful comments with a very hateful discriminatory tone against a number of Ruby experts like me who have done more for the benefit of the Ruby community than all the haters combined through talks at RubyConf and RailsConf and open-source projects. I call them out for doing a very shitty job. They totally suck. 

None of the haters in the Ruby subreddit would pass the minimum criteria of respectful conduct to get hired at any of the good Ruby shops I've worked at. So, why allow any people who don't pass the minimum criteria of respectful conduct to be hired at good companies into a Ruby subreddit to begin with? Those people are no different from random hobos and drug criminals one encounters on the streets with their hateful discriminatory negative conduct. So, what on earth are they doing in a Ruby subreddit if they don't pass the minimum code of conduct needed to be hired at any respectful ethical good companies! This is either a case of double-standards, which would implicate some of the moderators above as practicing discrimination, or a case of intentionally simping to unqualified people to feel like "heroes" (the hero worship complex). It's bad in either way. Be better!!!

If the Ruby community was healthy, a Ruby dev oughta be able to share a video they recorded for the benefit of the Ruby community in peace and with complete dignity and respect. Unfortunately, that's not the case in 2026. The Ruby community has deteriorated into trash because of terrible mods like the ones above.

XO Ruby joins RubyConf/RailsWorld as Another Exclusive Discriminatory Unexcellent Conference

So, I got contacted by the organizer of the XO Ruby conference (aka Travelling Ruby), Pascal Laliberté, on meetup.com because I organize the Montreal.rb Ruby Meetup and am a Montreal-based Expert Ruby Software Engineer. He said XO Ruby is coming to Montreal and asked me for help with it. We end up meeting in a video conference call. 

To help out, I indicated that I asked my company to consider sponsoring the conference. Furthermore, I volunteered to give a talk as a Montreal-local Ruby Expert (given I have won 2 awards by Matz and have spoken 4 times at RubyConf and 2 times at RailsConf, plus 2 times this year at Ruby conferences in Europe, including this talk that I shared with him); I offered to ask my company's former CTO (who is still with us in a different position) to give a "Founder" topic talk (one of the topics of the conference) about how to be a Tech Founder for a Ruby on Rails project (our previous Montreal-based Fintech company is a huge success story as we got bought by a larger Silicon Valley Fintech 1.5 years ago that is a leader in the Credit Union AI/Agent Conversational Software space); and I offered to recommend other potential Ruby speakers from Montreal. 

After everything I volunteered to help with, Pascal strangely seemed to push back against me giving a Ruby talk at the Montreal-based XO Ruby even though there are empty slots left and I am literally one of the biggest representers of Ruby in the Montreal Tech community today (not many Ruby Software Engineers from Montreal present at RubyConf like I have in 2022/2023/2024, and no one from Montreal as far as I know has won awards by Matz, the creator of Ruby). I've also put in many many hours and days into keeping the Montreal.rb Ruby Meetup going, including giving extra presentations myself whenever needed, and that's in addition to the many many hours and days I've put into Ruby Open-Source Projects. Honestly, if an interviewee at a job interview I am conducting had reacted with that sort of apathy after hearing my accomplishments, they'd be cut immediately from the interview process due to being apathetic instead of passionate, and due to not appreciating excellence, as only unexcellent people don't appreciate excellence. Truly excellent people always appreciate excellence and excellent accomplishments, while maintaining an attitude of curiosity about them.

I asked him how many talk slots are left in the conference. He said there are about 9 slots and about 4-5 are left, including empty slots for the "Open-Source Projects" topic. Then, he started trying to explain that he wanted a very technical Ruby talk (it's a weird note given Glimmer DSL for Web is one of the most technically interesting and innovative Ruby projects ever with its ultralight, expressive, and minimalistic DSLs). So, I told him I've given talks at many Ruby/Rails conferences and meetups on a variety of topics, including Domain Driven Design, Design Patterns, Object Oriented Design, Desktop Development, Frontend Development, and DSL Engine Meta-Programming, plus I have literally won an award from Matz, the creator of Ruby, last year for my Open-Source Project, Glimmer DSL for Web (in addition to winning another award a few years ago for Glimmer DSL for LibUI), so I can easily give a strong Ruby technical presentation. The weirdest and creepiest thing is Pascal's face was so apathetic when I was recounting all my Ruby accomplishments as if they don't matter. That's not the reaction of a strong ethical Software Engineer who cares about the fact that past Ruby accomplishments have benefited many customers and continue to benefit customers directly or indirectly today. 

Then, Pascal said he could not guarantee a slot for me despite having empty slots, believe it or not, without providing any valid reasons! I told him given that I am 100% qualified to give a talk at the conference, this is discrimination! After all, if I wasn't qualified, or even had some competition, I could understand not being guaranteed a slot. But, I am the only one in the Montreal community who has won awards from Matz, my new innovative open-source project has no competition, and no Software Engineers in Montreal have represented Ruby as much as I have in recent years through continued effort in fostering the local Ruby community with running the Montreal.rb Ruby Meetup. Meaning, this is 100% discrimination. 

To give a point of comparison, I was literally hired instantly at my current company a number of years ago (when we were still a small startup before acquisition) because my boss appreciated all my Ruby accomplishments and knew that I had a large enough body of work in the Ruby community (many RubyConf/RailsConf talks and Ruby open-source projects) that demonstrated my Ruby skills beyond the shadow of a doubt and warranted instant acceptance of me. My boss back then who was the CTO at the time is a Super-Duper Ultra Strong Software Engineer/Architect/CTO by the way, so he knew what he was doing. 

Any normal competent ethical strong Software Engineer would have been absolutely excited to have me talk at their Ruby conference (like the organizers of wroclove.rb and RubyConf Austria), especially that I have won an award from Matz himself, the creator of Ruby. They would have been 100% curious to learn what the award-winning project is all about and would have wanted me to share that knowledge with others in the Ruby community for the benefit of customers (not for selfish reasons). 

I responded to Pascal further by telling him that his conference practices discrimination and is an unexcellent garbage conference that is way below my standards for how a Ruby conference should be (it should be non-discriminatory and appreciative of excellence that wins awards from the creator of Ruby).  So, I don't want to participate in it anymore nor help it. The fact that the conference doesn't immediately accept a talk by someone who won awards from the creator of the programming language that is the reason for the conference existing means it is a trash conference. It can't possibly be sharing top-level Ruby excellent knowledge, yet lower-level mediocre knowledge. I told him I was ending the video conference call because discrimination is not acceptable anywhere in Canada. It's funny how this creepy unethical guy was trying to act as if he's "more important" than me when in fact he probably doesn't have half my accomplishments. This reminds me of this blog post about entitled people in the Ruby community, which applies to him as well.

The crazy thing is he tried to interject and say things about "my behavior" towards the end of the video call when in fact his behavior was already bad through discrimination and lack of appreciation for excellence, so if his behavior is already bad, he is in no position to judge anyone else's "behavior"! My behavior is exemplary in the Montreal Ruby community over many years.

One other thing worthy of note that relates to discrimination is that at one point, Pascal tried to focus the conversation on the pronunciation of my last name, which felt uncomfortable and felt as if he was trying to pigeon hole me into whatever "country of origin" my heritage belongs to instead of just treating me as a 100% equal Canadian (as I am a 100% Canadian after all). I have just completed my employer's yearly training for workplace prevention of abuse, harassment, and discrimination. And, such behavior came up in the training as "discrimination based on the country of origin". When he asked about how my last name is pronounced, I told him my last name is just pronounced like it's written in English, with the end being silent, similarly to the pronunciation of the word "melee" (meaning a skirmish). To be honest, over the years, I have received that sort of discrimination from a number of people in Canada. It's disappointing that some people in my country, Canada, discriminate against others based on their country of origin, sometimes in very subtle ways with plausible deniability (this was blogged about as covert discrimination). I had less experience of that discrimination when I lived in the USA in the past during the first 10 years of my career. It's ironic that the international stereotype of Canadians is that they are nice people, but in actuality, some of them (not all) apply "niceness" with a double standard (which is not nice), treating people in their in-group nicely and treating others in their out-group not nicely at all. That's something I have experienced by some of the people who work for Shopify in the past (this blog post by Paul Battley and this blog post by André Arko confirm my experience of Shopify being mean). Fortunately, I work with very nice people at my company's Montreal branch and I have a very nice French Canadian girlfriend too.

