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

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

#101
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes of course, that's their decision.

What I'm talking about that you can't expect the same contributors to a critical part of infrastructure as to a, well, more or less useless terminal emulator.

You can't do the 45327th copy of something (yes, yes, I get it, it's in Rust) and behave like your project is the Linux kernel or the Rust compiler.

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

#102
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?

I don't know about you, but I think I'm capable of polite conversation with someone whom I believe to be talking nonsense; or being friendly in discussing something I think is no good.

(In fact, maybe I'm willing to offer an example.. :/ - https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV/pull/372#pullrequestr... - could have been better perhaps, but I don't think it's too off-putting if the author has a legitimate change they want in, and surely they'd see the problem, I don't think it looks like gate-keeping pedantry? (NB the repo was unmaintained, I was recently added as a collaborator, so older issues/PRs with no maintainer response aren't a counter-example, I'm just in the process of sorting through them.))

The author of that comment was talking to us about low quality PRs, not a specific one, to an author of one, nor in feedback comments on one.

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

#103
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?

Yes, that sounds like it is going to be completely constructive and straightforward discussion.

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

#105

This smells a lot of the classic "Worse is Better" discussion [0]. Back then, it was Scheme people insisting on correctness and C people insisting on pragmatism. It's no surprise to me that Rust, a language with a heavy focus on correctness, attracts the correctness-over-pragmatism crowd. The author is a "worse is better" programmer who finds themselves surrounded by "the right thing" people. I think the addendum the…

I've found Rust programmers to be eminently pragmatic. The economics of bugs have been clear for decades: it is orders of magnitude more expensive to find and fix bugs after they've been shipped.

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

#106

Posts like this are major contributors to maintainer burnout. Whatever value they have as a signal boost is a rounding error compared to the harm they cause to individuals as well as to the culture as a whole. Please don't ever post things like this. If you're this frustrated that the people who make free things for you aren't donating their time to you in the way you'd prefer, grab a drink with a friend and vent to…

Maintainer attitudes like this are major contributors to maintainer burnout. A look through the linked PR is about 50/50 solid technical criticism and nitpicky bikeshedding.

The Rust community seems toxic, in the Wikipedian way of being unwelcoming and unfriendly without ever dropping into incivility.

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

#107
I was for, a period, a contributor to Alacritty and I'm still a daily user. The fact remains that it's a wonderful tool. Far better than most, yet still flawed in a number of ways. Both on the user side and within the codebase itself.

That said, I couldn't keep up with the arguments and decisions, while also balancing my own (disintegrating) life. I feel that we are all suffering from the effects of others far too heavily these days, so much so that good projects like this are labeled a "tragedy". That is completely unfair blame. The tragedy is not of Alacritty, it's of us. It's our fault we haven't fixed the issues. It's our fault all the comments and messages are loaded with unnecessary emotion. Well... it's at least partially our fault. Sometimes it's true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Sometimes it's also true that dark powers work against us. Still we must look at our own part in the equation.

Personally, reflecting on this post from the start of 2020, it's hard to think of anything but my own failings in the last years. But that too is not fair. It's something I must simply work to improve; like always. Leaving the world a better place than where I found it. I know there are amazing developers still working hard on important issues. It kills me that I'm not helping as I could be. It kills me that I'm often stuck, fixing bullshit issues and wasting time on things that are out of my control. But that's how it is now, and that's how it's been too, just perhaps to a lesser degree for a time, when everything clicked.

Perfection and correctness and idealism are lofty goals. But realism and practice are required while on the hunt. Maybe one day a new puzzle piece will be found, snuggling seamlessly into place. But until then, (we try and we fail)*.

Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I beg you.

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

#108
I've recently left a Rust project and the maintainer's perfectionism was one part.

From my observation, the causes tend to be:

- Maintainers spread thin, putting more of a burden on contributors

- Some projects being critical and needing more attention and some taking themselves too seriously (dealt with a project whose CI took a couple hours for ~60 jobs because they exhaustively tested every combination.

- Maintainers who haven't learned to distinguish the important from unimportant.

- Contributors who don't realize their PR is a white eleplant (burdensome gift)

- Contributors who jump in with a PR without first seeing if it aligns with the project.

Most of this happens everywhere. Probably the more unique aspects to Rust are being spread thin, precedence of high quality crates, and that Rust gives a level of control that is addictive and effects other parts of projects.

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

#109
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know about you, but I think I'm capable of polite conversation with someone whom I believe to be talking nonsense; or being friendly in discussing something I think is no good. (In fact, maybe I'm willing to offer an example.. :/ - https://github.com/posquit0/Awesome-CV/pull/372#pullrequestr... - could have been better perhaps, but I don't think it's too off-putting if the author has a legitimate change they…

> 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.

It's not about PRs. Read it carefully. It's a comment about 'most programmers' who apparently don't have characteristics that mean they can do anything but produce 'bug ridden garbage'.

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

#110
post #90

"The only people entitled to say how open source 'ought' to work are people who run projects, and the scope of their entitlement extends only to their own projects. Just because someone open sources something does not imply they owe the world a change in their status, focus and effort, e.g. from inventor to community manager. As a user of something open source you are not thereby entitled to anything at all. You are…

Rich Hickey is spot on...as always.
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