> I would much rather participate in a community of professionals who've organized themselves around sufficiently overlapping shared intents
I thoroughly enjoyed my involvement with early (US) Ruby and Rails folks from the first Rails conf to _why's unusual entertainment to Matz's calm and humble demeanor. People bounced ideas off each other and just enjoyed coding up interesting things. Dave Thomas and the Pragmatic Programmer group wrote what many of us used, not so much _why's guide which was still a fun read. I moderated a Ruby panel at the old Odeo HQ just before they pivoted. I didn't know the group gathering at that Ruby SF meeting would include not only Twitter but Github founders as well. At the time, tweets seemed pretty absurd to some of us but guess what happens when you try out ideas in a community that was into exploration?
I thoroughly enjoyed my involvement with early (US) Ruby and Rails folks from the first Rails conf to _why's unusual entertainment to Matz's calm and humble demeanor. People bounced ideas off each other and just enjoyed coding up interesting things. Dave Thomas and the Pragmatic Programmer group wrote what many of us used, not so much _why's guide which was still a fun read. I moderated a Ruby panel at the old Odeo HQ just before they pivoted. I didn't know the group gathering at that Ruby SF meeting would include not only Twitter but Github founders as well. At the time, tweets seemed pretty absurd to some of us but guess what happens when you try out ideas in a community that was into exploration?