Another thing worthy of note is that this XO Ruby conference is associated with Jim Remsik who runs Falgrant. In a past RubyConf that I presented at, at which I met Jim Remsik, I literally saw swag/stickers by Flagrant that included the F word, which were very unprofessional and disrespectful. Professional Software Engineers who don't make it a habit to drop F bombs at work would not use that sort of language in business marketing material as that immediately reduces a company like Flagrant into a trash company that spreads unethical trash with every interaction they have with others. I removed Jim Remsik from my LinkedIn in the past after I noticed that just as I removed Pascal Laliberté from my LinkedIn today after our video call.

I have mentioned this before; from the perspective of discriminators who have an unconscious or conscious in-group/out-group bias, it doesn't matter if someone from the out-group has launched rockets to the moon successfully with excellent effort, as they would still get treated as if they are unequal unimportant people and as if their accomplishments don't matter (in spite of having practically benefited many customers directly or indirectly with their accomplishments). 

In conclusion, to avoid enabling discrimination and unexcellence in the Ruby community, avoid attending, sponsoring, and presenting at XO Ruby. Also, know that it is a mediocre garbage conference that is way below the high quality standards of Ruby Experts like me for excellence and ethics. 

P.S. Of course, as with my other blog posts, to prove that I'm on the right side of things, I acknowledge that nobody is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. Meaning, I am always open to the idea of forgiving people if they redeem themselves. So, if Pascal was to apologize about his discrimination/lack-of-appreciation-for-excellence and allow the most active Expert Ruby Software Engineer in Montreal to present at a Montreal Ruby conference, I'd be happy to retract this blog post. Otherwise, if I am wrong about something and it was kindly, patiently, and respectfully explained to me with genuine loving intentions, I'd be happy to reverse my position too. 

The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Community Chronicles 2026-07-28

"The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Subreddit Chronicles" becomes "The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Community Chronicles" as it expands to cover embarrassing interactions by bad Ruby/Rails devs all across social media and the real world, exposing rudeness, meanness, discrimination, and unexcellence/unintelligence in the Ruby/Rails worldwide community. The goal of course is to call that out to discourage in favor of true Rubyist MINASWAN attitudes and behaviors instead (Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice).

While going through the yearly Bystander Intervention training for my job, I stumbled upon "Persistent unwanted personal questions" as a form of verbal abuse. 

I have to confess I recently experienced that at a Ruby tech event. A bad Ruby dev (the kind you'd find on the Ruby/Rails subreddits) kept rudely asking me what my salary was after I told him I won awards by Matz (the creator of Ruby) for my open-source projects. Any normal Rubyist would have asked me about my open-source projects instead, just out of normal Software Engineering curiosity to learn better ways of serving customers with Ruby. Instead, he kept prying very hard about my salary and was unwilling to accept the fact that it's rude to ask people he doesn't know for their salary. 

After I gave him multiple examples of how previous companies I worked at had policies against people asking about salaries because knowing the answer could cause envy and create bad relationships, citing a real story of that happening at one of my previous jobs when someone's salary leaked, he pivotted towards asking me if "I felt uncomfortable answering". He kept insisting on me answering that new question instead going forward. The person was already coming across by that point as a very awful rude unprofessional person due to literally attempting to make me feel uncomfortable with incessent questioning.

He sounded like he desperately wanted to "win the conversation/situation" in any way possible (of me having won awards he hasn't won, instead of being humble/happy for me) by trying to make me "look bad" as someone who is "weak" due to being "uncomfortable". That revealed to me what his original intention and ulterior motive was behind asking for my salary: He just wanted to make me "look bad" as I'm sure he was going to tell me my salary was too low no matter what answer I would have provided, as a trap, to insult me and render me "unimportant" even if I've won awards by Matz. As if the awards were about me "being important" or "making more money" as opposed to ensuring I serve customers with the best quality work possible (which is what awards really encourage from the perspective of truly ethical excellent people who don't prioritize greed or pride over customer service). 

What a ridiculous interaction that was! I finally answered him by saying "it's not about me being uncomfortable. It's just a bad practice/etiquette to ask for someone's salary, especially if you don't know them well, and I won't endorse/enable that practice by answering the question even if I were comfortable with answering it."

The dude confessed to me eventually that he doesn't work in Ruby anymore because he lost a political battle at work, so he is now using Python even though Ruby is more effective than Python at building his work application. What a loser! That's exactly the kind of pushover rude loser my team would never hire and would screen for during the interviewing phase of hiring. We don't want devs who lose political battles for what technology decisions are best for serving customers. I have won many many such political battles at my company over the years, and it was because I'm no pushover. A bad dev being unethical/rude goes hand in hand with other bad attributes like being a pushover, which is why we never hire such devs in the first place.

A Supporter Sympathizes with My Discrimination by RubyConf 2026

I am thankful to the Software Engineer who shared a very supportive comment regarding my experience of discrimination by RubyConf 2026. 

RubyConf 2026 Is Not a Safe Environment for Everyone

RubyConf 2026 is not a safe environment for everyone. They have an in-group and an out-group. If you're in the in-group, they will treat you well and accept talk proposals by you even if you don't have top-level skills in Software Engineering. If you're in the out-group, it doesn't matter if you launch rockets to the moon successfully on your own or win the approval of Matz himself, you will be excluded and discriminated against: 

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2026/06/rubyconf-has-joined-railsconfrailsworld.html

If that weren't true, then RubyConf's folks would not be afraid to address the issue of feeling discriminated against for the benefit of keeping their reputation clean. Alas, like all discriminators out there, they cower and hide instead of addressing the issue because the discrimination is 100% real. A discriminator usually discriminates because they don't see everyone as equal or because they're frauds and don't have the energy to treat everyone equally, so if discrimination is brought up to them, they won't take it seriously. 

Respectful treatment means to treat someone well and fairly for what they have accomplished and what they offer. I realize I could buy a ticket to the conference, but rejecting a talk by me that won the approval of Matz, the creator of the Ruby programming language that is the reason for the conference existing means I have earned the right to talk about the subject that I won an award from Matz for. Otherwise, I am being robbed and discriminated against. This is no different from how the MLB (Major League Baseball) used to mistreat Afro Americans and relegate them to playing in the Negro league instead of the Major League. Telling someone who can perform at the major league level they are unaccepted as a player there, but could attend if they want is most definitely discrimination 100%. 

By the way, under other circumstances, if I had no project to talk about, I would be 100% OK with attending RubyConf instead of presenting as I would normally want to support other speakers and learn from them. But, in 2026, the issue is if they rejected a talk by someone who won an award from Matz at a near impossible international competition to win, it means they probably rejected a lot of top-quality talks and accepted many subpar mediocre quality talks. I don't want to go to a conference in which I become mediocre by attending mediocre talks. Excellence and unexcellence are infectious. The next thing I know after hanging out with unexcellent speakers at RubyConf 2026 is I'll become unexcellent and subpar like them. This is no different from entire mediocre communities like the React.js comunity and others where the blind are leading the blind into a pit, but everyone is celebrating the popularity of mediocre ideas and technologies (meaning they only perceive themselves as being smart, but objectively, they're all performing suboptimally for customers and don't provide the best smartest work). No thanks!!!

RubyConf 2026 is a cesspool of discirmination and exclusion:

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2026/07/reminder-that-rubyconf-2026-is-cesspool.html

One might think that RubyConf's folks are too busy to look into the discrimination claim. But in fact, I contacted them about the perceived discrimination about a month ago. They had all the time of the world to look into the discrimination and lack of appreciation of excellence (an equally serious matter). Also, if they claim to be "excellent", "inclusive" and "diverse", then looking into discrimination and lack of appreciation of excllence would be the top priority of RubyConf, alas they're a mediocre discriminatory conference in 2026 that doesn't put excellence and lack of discrimination at the top of their priorities, just like any dictator at a third world country would act. They're no different. It's a fraud of a conference in 2026.

The fact that it doesn't bother them to have these blog posts published as to want to contact me and settle the issue of discrimination against me proves they are discriminators 100% because discriminators aren't bothered by having discrimination reported to them, but real non-discriminators put ethics and good equal treatment of everyone first above everything else.

