-
4
JAN
2008Dave Thomas is Definitely the Sammy Sosa of Programming
There is a debate raging in the Ruby community that I don't want any part of. I'm not going to engage in any of the mud slinging and there will be no debate here. Commenters have been warned. What I do want to do is to share some simple uncontested facts about a man I am lucky enough to know.
Sammy Sosa is famous for one thing: hitting home runs. In the entire history of the game of baseball five players have managed to hit over 600 home runs and Sammy is one of them. If that wasn't amazing enough, he has hit at least one home run against every single Major League team and in 44 Major League ballparks. Baseball fans everywhere love to watch Sammy Sosa at bat.
Now if I had to name five programmers who get me as excited about programming as Sammy Sosa does about baseball, Dave Thomas would definitely make the list. Dave does exactly what Sammy always does: continually preforms the hardest tasks of his profession while making it look easy to the fans. Allow me to give a few examples.
-
7
SEP
2007Marcel at Play
At the preconference charity event for the first Lone Star Rubyconf, Marcel Molina, Jr gave one of the best talks I've ever heard at a conference. The entire talk was Marcel showing examples of pathological (his word, not mine) Ruby code. Not only did he show all these examples to a room full of people new to language at an event titled Intro to Ruby, but he actually made a case for these examples being proof positive Ruby is a reliable language.
This was a very unique approach to speeches in that we literally saw a Ruby master at play. While most speakers try to put our best foot forward, Marcel embraced the craziness and just had some fun. His attitude was infectious and really drove his point home.
We should all try to have more fun with our speeches. It's so enlightening to watch, for any audience. I hope I have the courage to try a similar talk in the future.
