"FORTRAN and Python are equally good languages. YMMV"-useless and somewhat suspicious.<p>"Python is generally better than FORTRAN."-more accurate for most people<p>"FORTRAN is good for numeric computing when performance is absolutely critical. Python is better for almost anything where processing speed isn't a major concern."-most useful and most accurate.
So, what's better? Ruby on Rails or PHP? Probably Ruby on Rails... but then, Facebook and half the internet has made amazing stuff out of PHP in likely less time (and more bugs) than it would take to do with Ruby of Rails.<p>So.. <i>Your Mileage May Vary</i> ?
this is really a problem in software development? a lack of opinions?<p>i wish i lived in the author's world. in mine, developers seem to take it as a badge of honour to have an opinion about <i>everything</i>. and if they can be an intolerant, insufferable arse about it: bonus points!<p>[edit: actually, i should clarify. my colleagues are actually pretty good about this; it's online where the volume is always turned to 11.]
This kind of reasoning on the part of DHH is troubling to me. He's basically saying that there is always one best way to do something. That may be correct. But what's troubling is that Rails is so focused on its "One best way" to do everything. Rails forgoes complete through-and-through consistency in favor of "magic" -- because it's quicker and easier. That's fine, but it doesn't have the ring of complete truth that I expect from a truly great idea, or framework.
Didn't DHH basically use "your mileage may vary" in his "The Parley Letter" essay? [1]<p>> <i>So yes, the closer your application is to an application like Basecamp -- and I make that net extremely wide, I consider, say, 500px, Github, Shopify, and others to fall into "close enough" -- the closer you are to the primary use case that guides the development of Rails.</i><p>...I read that as "your mileage may vary" for rails if your application is dissimilar to basecamp, because design decisions are primarily made to support basecamp's use case (and not yours). Its more subtle than that, and you need to read the essay for the context of that statement, but that was one of the things I took away from it.<p>[1] <a href="http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2012/the-parley-letter.html" rel="nofollow">http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2012/the-parley-letter.ht...</a>
I like this non-relativist stance. Simply stating YMMV often kills what could have led to a good conversation, thus possibly preventing us from learning more.<p>I'd like to couple this attitude with the great advice of having "Strong opinions, weakly held".
(<a href="http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/07/strong_opinions.html" rel="nofollow">http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/07/strong_opinio...</a>)
Purely pedantic nitpicking, but the title feels poorly worded to me.<p>"Everything is not equally good": for all x and y in the universe of things, x is not equally good as y - seems nonsensical<p>"Not everything is equally good": there exists some x and y in the universe of things for which x is not equally good as y - seems to be the actual intent of the post<p>YMMV. :)