I have talked extensively about covert discrimination in the Ruby community in the past, including microdiscrimination / personal discrimination (meaning discrimination against a single person, which makes the discrimination escape protections available for minority groups). Ignoring someone without attempting to resolve things amicably definitely falls under covert discrimination:

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2024/12/how-to-spot-covert-discrimination-in.html

Ruby Open-Source Innovation Process Expectation vs Reality

Expectation regarding the Ruby open-source innovation process:

1- I stumble upon a problem at my job in our Ruby application.

2- I build a solution for it in an open-source project (e.g. the ability to write the Frontend with a Ruby Frontend Framework instead of using an inferior JavaScript library like React).

3- I win an award for my open-source project by Matz, the creator of Ruby.

4- I get accepted to present my open-source project at Ruby conferences.

5- Ruby Software Engineers adopt the new highly innovative open-source project, benefiting themselves and their customers greatly. 

Reality regarding the Ruby open-source innovation process:

It doesn't matter how innovative an open-source project that you build is in your free time as a free beneficial contribution for the Ruby community. Even if your open-source project won an award from the creator of Ruby himself at an international tech competition that very few devs won, the project will get rejected from RubyConf due to discrimination and lack of appreciation for excellence from everyone equally. If you're in their discriminatory out-group instead of their in-group and/or you cover a topic that might upset RubyConf folks who aren't 100% for Ruby (e.g. unseating React/JavaScript with Ruby), you are excluded (even if your talk's project has zero competition), to the detriment of the Ruby community at large. 

Learn more:

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2026/06/rubyconf-has-joined-railsconfrailsworld.html

Reminder that RubyConf 2026 is a Cesspool of Discrimination and Exclusion

Just a reminder that RubyConf has become a Cesspool of Discrimination and Exclusion. In 2026, it doesn't matter how well accomplished a Ruby Software Engineer is in the Ruby community as even if they win awards by the creator of Ruby himself, if they propose a topic that is taboo with the organizers of RubyConf, they are excluded and discriminated against, without even providing a valid reason for the exclusion. It's one thing if there was an intelligent rational reason. It's another when the organizers just run away in cowardice from addressing the discrimination, which is an act of discrimination/exclusion as ignoring someone is a form of exclusion too. 

The bottom line of RubyConf is that if you are one of the "favored ones" that RubyConf give preferential treatment to, then even if you haven't won any awards from the creator of Ruby or lack complete mastery in Software Engineering, due to discrimination, you are given more importance over someone with more skills and experience. 

That means RubyConf mostly has subpar and suboptimal talks. Intelligent well-accomplished master Software Engineers can't trust that they would receive top-level talks at RubyConf anymore in 2026. 

Basically, RubyConf discriminates against people by seeing them in multiple groups (unlike normal non-discriminatory conferences that always recognize and reward excellence):

• Excluded ones: those people can build a rocket that reaches the moon and win awards from the creator of Ruby, but their efforts are not appreciated by RubyConf or respected as to give them a speaking platform if they propose a topic that is deemed too novel, outside the box, or taboo by RubyConf (like Frontend Ruby Development)
• "Favored ones": those people are liked not always for top-merit or rational reasons, but often for emotional reasons too, a form of discrimination by not seeing everyone as equal, yet deeming some people as above others even without having the best or top-level accomplishments.

Meaning, the "favored ones" will be allowed to "have fun" at the conference and think it is "diverse and inclusive" when in fact it's all a lie. They do it with a double standard offering that to some people only, but not offering well-deserved respect to everyone who earned it, and without even being loving enough as to explain why a talk about an open source project that won an award by Matz himself at a very difficult international competition is getting rejected at the conference as to help the person follow a "better path" in their career if they're truly wrong.

Part of the reason why this is a big problem is because the project they excluded offers an amazingly simple Ruby solution to a very complicated and divisive problem in the Ruby on Rails community. Then again, perhaps it is knocking JavaScript around too much for the liking of fake Rubyists who work at RubyConf and that's the true reason why they "didn't find the project interesting" when in fact Matz the creator of Ruby who's smarter and more accomplished/important than all of them didn't just find it interesting, but was willing to give it an award at a difficult international competition along with other smart judges. 

By attending RubyConf, you're supporting this kind of discrimination and exclusion, plus lack of appreciation of excellence, which means RubyConf is unexcellent and is mostly sharing dumb "yet popular" talks with the public. If anyone has any shred of ethics, self respect, or excellence, they would boycott RubyConf and contact them about this grand discrimination offense committed by them. 

Funny, I told my girlfriend about this a while ago, and she recently asked me if any of the RubyConf folks reached out to me to apologize or explain themselves, expecting that normal people would do that. I told her no, they're just unethical discriminatory cowards (their guys aren't real men) who don't care to explain this or apologize about it. Though, I personally am always open to forgiving someone if they are willing to apologize or explain what I might have done wrong to deserve this. Any other reaction shows apathy and more discrimination (ignoring someone is exclusion, so another form of discrimination). 

In a way, I am very happy I won an award from Matz in 2025 because it exposed the Ruby community for all the discrimination it has against certain people/topics in the community, which even reached RubyConf eventually.

The Ruby Community in 2026

The Ruby community in 2026 is dominated by mean discriminators and their benefactors (they're about 50% of the community at least). Many devs in the Ruby community who are indirect (unconscious) or direct benefactors of discrimination have this attitude of "well, if this discrimination problem is not affecting me, then I don't care". So, they're not real Rubyists because real Rubyists always care about being nice to everyone in the community.

Basically, the #Ruby community in 2026 is comprised of 3 groups. 

The 1st group is the true Rubyists who are customer focused with their work (not popularity focused) and who are sincere nice people, well-educated, and well-accomplished with often a good number of free open-source contributions and talks for the benefit of the Ruby community at large. 

The 2nd group is the elites (devs who work at organizations like RubyConf, 37Signals, and Shopify) who act like they're not required to treat everyone with equality and respect, and often discriminate against certain people in the community, treating them like dirt while boosting other people in the community who don't have merit in Ruby or in general at their expense. When such companies hire unqualified devs by giving them false privilege, they don't always choose them based on true merit or Software Engineering education and skills, yet based on whether they belong to certain elitist circles, they are alphas/cool, or they are good looking to use them as the product, not their Software Engineering education or skills. That's an incredible form of blatant discrimination and preferential treatment. 

The 3rd group is the benefactors of false privilege. It's mostly people who have no completed university degrees, no big accomplishments in open-source, no substantial Software Engineering skills beyond Monkey-See-Monkey-Do and copying "famous devs" at large corps without true understanding, but they're treated like they're better than the 1st group because the 2nd group gets off on the feeling of acting like benevolent heroes by giving false privilege to people in the 3rd group who don't deserve it at the expense of people in the 1st group who have earned everything with sincere effort and smart ethical excellent work. In other words, people in the 3rd group are living off of stolen good via false privilege and preferential treatment while making the Ruby community worse. I have run into people of the 3rd group who work for organizations of people in the 2nd group that came across as extremely rude/mean, unintelligent/unskilled, apathetic towards treating everyone with equality, niceness, and respect, and quite aloof or nasty in some instances. 

This only started happening more with the rise of Shopify as explained in this article:

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2025/06/shopify-has-been-bad-for-ruby-community.html

In other words, RubyConf in 2026 is FakeRubyConf. Anyone attending it is endorsing discrimination and unexcellence. Learn more about that here: 

https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2026/06/rubyconf-has-joined-railsconfrailsworld.html 

I've said it in previous posts. If the people perceived as mean discriminators were to courageously address this issue and apologize for it if needed, I'd take down these posts, alas the coward's plea is often the only response provided. They're not real men of honor who are willing to face the music and address serious matters like discrimination to demonstrate good will and tell us they care about treating everyone in the Ruby community equally.

