all’s we needs is us some of them Tommy Bartlett shows.

I think it’s less anti-growth, and maybe more that people in this town need to stop acting like rubes: Aquarium, really? “Technology Village,” really? Close schools and plan for a future that won’t happen, really? Spirit Mountain slide??

Boondoggle. Boondoggle. Boondoggle. I know where to sell snake oil in this state.

So what does Duluth have? Poop lake and a penchant for buying into outdated, useless gimmicks that in one way or another are supposed to “save” us. Instead of, say, STFU and get to work.

It depends on what market you’re going after. We’re a software development company, so our potential client base is all over the country (maybe even the world, someday). So our company is directly competing against every other company in our space regardless of whether we’re physically located in the same place.

In that case, the best thing we can do is put the company in a place where we can get the best developers because having good developers gives you a competitive advantage.

When we started this company, the idea of staying in Duluth never entered the picture. I love this place and have lived here all my life, but one of the first conversations we had was, “Well, we’re going to have to leave Duluth.” Although we could find developers to do what we need, Duluth is not an employer’s market for the type of developers we’re looking for. Austin is.

My original point is, I think Duluth COULD be such a place. It comes naturally with every bit of culture that attracts developers to places like Austin. One could come-up with a lot theories as to why we haven’t pursued that goal (I tend to agree with the assessment that Duluthians are anti-growth, but I’m no expert); I’m just bringing up a concrete example of a practical side-effect of our stagnancy.

Jason

Why leave an area when you have already established yourself as being one of a handful and started making money to throw yourself into a situation where you’re just another face in the crowd?

We’re actually on Merb, it’s lighter and faster than Rails but built with the same rigor and high test coverage. Almost no one’s ever heard of it, and Rails developers usually make good Merb developers so I usually just say, “RoR developer” in conversation.

And, if you hate ActiveRecord, DataMapper will rock your world .

Jason

The DSL is awesome, but also allows your hiring pool to do things that are really stupid.

RSpec is really good, though.

Uh oh, I think we may have hijacked this thread.

I actually think Duluth could be a “beter” Boulder. But that’s just me. I know swathes of geeks who would love the winter sports in the area.

“I don’t think that’s the future of Ruby as a tool in web dev, with all due respect.”

Really? You’re entitled to your opinion, of course, but Ruby is a beautiful language. It was the language that made lambda-calculus practical for me. You can’t match Rails or Merb for development speed and agility (except perhaps with Python and Django), RSpec is a dream for test coverage… If you’ve never done a project in Rails, it’s worth it.