Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

gist.github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 245 posts

Re: Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

#91

Post by mixedCase »

oreally wrote: post #83
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is an unfair generalization. You need at least one of the three: patience, skill, experience. I am not sure who would argue with that. If you lack skill and experience, it's no problem. But if you begin to get frustrated as soon as you receive feedback... you're going to have a bad time. I've seen some truly impressive contributions over the years and the common element that stands out isn't the au…

'patience' that's why these projects never get many things moving forward and those higher up in the project's hierarchy seem to contribute way more. Also this is why younger, hungrier contributors should avoid these types of organizations and why these orgs will suffer sooner or later from certain bias. Ever heard of the quantity vs quality pottery story? You want to make mistakes and iterate on those to quality. Ge…

That's what code review in a PR is for. Iterate all you need, and people experienced in the codebase will help you point out your mistakes so you can iterate some more until the maintenance burden you're shifting onto someone else is reasonable.

Re: Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

#92

Post by jasode »

klelatti wrote: post #63
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #39

> So, here we are in 2020, and nix#864 remains unmerged. Fred, you say, you overreact. I read the entire PR. I _want_ to agree with the author, but I didn't find this reasonable. The feedback, for the most part, was not about being perfectionism. Not remotely. It's about being correct . This is not unique to Rust, which as a language spends a lot of time being correct in a few dimensions, but pretty traditional. You…

> The fact is that most programmers do not have the patience, skill or experience to write half-decent code that isn't bug-ridden garbage. Whether or not you are right on this issue is this really the way to generalise about current / potential contributors? Why would anyone even attempt to contribute if their efforts are likely to be dismissed in this way? Edit: I’m making no point about quality or otherwise of cont…

>Why would anyone even attempt to contribute if their efforts are likely to be dismissed in this way? [...] Just that phrases like ‘bug ridden garbage’ don’t suggest a welcoming atmosphere.

I think you missed the gp's point of bringing up the example from the long history of Linux kernel contributions. It's a counterexample to your intuition that people won't attempt to contribute if there's a "hostile atmosphere" (scare quotes) to bad code.

So even though Linus Torvalds and his trusted lieutenants constantly complain about terrible buggy code that wastes their time, Linux still attracts new contributors (and this means more "bug ridden garbage").

EDIT add specific example... I think this 2014 Linus Torvalds complaint about programmer's bad code from has the "unwelcoming atmosphere" you probably wouldn't like : http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1404.0/01331.html

... and yet people keep attempting to contribute to the Linux kernel project.

Re: Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

#93

Post by iamthepieman »

klelatti wrote: post #63
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #39

> So, here we are in 2020, and nix#864 remains unmerged. Fred, you say, you overreact. I read the entire PR. I _want_ to agree with the author, but I didn't find this reasonable. The feedback, for the most part, was not about being perfectionism. Not remotely. It's about being correct . This is not unique to Rust, which as a language spends a lot of time being correct in a few dimensions, but pretty traditional. You…

> The fact is that most programmers do not have the patience, skill or experience to write half-decent code that isn't bug-ridden garbage. Whether or not you are right on this issue is this really the way to generalise about current / potential contributors? Why would anyone even attempt to contribute if their efforts are likely to be dismissed in this way? Edit: I’m making no point about quality or otherwise of cont…

"Why would anyone even attempt to contribute if their efforts are likely to be dismissed in this way?"

Because if they pass the bar knowing what it is then they also know that they're part of the club of developers who have the "patience, skill or experience to write half-decent code that isn't bug-ridden garbage."

Re: Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

#94

Post by neilalexander »

antihero wrote: post #51

Ha, trying to get Alacritty to have a native-feel icon for macOS which had basically zero drawbacks and most other applications do was met with a straight up NOPE. Not up for debate, people supplied the assets and I even made a PR, nope, closed. Even though it was in a directory full of platform specific stuff (Alacritty.app resources), it was decided that it couldn't differ from the other icons, so Alacritty has to…

This is frustrating because it is a change that has no other impact aside from making your users happier. The justification for not merging that is nonsense.