RubyConf has joined RailsConf & RailsWorld as another exclusive discriminatory unexcellent conference

RubyConf has joined RailsConf & RailsWorld as another exclusive discriminatory unexcellent conference by discriminating against any speakers who submit talks that cover Frontend Ruby technologies or dethrone React/JavaScript in any way. In 2025, I won an award for a highly innovative and outside-the-box Ruby open-source project at an international Japanese tech competition that Matz, the creator of Ruby himself, presided on in addition to other judges. My project really impressed Matz, who is the reason for all the Ruby-related conferences existing in the first place, but in spite of that, both RailsConf and RailsWorld rejected my talk about my award-winning open-source project in 2025 despite the Ruby on Rails community sorely needing a Frontend Ruby solution that would fill a gap not handled by Hotwire; that is true Frontend Development in Ruby (to build frontend-local apps like a UML Diagrammer for example). Given that I am the most qualified person to talk about Frontend Development in Ruby on Rails using real Ruby in the Browser, and no other Frontend technologies rival my project in either productivity or simplicity/maintainability, the rejections came across as discrimination/exclusion and mediocrity/closed-mindedness/lack of appreciation for excellence. After all, if you reject an open-source project that won an award by Matz, your action is sending everyone the discouraging message that it doesn't matter how hard Software Engineers work to produce a unique innovation; they will stil be rejected because of discrimination and lack of appreciation for excellence if it comes from outside the core group behind Rails and some of their sponsors/friends. The reason this is also discrimination is because I was not rejected due to being unqualified (as I won an award after all) or due to the project not providing great value to the Ruby on Rails community (it impressed Matz) as the project saves Ruby on Rails Software Engineers who previously used JavaScript libraries like React.js/Angular/Vue/Svelte 6 months of Frontend work every year by switching to Frontend Ruby. I don't know many talks at RubyConf in general that can offer the same benefit. And, I am sure that nobody working for either RailsConf or RailsWorld has won a similar award to mine at the same international Japanese tech competition that was judged by Matz (and I have done it one other time previously too in fact). 

Fortunately, this year, my award-winning open-source project got accepted at RubyConf Austria 2026 (30-minute talk) and wroclove.rb 2026 (3-hour workshop). Those conferences are much better run than RailsConf and RailsWorld in welcoming innovation and being inclusive! wroclove.rb 2026 literally says on their website that they "want to confront ideas", in contrast to RailsConf and RailsWorld running away from ideas that don't come from the Rails core devs and some of their sponsors/friends (a form of discrimination). RubyConf Austria & wroclove.rb don't discriminate against Frontend Ruby projects and aren't offended by a talk that dethrones React/JavaScript, especially if already approved by Matz, the creator of Ruby. They welcome the excellence and hard work that went into creating my award-winning open-source Ruby project and winning an award from Matz. In other words, they encourage the Ruby community to be excellent and follow my example in innovation and thinking outside the box. In fact, I met Chad Fowler at RubyConf Austria 2026, and he attended my talk, then told me "good job" afterwards. For those who don't know, Chad Fowler founded RubyConf back in 2001. 

So, I submitted my award-winning open-source project's talk to RubyConf in 2026 thinking they might be less averse to Frontend Ruby, especially if the speaker won an award from Matz, given RubyConf is typically more open-minded about Ruby innovations outside of core Rails. Well, I got rejected despite being accepted by Matz, the creator of the language that conference was founded upon. I asked by email for the reasons for the rejection and for feedback to help improve myself in case they want me to do better before getting accepted (though to be frank, I won an award from the creator of Ruby himself, and there isn't anything that can top that). They never responded. 

I want to clarify that I have supported RubyConf in the past by giving talks/workshops at it and by donating my speaker stipends/hotel-pay (over $1000 or $2000 for all the conferences I spoke at) back to RubyCentral for the benefit of the Ruby community as a whole with everyone in it. So, it's not much to ask for a response as to why I encountered behavior that came across as discrimination when I have gone above and beyond in the past in supporting RubyConf and RubyCentral.

Eventually, I remembered that I have 2 RubyConf/RubyCentral people as LinkedIn connections, Jason Swett and Freedom Dumlao, so I contacted them asking the same question. I also pointed out to them that I am a former RubyConf speaker who donated his speaking stipends from the last 3 RubyConfs back to RubyCentral for the benefit of the Ruby community at large (that's over $1000). So, being treated with respect and non-discrimination is the least I could expect from RubyCentral.

Jason Swett chose the coward's plea and just never responded, which is how true discriminators handle discrimination when it's raised to them. The reason this incriminates him 100% is because if he truly wasn't involved in discrimination, he would have at least responded by saying he sympathizes with me perceiving discrimination and by indicating he is shocked that a project that won an award from Matz (when many other RubyConf talk projects didn't win any awards from Matz) got rejected at RubyConf. Honestly, Jason reminds me of employees that my employers fired in the past. Lack of presence and visibility is usually the sign of an unreliable employee who is never there for others. So, I advise against hiring Jason Swett (unless he responds to me and clears up my experienced discrimination).

Freedom Dumlao didn't respond to my first message, but at least responded to my 2nd follow-up message. He gets some points for that. Otherwise, his response was very weird and defensive. He claimed with a very unfriendly tone that I didn't know him even though him and I met at RubyConf 2024 and sat at the same eating table multiple times while having conversations that eventually led to connecting on LinkedIn. In fact, it sounded like he was trying to get out of responsibility by claiming I did not know him enough (a very unnice unfriendly thing to say from a Rubyist) even though the world is a meritocracy anyways, meaning people are known through their actions in day to day interactions, whether ethical or unethical. The way he said that came across as immature and irresponsible, not the way someone at RubyCentral should be talking. After all, a responsible person would have not focused on that, yet focused on my experience of discrimination and how strange it is that a project that was approved by Matz in a very difficult international competition and got a "good job" remark from Chad Fowler (the founder of RubyConf) got rejected at RubyConf, which would indicate RubyConf's staff are unqualified and do not appreciate excellence, in addition to having discriminatory biases, like the bias against Frontend Ruby and biases for React/JavaScript that cause offense if they are dethroned (shameful at a Ruby conference that is supposed to make Software Engineers feel safe about loving Ruby more than other languages). None of them have won similar awards from Matz, most likely in fact. A person in Freedom's position should have been sincerely concerned and should have noticed the problem and then promised a solution without making any excuses, just like how excellent organizations behave. Given that he didn't respond that way, even if I didn't know him, his reaction told me and everyone everything about him that we need to know about who he really is. He showed that he's part of the problem not the solution.

Regarding my donations to RubyCentral that exceed $1000, Freedom tried to deny the value of my donation by saying he donated more to RubyCentral, believe it or not! What a creepy disrespectful way to talk to someone who gave you money for free without being required to. Invalidating a donation is NOT a way to encourage people to continue donating, yet sends the message that donations are discouraged because in the end, they won't matter anyways as "someone else donated more than you". That was the most unhinged unprofessional encounter I've had from someone who is supposed to be a professional! Honestly, it doesn't matter how much he donated. My donations still have the same value in helping RubyCentral and the Ruby community regardless. Other people's donations definitely don't invalidate mine. 

Freedom also proceeded to claim that there was "no discrimination" because all their talks are reviewed anonymously. EXCEPT, my talk was NOT reviewed anonymously, because it mentions a public project on GitHub (which shows the author as soon as one visits it) and a public award (with the winner's name) that the project won from Matz at a public competition. 

I responded to inform him that my proposal submission wasn't anonymous as that was impossible with the talk being about a GitHub project and having won an award. And, I informed him that my donation is definitely NOT invalidated because he donated more. Freedom then chose the coward's plea and didn't respond. I advise against hiring Freedom Dumlao for any jobs or services as a result. He's the kind of selfish irresponsible excuse maker who is only about protecting his own hide while not caring about encouraging and maintaining excellence in a community, nor respecting people who donate to the community without being required to.

You see what I'm dealing with here!? Total trash! These are the kind of people running RubyCentral today! No matter it encountered issues last year with the Mike Perham vs DHH debacle, in addition to stopping RailsConf. The Ruby community is being run by total clowns who are discriminatory, unethical, and unprofessional!

I have ZERO interest in attending RubyConf 2026 as a result. After all, if they rejected a talk by one of the best open-source Ruby projects to come out in 2025 as to win an award by Matz, the creator of Ruby himself, then they probably rejected many other project talks that are top  quality because of the discriminatory biases and lack of qualification of RubyConf staff in 2026. For all we care, we got the dumbest, but most popular, talks in RubyConf 2026, but smart Software Engineers know that popularity is NOT quality. After all, PHP/WordPress is more popular than Rails, but definitely inferior in productivity and maintainability, which is why Ruby on Rails devs don't use those technologies in general. 

