In the interest of world peace, here follows 10 explanations to why Rails does pluralization. Pick the one that’ll make you the most calm:

• A point of argument: Pluralization is really meant as a long-running practical joke instituted to cause a good flame-thread every once in a while. There’s nothing like the fresh smell of napalm in the morning and all communities need a cleansing now and then. It makes it possible for us to be so ultra-nice the rest of the time without going suicidal.

• Gives a sense of accomplishment: Since the rest of Rails is so easy, we needed to put in at least one piece that would feel like an accomplishment when you finally learned the ins and outs of it.

• Love it or leave it: Pluralization is a posterchild for the entire philosophy of Rails. If you can’t deal with it either by acceptance or by turning it off, it saves you a lot of trouble walking away today rather than three months down the road when you learn that Rails is soaked in opinions like this.

• A rite of passage: Similar to the point of entry, but more profound. Once you accept the true wisdom of pluralization, you will have completed your cultural transformation and become a true Railer. I can count on you know to do any bidding and your path to rails-core as been made.

• Them against us: In order for communities to yield, they need controversial arguments where they can clearly take side and talk about “the others”. It makes the group tighter and happier.

• A tough problem: Since Rails is so bent on solving all the easy problems and with the least amount of energy, we needed a hard problem, like the English language, to tickle us as we work on the otherwise mundane details of creating a web-application framework.

• The learning curve: Since David is not a native English speaker, he needed some way to practice those irregular inflections. What better way than to embed the challenge in every day software.

• It’s the color of the bike-shed: When you enter Rails, it can seem like an overwhelming experience that almost sucks you in. A good way to reaffirm your identity, and that you don’t just accept anything, is to complain about the color of the bikeshed. You now did your part of scepticism and can partake in the lovefest without feeling like a fanboy.

• Beautiful code leads to happy programmers: One of my prime inspirations for still doing programming is the possibility of creating beautiful code. I consider the singular/plural splits as employeed in Rails to constitute beauty. Removing it would make Rails appear less beautiful and that would make me sad.

• David is insane: This is the summary category. If you found none of the others to fit, just ascribe pluralization to insanity. If you like the rest of Rails, you can even put the positive spin that “all genuises are a little crazy”, and if you don’t, you can use this point to prove that Rails really is evil.