Re: Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

#95

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

klelatti wrote: post #63
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #39

> So, here we are in 2020, and nix#864 remains unmerged. Fred, you say, you overreact. I read the entire PR. I _want_ to agree with the author, but I didn't find this reasonable. The feedback, for the most part, was not about being perfectionism. Not remotely. It's about being correct . This is not unique to Rust, which as a language spends a lot of time being correct in a few dimensions, but pretty traditional. You…

> The fact is that most programmers do not have the patience, skill or experience to write half-decent code that isn't bug-ridden garbage. Whether or not you are right on this issue is this really the way to generalise about current / potential contributors? Why would anyone even attempt to contribute if their efforts are likely to be dismissed in this way? Edit: I’m making no point about quality or otherwise of cont…

Since you edited:

I think you're misconstruing what I'm saying. I'm not selling an atmosphere. I'm writing a comment on this website. I don't have a project for you to decide to contribute to.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that anyone's efforts should be dismissed impolitely -- but that's not what's being discussed here.

Re: Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

#96

Post by ReleaseCandidat »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #39

> So, here we are in 2020, and nix#864 remains unmerged. Fred, you say, you overreact. I read the entire PR. I _want_ to agree with the author, but I didn't find this reasonable. The feedback, for the most part, was not about being perfectionism. Not remotely. It's about being correct . This is not unique to Rust, which as a language spends a lot of time being correct in a few dimensions, but pretty traditional. You…

> Take a look on LKML, or Git's mailing list, or on any serious project from the last 20 years.

Yes. But we are talking about a terminal emulator. And not even about one bundled with a DE (or OS). This _should_ be exactly the type of project where people can get their first OSS programming experience.

Re: Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

#97

Post by coldtea »

>Let's look at another project, alacritty. Don't we all remember it? It was supposed to bring Rust to the mainstream Linux desktop. It was supposed to be the new standard tty. It was supposed to be a revolution, shaking the foundations of the Earth

No, it was just supposed to be one of the many projects with ambitious goals, that more often than not, go nowhere, and are abandoned a few years down the line...

If you've been on the scene long enough, you've seen thousands like Allacrity: editors, shells, terminals, DEs, new languages, etc.

Re: Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

#98

Post by coldtea »

ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #96
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #39

> So, here we are in 2020, and nix#864 remains unmerged. Fred, you say, you overreact. I read the entire PR. I _want_ to agree with the author, but I didn't find this reasonable. The feedback, for the most part, was not about being perfectionism. Not remotely. It's about being correct . This is not unique to Rust, which as a language spends a lot of time being correct in a few dimensions, but pretty traditional. You…

> Take a look on LKML, or Git's mailing list, or on any serious project from the last 20 years. Yes. But we are talking about a terminal emulator. And not even about one bundled with a DE (or OS). This _should_ be exactly the type of project where people can get their first OSS programming experience.

Isn't that up to the maintainer? A maintainer might not want anybody else working on the code with them even. FOSS license != community project.

Re: Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

#99

Post by coldtea »

klelatti wrote: post #63
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #39

> So, here we are in 2020, and nix#864 remains unmerged. Fred, you say, you overreact. I read the entire PR. I _want_ to agree with the author, but I didn't find this reasonable. The feedback, for the most part, was not about being perfectionism. Not remotely. It's about being correct . This is not unique to Rust, which as a language spends a lot of time being correct in a few dimensions, but pretty traditional. You…

> The fact is that most programmers do not have the patience, skill or experience to write half-decent code that isn't bug-ridden garbage. Whether or not you are right on this issue is this really the way to generalise about current / potential contributors? Why would anyone even attempt to contribute if their efforts are likely to be dismissed in this way? Edit: I’m making no point about quality or otherwise of cont…

>Why would anyone even attempt to contribute if their efforts are likely to be dismissed in this way?

Isn't the parent's whole point to discourage them from contributing?

Re: Rust maintainer perfectionism, or, the tragedy of Alacritty (2020)

#100

Post by coldtea »

klelatti wrote: post #76
OJFord wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you want to be able to make high quality contributions, you want to learn? If you don't have that desire and can't take critical feedback then it's not really a contribution that the maintainers want to be attempted, so that's fine. Nobody's saying the feedback is hostile or outright dismissive, and generally what I see (no experience with LKML specifically but I assume the same) isn't. It might get there if…

> bug ridden garbage This is what I was reacting to. Does this suggest that the feedback is likely to be constructive?

The feedback can be very constructive despite the language.

Or even because of it - as this kind of language can mean "I wont sugarcoat it, I'll say it like it is".

It's up to the receiver of that feedback to be able to see this.

Post reply on HN