In conclusion, RubyConf in 2026 has become an exclusive discriminatory unexcellent conference, which is where people go to become dumber and/or meaner. 

If I had been working for RubyCentral, I would have provided guaranteed speaker slots for winners of the yearly Fukuoka international tech competition that Matz presides on to encourage excellence and innovation in the Ruby community, and I would have provided guaranteed speaker slots or tracks for owners of long-term "pillar" open-source projects in the Ruby community (e.g. Sidekiq, JRuby, Opal, etc...) to respect and support long-term open-source contributors of the Ruby community.

I have covered the topic of covert discrimination in the Ruby community before. What I encountered at the hands of the RubyConf folks is classic covert discrimination. Spread the word to help stop discrimination and unexcellence in the Ruby community! In the meantime, I'll make sure to only attend and speak at Ruby conferences that don't have unprofessional unexcellent discriminatory staff.

P.S. To prove that I'm reasonable and on the right side of this, I will acknowledge that nobody is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. What distinguishes good people from bad people though is that good people will admit their errors and apologize for their mistakes when they are pointed out to them whereas bad people will act aloof and commit more discrimination/exclusion by ignoring you when that happens. If any of the problematic people mentioned in the article change their mind and decide to respond like real men (not by hiding like cowards) to resolve my concerns about discrimination/exclusion/unexcellence for the benefit of the cheated Ruby community that missed out on all the Matz-loved value provided by an award-winning open-source Ruby project that impressed Matz, then I'll delete this blog post. 

The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Subreddit Chronicles 2025-12-02

Welcome to another edition of the Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Subreddit Chronicles! A post was shared in the Rails subreddit about DHH claiming that money is a good reason to cheer for Shopify. I simply stated that no amount of money justifies mean discrimination, and I immediately got downvoted to 0. That proves yet again that there are devs in the Rails subreddit who are OK with mean discrimination if a certain amount of money is made and the subreddit mods are OK with mean discrimination by extension by allowing them into the group. 

Yet another embarrassment for the Ruby on Rails community as it officially admits the belief that mean discrimination is OK if a certain amount of money is gained, throwing MINASWAN out of the window instead of behaving in the ethical and nice Ruby way! This is the truth of the Ruby on Rails community in 2025!

The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Subreddit Chronicles 2025-11-24

Welcome to another edition of the Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Subreddit Chronicles. Attached are screenshots for another embarrassing incident demonstrating the mean/hateful nature of Ruby/Rails subreddit members and how they downvote without first having a nice and loving patient discourse in case of a misunderstanding or an uninformed disagreement. 

It hit me the other day that the reason I suffer from mean/hateful behaviour in the Ruby/Rails subreddits despite being a 2-time Fukuoka international competition winner (of awards by Matz, the creator of Ruby), a 4-time RubyConf speaker, and a 2-time RailsConf speaker is because they allow in people who are below the minimum bar of professionalism and respectful conduct that is required for hiring in a Software Engineering job at a respectful ethical company. I mean I wouldn't hire any of them in a million years, not just for lack of technical skills, but more importantly for not having the patient loving nice Rubyist personality. So, why do the Ruby/Rails subreddit mods allow in unnice/hateful people who are below the minimum bar of respectful conduct?! This is a negative reflection on the mods just as much as it is on the trash members of the Ruby/Rails subreddits. I say trash because they're no different from trash criminals and drug addicts I'd encounter on the streets in their mean behaviour. It's not the behaviour of a member of the Software Engineering community, let alone the Ruby/Rails community.

In this screenshot, you can see a Ruby subreddit moderator asking for feedback about new rules, which in my opinion are embarrassingly fascist (not referring to the linked rules, yet the ones in the post, which negate the value of asking for feedback; I never restrict people from sharing feedback, especially negative, in the sports groups I moderate, and they're infinitely better than this Ruby group as a result). 

Here, you can see my response, and how it was immediately downvoted to 0 within 5 minutes of posting, demonstrating the mean hateful non-open-minded unsympathetic nature of Ruby subreddit members (not sympathizing with someone who says they received hateful behaviour means you are a hateful person).

Of course, fascist rules are a red herring. They're a side effect to Ruby subreddit mods holding on to terrorists that they harbour within their group instead of letting them go as explained in this sentence:

"If you worry too much about the rules, it means you have the wrong kind of people in the group, and that’s the real problem not being dealt with (eg allowing in haters of Ruby, people who don’t give Ruby the benefit of the doubt in applications that it’s not common in, people who are below the minimum bar of ethical respectful conduct and professionalism, etc…)."

Here is my full comment, repeated here textually:

"This group allows a lot of hate on Frontend Ruby. It also literally allows people who don’t truly like Ruby or get it to freely discuss JavaScript as better than Ruby while making true Rubyists who understand and appreciate Ruby’s benefits over JavaScript not feel safe in a Ruby group. This automatically renders the group a bad one.

Also, I’ve encountered a lot of hateful behavior in this group against anything that’s novel and outside the box of what’s common in the software development community. 15 years ago, Rubyists were open minded about new novel ideas and patiently listened to them without downvoting. In this group today, such ideas get downvoted to zero in a very hateful unintelligent way without giving the poster the benefit of the doubt or even attempting to understand the benefits of what is shared. That discourages Rubyists from sharing new ideas or exploring them in this group in a respectful intelligent open minded manner. I personally make an effort not to downvote anyone, yet to ask questions and facilitate discussions if I disagree with something.

In general, rules that are unethical or do not implicitly respect everyone equally only make the group a bad one.

Lastly, politics are off-topic. Honestly, this is not a good group if it allows off-topic things while attempting to shift the blame unto the people who are right about the matter. That’s attempting to get out of responsibility, which is also bad. If you don’t understand this, you’re on the wrong side of this. I’m apolitical and don’t vote by choice by the way, so I don’t care to discuss this further because I don’t like discussing politics ever, especially not in a Ruby group not about politics.

If you worry too much about the rules, it means you have the wrong kind of people in the group, and that’s the real problem not being dealt with (eg allowing in haters of Ruby, people who don’t give Ruby the benefit of the doubt in applications that it’s not common in, people who are below the minimum bar of ethical respectful conduct and professionalism, etc…).

Update: Exhibit A: I have won 2 awards from Matz in very difficult international engineering competitions, and have spoken at RubyConf 4 times, and yet people don’t respect me, discriminate against me and hate me, unintelligently downvoting my posts out of hate and discrimination not for any intelligent reasons. Of course, this behavior is only an indirect reflection on the mods allowing hateful disrespectful people into a Ruby group without respecting the Ruby luminaries of the Ruby community. I was respected more 10-15 years ago when I wasn’t a very well accomplished Ruby Software Engineer back then because the Ruby group was run better back then."

Happy Ending for Discrimination Experienced at Tech Companies

I reported a few weeks ago some discrimination that my girlfriend has experienced at a tech team, which is similar to discrimination I have experienced in the Ruby community. The good news is last week, my girlfriend finally had a happy ending to this discrimination problem. The good guys and gals always win in the end! Evil never triumphs permanently!

Assuming you read the previous blog post on the topic, what happened next is the manager who was enabling discrimination against my girlfriend totally lost it and started commanding and controlling every developer on the team, telling them to stop sharing their opinions at meetings and only follow orders from the manager going forward. The manager completely stopped the whole agile Scrum collaborative approach and wanted to turn the team into the worst kind of Waterfallish nightmare in which devs cannot question anything and must only do as the manager says. As part of that, he stopped my girlfriend's retro meetings and was beginning to have her cut out several Scrum practices that help with team collaboration because he wanted to be in charge of everything all of the sudden.

Needless to say, my girlfriend couldn't take that BS anymore, and told the manager point blank that the team is NOT Scrum or Agile anymore, and her title is literally Scrum Master, so she did not want to work on that team anymore. She told the manager she was gonna use her many accumulated vacation days over several years and take a month long vacation. 

My girlfriend just got back to her job last week, and after her first day back, she shared with me the big surprises that happened in her absence. Apparently, several members of the team quit (both devs and product people) or became extremely demoralized by the insanity of that manager and his changes that destroyed collaborative Software Development. His team moved so slowly as a result that the directors above him ended up pulling the plug on the project and killing it completely.

