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

Why I Left Rust

jntrnr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 880 posts

Re: Why I Left Rust

#21

Post by samastur »

arp242 wrote: post #10

I've been to plenty of conferences over the years, and I never really knew who was a "keynote speaker" or "only" a "speaker". Does anyone pay attention to this? You give a talk. People show up. They clap at the end. Does it really matter what some title on some conference website is? The communication was perhaps a bit more confusing and hectic than it should have been, but does that really matter? Is that really a b…

I haven't been to a conference in years because of COVID, but I've been to plenty mainly web and Python related before.

Almost all of them had keynote speakers, who received a prominent spot, usually in the morning and on multi-tier conferences the only talk scheduled at that time slot. Based on content of most of those talks the expectation was to take a wider or deeper or just different look at our fields and not mainly present a smaller idea or solution.

But it also doesn't matter if you or I personally do or don't care about distinction. There is one made clearly and as soon as it is made, there is an implicit promotion or demotion depending on which way a person is being moved and one should have very good reasons to demote anyone publicly as they did here.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#22

Post by vikramkr »

jenadine wrote: post #11

I once got a talk demoted from a normal talk to a lightning talk at some unrelated conference to make it work with the schedule. That was indeed not nice. But also not "Cruelty". I just acted professionaly and accepted the change.

I think it would have also been perfectly professional to decline in that case, since it's clearly poor planning on the part of the folks organizing the talk. And demoting the keynote speaker is even worse - especially when in this instance something like scheduling doesn't seem to be the excuse

Re: Why I Left Rust

#23

Post by rurban »

arp242 wrote: post #10

I've been to plenty of conferences over the years, and I never really knew who was a "keynote speaker" or "only" a "speaker". Does anyone pay attention to this? You give a talk. People show up. They clap at the end. Does it really matter what some title on some conference website is? The communication was perhaps a bit more confusing and hectic than it should have been, but does that really matter? Is that really a b…

Usually a keynote speaker is invited, and gets his travel and hotel costs reimbursed. Without reimbursement you usually think twice if you visit a conference or not. And I never heard of downgrading a speaker before, even if I heard of plenty of conference drama before.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#24

Post by CaliforniaKarl »

jenadine wrote: post #11

I once got a talk demoted from a normal talk to a lightning talk at some unrelated conference to make it work with the schedule. That was indeed not nice. But also not "Cruelty". I just acted professionaly and accepted the change.

Was it a talk that you submitted on your own choice, or were you asked to give the original talk? In this case, the speaker was asked to keynote-speak, when they had not planned on doing so.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#25

Post by arp242 »

OJFord wrote: post #17
arp242 wrote: post #10

I've been to plenty of conferences over the years, and I never really knew who was a "keynote speaker" or "only" a "speaker". Does anyone pay attention to this? You give a talk. People show up. They clap at the end. Does it really matter what some title on some conference website is? The communication was perhaps a bit more confusing and hectic than it should have been, but does that really matter? Is that really a b…

You've been to more than me then so what am I talking about, but I always understood it to be the one talk given to kick things off or maybe conclude, i.e. nothing else is going on at the same time, 'everyone' is listening (or else skipping it). Maybe it's just been watered down to 'featured'/'sponsored'/'recommended' talk? I haven't been aware of that.

It depends on the conference; sometimes it's something like "creator of the language shares their vision for the next five years", other times it's "talk from the most famous person we could book", and sometimes just "the talk we liked best from a relatively unknown person". If there are multiple tracks then sometimes the keynote will be the only talk for the timeslot, other times it's not.

Looking at the schedule for this conference, it seems that there's just a single track and all talks are 30 minutes. I wouldn't expect any substantial changes beyond a different timeslot and title.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#26

Post by whinvik »

arp242 wrote: post #10

I've been to plenty of conferences over the years, and I never really knew who was a "keynote speaker" or "only" a "speaker". Does anyone pay attention to this? You give a talk. People show up. They clap at the end. Does it really matter what some title on some conference website is? The communication was perhaps a bit more confusing and hectic than it should have been, but does that really matter? Is that really a b…

I feel like this post misses the point.

Do most people care if someone was a keynote speaker? No(Outside of academia). Is it a big deal if your talk was selected as a speaker or keynote speaker? No. But should you care if your talk is demoted from Keynote to non-keynote without following due process(and possibly because of personal biases)? Yes.

I don't know anything about any of the parties involved, but I feel like declining the talk was the correct thing to do and raising the lack of due process is also the correct thing to do.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#27

Post by jstx1 »

adrianN wrote: post #19
locusofself wrote: post #5

What's up with all the petty drama in the Rust community.. is it uniquely problematic?

I don't see evidence that there is more drama in the Rust community than in other communities. Posts with Rust in the title just have better chances to make it to the HN frontpage.

Similar things might happen in other communities but Rust drama seems much more visible, and this isn't because of HN bias - the foundation having weird guidelines, controversy around governance, prominent people in the community badmouthing other languages in bad faith, now this. It's quite ugly.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#29

Post by neonsunset »

I love Rust but the ideological posturing and swathes of people who in their hearts are grifters is truly disappointing.

Framing a technical presentation you disagree with as "making you uncomfortable" in highly manipulative fashion definitely deserves to be called out in public.

Post reply on HN