This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by David Heinemeier Hansson. Original Post: Maturity is the new 'does it scale?' Feed Title: Loud Thinking Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/LoudThinking Feed Description: All about the full-stack, web-framework Rails for Ruby and on putting it to good effect with Basecamp Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by David Heinemeier Hansson Latest Posts From Loud Thinking

There's a special magic to catch-all dismissals of new technology. Usually, they start out being fairly generic and vague enough to sorta pass by with enough waving and implied assumptions. But that only works for so long and soon the catch-all dismissal must retreat to higher ground seeking to be ever more generic, vague, and, of course, meaningless.

I'm sensing that "does it scale?" is experiencing the end of its run along this course. A general understanding that scalability is archiveable with most modern web-development platforms has left a void for the role of quick dismissal. But what was lost on scalability is quickly recouped with the advent of... wait for it... Maturity!

Maturity is such a wonderful blank that your brain can readily fill with any property that fits for the moment without even being concious about it. Hence, most everything can be attacked for lacking maturity. Its a great joker that fits in any hand of argument.

Its greatest fallacy is inherent in its close ties to absolute age. Unlike the growing of man, technological progress is less determined by the passing of time than it is the expendure of attention and determination. A focused burst energy, a large enough set of eyes, the right ideas can all be drivers of "maturity".

That is when maturity is played as meaning something more specific, like...

• Friendly (easy to get started with)
• Polite (reasonable reporting of mistakes)
• Dependable (free of critical run-time bugs)

According to these definitions, some projects remains immature years after their premiere, others archive it in much shorter time.

So please, take the joker out of the deck and replace it with arguments of specificity and clarity.