Fortunately, my girlfriend got re-assigned to another team that has just had their Scrum Master promoted into a higher level manager, so my girlfriend became the new Scrum Master on that team. And, the good news, my girlfriend told me the new team is amazing! They do even more Agile Software Development than straight up Scrum by augmenting Scrum with Kanban. They are very friendly and nice. And, they have a highly collaborative approach!

I had surprising good news like this happen to me last year after an abusive coworker from another Software Development team got suddenly let go with his entire team because his team failed to deliver and my team inherited his project and finished it in about 2 months despite being completely unfamiliar with its code beforehand. While working at the same company as me, that abusive dev missed all the Montreal.rb Ruby meetups I have organized except one, which he abandoned in the middle of. He never cared to support me, so he was definitely not the kind of dev I'd ever hire in the first place (he was at the company from before my time until he was let go). In fact, some dev at a different company contacted me a few months later to ask me about that abusive dev because he had applied for a job at his company. I ended up giving the full scoop on that abusive dev, which resulted in him getting rejected for that job. 

So, the good guys and gals always win! Never give up when you are in a bullying abusive discriminatory situation at your job or elsewhere!!! Bad people always end up paying for it sooner or later.

PS I am disappointed only a few people told me they sympathized with my situation after I posted the original blog post about the discrimination my girlfriend was suffering from. It's like many people in the Ruby community are 100% OK with discrimination/bullying/unnice-behavior nowadays or just they don't care if it's not happening to them! I would say 50% of the devs in the Ruby community today are part of the problem not the solution as either they are too complacent/lazy/cowardly to lend support to people affected by the problem of discrimination or they indirectly benefit from the discrimination because they are unqualified devs that only get ahead by getting some other devs pushed down. Do not be part of the problem through inaction! Speak up against discrimination, bullying, and unethical behavior! Offer sympathy, help, and support! Share your stories! Share triumphs over discrimination and bullying! 

The Embarrassing Ruby/Rails Subreddit Chronicles 2025-10-09

I have covered multiple times the mean discriminatory ways Ruby/Rails subreddit members treat some Rubyists, which started happening only in the last 10 years. Now, I will be regularly sharing examples of that for everyone to see to increase the level of awareness of the un-Ruby-community-like meanness, lack of sympathy, lying, and discrimination that Ruby/Rails subreddit members practice and moderators tolerate to the detriment of the Ruby on Rails community. Eventually, if the problem is not corrected, I will be talking about this problem at Ruby meetups and conferences to increase awareness of this big elephant in the room that isn't being addressed. It is basically a double standard that excludes some people like me from participating safely in the Ruby/Rails subreddits while the Subreddit members are nice to others they deem "in their clique" or "tribe". That's exactly what discrimination is, let alone, it's not nice as per the MINASWAN Ruby principle (Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice). Also, the argument that nobody forced me to join those groups is akin to telling someone who went into a bar and got stabbed that nobody forced them to go into the bar instead of correctly sympathizing with them and reporting the bad behavior to the authorities, potentially closing the bar permanently if it doesn't reform in its treatment of clients who enter it.

Before sharing examples, here are some of my previous posts about the topic:

• Entitled/Incompetent/Mean Members of Ruby/Rails Subreddits
• The Rails subreddit is an embarrassment to the Ruby community

I am very confident secure person and have thick skin, so I can freely share the interactions without being anxious about others' opinions.

As a first example, 10 months ago, I shared an article about "How To Spot Covert Discrimination in the Ruby Community", and I got downvoted to 0 in both the Ruby subreddit and Rails subreddit (probably got a very large negative number in both subreddits as Reddit doesn't show the real number when it's negative anymore I believe).

We all know that downvoting an article that speaks against discrimination means all the downvoters are discriminators (assuming what is shared is truthful). Meaning, this downvoting unwittingly confirmed 100% that the Ruby/Rails downvoters are discriminators.

Even if there might be some disagreement with what is written, the nice Ruby way to express that is by refraining from downvoting and having a conversation in a sympathetic, serious, and patient way (that's how things happened 10 years ago and before). It is very weird that Ruby/Rails subreddit members don't act that way, but it is possible they are indirectly benefiting from the discrimination that is happening in the Ruby community as that discrimination frees up jobs for them that they are not most qualified for, which enables them to steal those jobs at the expense of pushing defenseless members of the Ruby community down with bullying and discrimination. But, how come no leaders in the Ruby community are commenting about this mean behavior when in fact it is not normal whatsoever?!! Could it be that they are indirectly benefiting financially somehow from this discrimination too by taming the competition of Ruby developers indirectly? 

As a second example, I will share a very recent interaction that demonstrates total lack of sympathy by a Ruby subreddit member with the fact that I got discriminated against by a certain Ruby shop. And, the subreddit member ended up embarrassing themselves further by defending embarrassing lack of support for a local Ruby community by a well-funded Ruby shop that claims to be a "big supporter of Ruby", which is obviously a lie if actions don't match their words or if they discriminate against some members in the Ruby community in their support. Of course, defending mediocrity indicates mediocrity in the defender, which is why they embarrassed themselves further with the defense, let alone they told everyone they have no manners and aren't nice members of the Ruby community. One more thing that is also embarrassing about the interaction is that I am sure the commenter fits the profile of the post above "Entitled/Incompetent/Mean Members of Ruby/Rails Subreddits", meaning it's an unqualified person with entitlement issues that make them act in a mean way as if they're a god instead of being humble and sympathetic.

If a normal person was told by somebody that some other person suffered from discrimination, they would assume a serious sympathetic attitude and ask what happened to see if they could help. Any other reaction, like making fun of the person or being sarcastic with them, immediately reveals that the listener isn't a normal loving person, yet a person who is mean, unloving, a discriminator by extension through endorsement of discrimination, and probably someone indirectly benefiting from the discrimination to defend it. Even if the reporter of the discrimination was wrong in misinterpreting some behavior as discrimination, the right reaction would be to at least show concern and ask questions or explain in a calm rational manner any misunderstandings without joking about a topic like discrimination. That Ruby subreddit member's reaction was totally unacceptable and inappropriate as part of the nice Ruby decorum.

Here is the interaction:

Here is the link shared in my Reddit comment to learn more about what it says: https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2025/06/shopify-has-been-bad-for-ruby-community.html

The bottom line is that this person's interaction made the Ruby community worse not better overall. Offering sympathy or at least a listening ear to a person who suffered discrimination would have made the Ruby community better overall regardless of whether the discrimination took place or was a false perception that needed a patient gentle correction.

Not sympathizing with discrimination while affirming lack of support for members of the Ruby community means the commenter is by extension a mean discriminator who does not support the Ruby community nor kindly sympathizes with people who are mistreated, meaning a manner-less trash person. Also, by simple logical deduction, upvoting that comment indicates that all the upvoters are mean discriminators who do not support the Ruby community nor kindly sympathize with people who are mistreated equally, meaning manner-less trash people.

This demonstrates how ugly the Ruby on Rails community has become, especially with people in it enabling this kind of behavior and not doing the right things to discourage it, while conducting that with double standards, meaning they sometimes defend some members of the Ruby community from this sort of behavior, but also allow this behavior to go unchecked against other members of the community. Having double-standards is the very definition of discrimination.

I will start sharing more and more of those interactions to expose the unnice ways of Ruby/Rails subreddit members to the maintainers and contributors of Ruby, Rails, and other high-profile Ruby projects. It is important for everyone to become aware of this problem to eventually resolve it.

It's Official! The Bullies Are Running The Ruby Community!

Update 2025-10-24: Since this article has been written, new development has happened that led to the Ruby core team officially taking over RubyGems and Bundler, so fortunately, the hostile takeover by Shopify has been corrected and Ruby devs won everywhere as a result!!!

After reading Joel Drapper's article "Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover" and Josef Simanek's article "Why I leave Ruby Central", there is no doubt left in the fact that Shopify is a mean opportunistic company and isn't good for the Ruby community. They intentionally compromised the neutrality of RubyGems and Bundler for their own commercial interests. Meaning, they don't have the best interests of the Ruby community and customers in mind aside from profit, yet only their own self interests that are ultimately about their own profit. That fully compromised RubyGems and Bundler as being non-profit neutral platforms not associated directly with any company's commercial interests.

Just like that, the false image of Shopify as a nice entity in the Ruby community is completely shattered and exposed for the illusion it always was! Shopify does in no way follow the Ruby MINASWAN attitude and practice (Matz Is Nice And So We Are Nice)!

