This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by David Heinemeier Hansson. Original Post: The power of a friendly community 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

One thing that surprised me coming to Ruby was how extremely friendly everyone was. On ruby-talk, pretty much everyone doing interesting things in Ruby are hanging out ready to pick up questions and debates when they fall within their territory.

This made the transition from the scattered and fragmented communities of PHP so much easier. One place to look for all the experts and they even bothered to answer my silly questions.

I was equally surprised by the presence of Matz. On several occasions, I'd write a simple question only to see it answered by the creator of the language itself. That's a pretty powerful motivating factor when the creator is still that involved and caring for his creation.

The best part of the friendly welcome is that it's contagious (Daughters will love like you do). I wanted to attempt the same effect with Rails, so since almost the beginning we've had but she's a girl.. talks about her experience with #rubyonrails:

The people who hang out in the #rubyonrails channel are also fantastically helpful and enthusiastic, and perhaps one of the best possible advertisements for both Ruby and Rails.

I can't say how proud of the community in #rubyonrails I am. It's truly one of the biggest assets to Rails. Just like ruby-talk (and #ruby-lang) is it for Ruby itself.

P.S.: I'm pretty excited to see what but she's a girl... comes up with in her Getting Things Done application. I'm rediscovering David Allen's approach to productivity and I'd love to see what a Rails application could do for it. About the road itself, she writes:

I’m stunned that a framework which can create something as complex and professional as Basecamp can also allow a totally green newbie like me to make something cool and functional, without making me tear my hair out.