I already blogged about how Shopify has been bad for the Ruby community in the article "Shopify Has Been Bad for the Ruby Community in the Last 10 Years". The events of last week support everything I wrote as true. I haven't received any apologies from Shopify about what I wrote even though it is all 100% true. Everybody makes mistakes, but good people humbly own up and apologize when they realize their mistakes whereas bad people neither humbly own up nor apologize for their mistakes. 

A wronged person would at least expect something like "Hey, sorry! We messed up! We don't do this anymore as we learned from our past mistakes (or we fired whoever did this). Let's have a chat to make sure we're good going forward!". Not receiving communication as basic as that means the company is truly evil. If I was working at Shopify right now and I read a story like this, I'd immediately dust up my resume to go find another job. After all, everyone who works at Shopify right now is working at the expense of pushing people like me down by Shopify's mean elitist discriminatory practices. It's like someone living at a house that was paid for by stealing from a percentage of people in their community. It's not right at all! 

That's part of the reason why I was surprised DHH recently joined Shopify's board of directors. That indicts him further as part of the problem, not the solution. I have observed that companies that have evil discriminatory practices like Shopify's are almost always 1000+ employee companies as they treat people like numbers by the definition of them being too large. After all, their size, which is mainly driven by the greed for too much profit, makes it impractical for everybody to know everybody and treat everybody like an equal, let alone they have fake problems caused mostly by their size, preventing them from being truly agile like small-to-mid-size companies. DHH's 37Signals is a small company that should have a much better culture, so it's surprising that he chose to join the board of directors of one of those big corrupt evil companies that are totally unlike his.

In summary, it's official! The bullies are running the Ruby Community today! And, it's been having terrible effects on the Ruby community as a whole, especially innovation in Ruby. I recently recorded a video of myself talking about how "Ruby on Rails Conferences Are Discriminatory, Unintelligent, and Hateful of Ruby in 2025". This is a direct result of the bullies running the Ruby community!!!

In fact, I have suffered quite a bit from this covert bullying in the Ruby community in previous jobs, and have written an article about "How To Spot Covert Discrimination in the Ruby Community".

I had a hard time talking about the bullying in the Ruby community in the past because I really needed to keep my job for financial reasons, and I didn't want to lose my job by talking about the discrimination I was facing at various companies I worked at as well as in the interview process of companies I was considering. Fortunately, I have a good job now, and I am not worried anymore about talking about all the discrimination I received from past companies in past jobs. 

If you have faced bullying in the Ruby community at a previous job, please speak up about it for the benefit of everyone who is oppressed by unethical Ruby companies. Don't do it just for yourself, but for the benefit of the tens, hundreds, or thousands of employees that are potentially being bullied at bad Ruby companies today. After all, speaking up about this problem is the only way to expose it and then eventually eliminate it and prevent it. I know it is very hard to speak up about this problem, but every voice that gets added in opposition of bullying helps prevent further bullying in the future.

Ruby on Rails Conferences Are Discriminatory, Unintelligent, and Hateful of Ruby in 2025

I think I might have finally figured out why Ruby on Rails 2025 conferences rejected my talk proposals for my open-source project Glimmer DSL for Web that won a 2025 Fukuoka award from Matz (the creator of Ruby) even though the library provides a 100% innovative and useful tool, is used at my job, has no competition by any other open-source projects, is Matz-approved, and I am the most qualified person to give a talk that unique and interesting due to being the creator, a multi-time RailsConf/RubyConf speaker, and an award winner (meaning, the excuse of other talks winning over doesn't really apply here as they're all inferior if they don't cover a topic that is as innovative and aren't given by someone as qualified as I am due to winning an award by Matz).

I noticed in the past that some Ruby on Rails conference websites were built using React and kinda sucked because they didn't have bookmarkable URLs for when the user clicked on a talk to expand it and read it, preventing users from being able to share direct talk links with others. So, the devs presiding over the conferences were probably insulted by my talk saying that using Glimmer results in writing much less Frontend code as to be able to do 12 months of JS Frontend work in 6 months in much more readable Ruby because they've drank the React koolaid, are biased, and would hate to stop using React no matter how inferior it is to using a Ruby Frontend Framework. In other words, they're devs who are insecure, standing in the way of progress and innovation, attached to inferior technologies for emotional reasons not rational reasons, and hate Ruby, so would rather side with React's folks against real Rubyists to the point of discriminating against me by rejecting my 100% qualified and unique talk that had zero competition. 

Honestly, that auto-disqualifies those conferences from being ones that I'd like to speak at due to being run by unintelligent biased haters of Ruby who don't respect accomplishments like winning an international competition with an open-source project by the creator of the Ruby language himself, meaning they discourage innovation and encourage devs to either use outdated tech like JavaScript and React (Inertia is just inside-the-box unimaginative lipstick on a pig and Glimmer DSL for Web already bridges the gap to all JS libraries via Opal) or follow the hero worship anti-pattern by only allowing DHH to "innovate" with Turbo without anyone else in the community being accepted for their innovative idea contributions (a form of discrimination). So, it wasn't a loss for me not to present as I'd be embarrassed to speak at one of those inferior conferences like RailsConf that are now run by unintelligent haters of Ruby in 2025. In fact, I am already embarrassed I spoke at RailsConf twice in the past given how anti-innovation, unintelligent, and downright discriminatory RailsConf has become. But, it is a loss for attendees of those conferences to miss out on a tool that lets them cut down development time and code by half in the Frontend of Rails apps when Turbo isn't cutting it anymore, meaning the selfishness in being biased towards React and JavaScript against Ruby is literally robbing all devs and customers of months of saved costs and time in Frontend work. 

Obviously, the Ruby community has a cancer that has invaded it through fake Ruby shops that claim to like Ruby, but use React in the Frontend instead of Frontend Ruby (Frontend Ruby via Opal has been around for 10 years, so no Ruby shop has any excuses not to have adopted it as a standard even before I created my Frontend Framework, Glimmer DSL for Web, on top of it). A while ago, I saw a guy give a talk at a Ruby meetup about how much he liked using Ruby at his startup, but then he mentioned that his team used React in the Frontend, even though React's code and approach completely contradicts and goes against the Ruby way, resulting in very bad maintainability. When I told him and his team after the talk that they could use Ruby in the Frontend via Opal now, their eyes glazed over as if they didn't care for Ruby whatsoever, disproving 100% that they really liked Ruby and proving they were hypocrites that just used Ruby on Rails for the "cool association factor" (that's what they truly liked Ruby for), not for appreciating or understanding the benefits of Ruby. That's the story of 50% of Ruby shops in 2025. 

I have no choice but to conclude that those Rails conference rejections are 100% discrimination and exclusion given I am 100% qualified (I have spoken at the last 3 RubyConfs in a row), the topic is very important as it would save companies that do Frontend Development with JavaScript months of work every year, and no other speaker at all in any of those conferences has won a Fukuoka international technology competition award with a Ruby open-source project from Matz, meaning the excuse of "other talks won over" doesn't really apply unless there is discriminatory bias. I mean some of those conferences literally accepted JavaScript Frontend talks with Inertia and favored them over using Ruby even though  they are Ruby conferences believe it or not, and Ruby produces much more readable/maintainable/slim code than Inertia/React while cutting Frontend work by half and allowing the use of any JS library from Ruby (that's infinitely way more innovative than using Inertia), and yet those conferences claim to be "Ruby conferences" (obviously a lie nowadays)!!! 

While inferior tools like Inertia think inside-the-box, truly innovative tools like Glimmer DSL for Web in Rails-like fashion totally tear down the box and re-imagine Frontend Development in Ruby. Why did the once-forward-thinking Rails community become so backwards thinking about the Frontend Development story aside from Turbo in 2025? The talk that covered Inertia at RailsConf 2025 didn't even mention Opal Ruby as part of the Rails Frontend evolution at all, nor cover Ruby WASM and how it allows writing Frontend code in Ruby as an alternative to Opal. I personally covered both with a talk at my local Ruby meetup years ago now, proving I'm a more qualified speaker than the guy who mentioned Inertia in his Frontend talk at RailsConf 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AdcfbI6A4c . The RailsConf 2025 Frontend talk didn't highlight how Rails 6 broke its own Convention over Configuration principle by including a configuration heavy library like Webpack in Rails due to lack of intelligence in selecting Opal Ruby as a default instead. Had that happened, the Rails community would be 10 years ahead today, but it is in fact 10 years behind. Just because people aren't aware of that, that doesn't mean it's not true. Smart people think of what the highest potential that could have been achieved over the last 10 years had DHH didn't completely mess up and simp to the JS folks as a pushover instead of confidently sticking as a leader with the superior language he was already using in Rails, Ruby!

The Ruby on Rails community cancer of discrimination, bias, and hate of Ruby is very ugly in 2025. Conference organizers could put an end to the discrimination and incompetence by apologizing for their discriminatory treatment and guaranteeing a spot for me to speak at their conference next year if they want to make things right and prove that the Ruby community isn't run by discriminatory unintelligent biased haters of Ruby. Otherwise, RailsConf 2025 actually provided outdated, incomplete, and inaccurate information about the Frontend story in Rails that neglected a Fukuoka Prefecture Future IT Initiative 2025 Award Winning Ruby on Rails Frontend library (Glimmer DSL for Web), neglected Opal (won an award in 2023), and neglected Ruby WASM entirely! The Ruby on Rails community is worse for it, and more importantly, customers are paying double the fee for Rails Software Development and getting the Software in double the time as a result. RailsConf was a weak conference that degraded developers' skills. Still, everybody makes mistakes, but good people apologize when they are made aware of their mistakes, and they redeem themselves as a result. I do make mistakes and say sorry at work from time to time. I say sorry because if I don't, customers suffer like they're suffering today from terrible React/Inertia codebases. Devs not realizing that doesn't mean the codebases aren't terrible (the Dunning-Kruger effect) when the devs could have done half the work in half the time using Frontend Ruby and contributed to the betterment of Ruby in the Frontend as well. 

Honestly, saving 6 months of Frontend work a year via Frontend Ruby (vs doing 12 months of work in JavaScript) provides the biggest improvement to Rails shops in 2025, so this is actually the most important topic at any Ruby on Rails conference in 2025 as I am 100% sure that not a single other RailsConf 2025 talk provides that big a benefit to companies. 

Discrimination Experienced at Tech Companies

I have experienced something like this at Ruby shops before. My girlfriend keeps getting mistreated at her job where she works as a Scrum Master. Some devs on her team miss her meetings and ignore her deadlines, and then instead of apologizing for their bad work ethic, they lie and bully my girlfriend by pretending they're the "victims" and she's the "oppressor", which makes zero sense given that she's like the nicest person and incapable of being mean towards anyone. 

Worse yet, instead of the manager bringing the other devs and my girlfriend into a room to have them speak their sides of the conflict and hash out their differences respectfully (as done at normal ethical companies), or at least investigating if the claims by the devs about my girlfriend are even true at all (they're not), he decided to blindly trust the claims without giving equality to all sides (meaning he is taking sides with one side instead of staying unbiased and letting both sides be equally trustworthy or equally have to prove their claim). Afterwards, he decided to split the team into 2 teams with the excuse that "there is no cultural fit between some people on the team, so it's better to split them into 2 different teams". That's ridiculous as it completely ignores the bad work ethic of the lying developers (like not attending meetings and not hitting deadlines) and ignores the fact that my girlfriend is a certified Scrum Master and a very friendly team player. She would be a great fit in any tech culture given that she is a qualified team player. On the other hand, the other devs are very individualistic and don't care about the team or teamwork whatsoever. So now, they are using "culture fit" as a way to discriminate against my girlfriend and defend bad coworkers who are literally missing meetings without being held responsible while bullying my girlfriend and treating her with discrimination. They don't see themselves as equals to her, yet as being on a higher platform from which they don't need to follow the same standards my girlfriend follows like attending meetings and respecting deadlines. 

I actually cover these exact kinds of discrimination in my writeup on covert discrimination (like having double standards and using "culture fit" as an excuse to discriminate): https://andymaleh.blogspot.com/2024/12/how-to-spot-covert-discrimination-in.html

Stop covert discrimination from happening at work places by spreading awareness via sharing this article and the one linked above. 

In my experience, 100% of companies that have 1000 employees or more (the kind of company my girlfriend works for) practice some sort of discrimination while treating employees as numbers, with some treated as part of the "elite" and others treated as second class citizens regardless of their technical qualifications and merit. That's why a number of years ago, I stopped accepting high paying jobs at 1000+ employee companies even if I am fully qualified for them technically because I discovered that they are all essentially discriminatory environments that prioritize greed/pride over servitude to customers and coworkers (any company that makes more than a certain large amount of money cares more about greed than providing 100% equal service to everyone without discrimination). I am much happier working for small and mid-size companies where such discrimination doesn't take place while working in a much more agile fashion than any 1000+ employee company could.

Stupidity in the Ruby on Rails Community

Any environment that prevents people's freedom to call stupid people stupid is actually an environment that is full of stupid people who are all in denial about being stupid because they are living a lie if people cannot speak the truth.

Some people don't understand this. Calling someone stupid is only BAD if that person is NOT truthfully stupid. Calling someone stupid if they are TRUTHFULLY stupid is GOOD because it is pointing out a TRUTH that needs to be corrected so that the stupid person would stop being stupid and would start being smart for the benefit of clients and coworkers. In other words, calling stupid people STUPID is a LOVING act that aims to IMPROVE a situation. Preventing others from calling TRULY stupid people stupid is BAD and a HATEFUL act because it helps maintain a LIE and a NEGATIVE REALITY as a big elephant in the room that no one can discuss, thus enabling bad work performance for clients to persist forever. 

I thank people if they call me STUPID when I'm being TRUTHFULLY STUPID, and then I course-correct to improve my thinking, attitude, and behavior to be SMART. I don't push back. Only truly STUPID people who never become smart push back. Besides, if people who call me stupid are WRONG about me being stupid, I can ignore what they say because words have no power whatsoever if they're UNTRUE. Words only cut and hurt if they are TRUE and the person who received them is in DENIAL OF THE TRUTH. That's why I strive to ACCEPT THE TRUTH whenever possible, instead of living a lie, to ensure I am AS SMART AS POSSIBLE, which translates to better work performance for customers.

Of course, there are gentler ways of pointing out stupidity like by talking about a certain technology or solution not being the best solution to a problem, or by describing approaches as stupid, not people. But, when people keep ignoring that while pretending that whatever terrible popular technology they want to use is not stupid, that's when it becomes important to point out stupidity in a frank manner because people are literally insisting on stupidity and not being smart. That case makes it 100% OK to eventually call people stupid. For example, people in the Ruby community had more than 10 years (since the creation of Opal) to be able to figure out and unlock the benefits of Ruby in the Frontend, but they didn't. Gentler approaches of giving feedback obviously didn't work in those 10+ years as I've seen quite a few Opal talks in that time period, and yet they were ignored by the community, so now we can conclude many Ruby devs are truly stupid and we can point that out directly. They had their chance to be smart and they blew it. Now, it's better to point out the truth than to lie about it while customers continue to suffer from terrible productivity/maintainability in developing their software. 

My estimation is that about 75% of the Ruby community is stupid today. It's easy to tell just by looking at how may Ruby on Rails jobs include React (or some other non-Frontend-Ruby library) and by looking at how non-innovative RailsConf & RailsWorld talks were in 2024 as they didn't include a single talk about Frontend Ruby, which came across as extremely outdated, unimaginative, lame, and dumb. If you look at most Rails codebases today, they include a lot of garbage unreadable React code that totally contradicts the Ruby Way and Rails Way. Stimulus code isn't much better as it's still JavaScript. Of course, some people at the top of the Rails world like DHH, Shopify devs, Ruby/Rails Subreddit mods, and many Rails Podcasters have become extremely dumb too and indirectly encourage stupidity with their actions. It's sad, but true. Rails has become BIFI (By Idiots For Idiots) even though it had a promising start back in the day. That's mostly because the general Rails development model hasn't evolved much since Rails 3 due to not enough exploration of Frontend Ruby by the Rails team. 

The silver lining though is that more stupidity in the Ruby on Rails community means more free job security for the rest of us!!! Thank you stupid members of the Ruby on Rails community!!! Keep being stupid so the rest of us would easily thrive at your expense!!!