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Dear JavaScript

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Re: Dear JavaScript

#131

Post by forgottenpass »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #16
hvs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think HN is on the level of Reddit or some other communities, but there is an air of contrarianism that wafts through this place that I can imagine reads as negative to people that aren't familiar with it. It also sometimes outright vilifies certain projects.

There's some cultural and some technical elitism here, and you can taste it. It's available on other forums, but I think it's a touch stronger here. On the other hand, HN does a great job of shouting down trolls and truly ignorant (unresearched/uninformed) opinions. As such, I find a stronger S/N here despite the elitism. It's pretty easy to filter/calibrate for that than the trolling and sheer idiocy so pervasive in…

As such, I find a stronger S/N here despite the elitism.

Despite? I've only been on the internet for 15 years, but I thought elitism was the only way to increase s/n ratio.

I've seen elitism enforced through selecting _who_ can talk or _how_ the people talk to eachother. But I've never seen anything but "GOML" change interaction for the better. Even this "Dear Javascript" can be seen as a flavor of GOML.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#132

Post by yesimahuman »

fusiongyro wrote: post #50

I don't want to distract from the main thrust of the article, which was that we should be decent to each other even with our criticism, but I think both his examples (Babel 6 and Angular 2) had something in common that lead to a lot more anxiety: they changed the essence of the software in a way that a major version bump is not enough to communicate. I'm speaking especially of Angular 2 here. It's essentially a compl…

I disagree that Angular 2 is a completely different framework. Rather, it's like Angular 1 re-imagined for the ES6+ world. Many of the concepts are the same, like data binding, "scope," and Dependency Injection. The big change is moving to new syntax and a new foundation on object-oriented concepts. The framework had to adapt and shed some of its custom solutions to what are now available standard in the language.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#133

Post by jordanlev »

jasode wrote: post #19

> But when someone starts to insult me in mock my hard work, when they criticize me and my work in a way that is extremely negative, it gets to me. That seems to be the essence of his entire essay. He wants people to be nicer. Yes, criticism is often necessary and often motivates progress, but the criticism should be nicer. Well, that's an ideal but his lament isn't limited to Javascript specifically. Nasty complaini…

I took the essence of his essay to be "communities that are primarily negative about things are hurting themselves because they push out the people who are in a position to help them".

Re: Dear JavaScript

#134

Post by pvg »

thejameskyle wrote: post #86
fusiongyro wrote: post #50

I don't want to distract from the main thrust of the article, which was that we should be decent to each other even with our criticism, but I think both his examples (Babel 6 and Angular 2) had something in common that lead to a lot more anxiety: they changed the essence of the software in a way that a major version bump is not enough to communicate. I'm speaking especially of Angular 2 here. It's essentially a compl…

The change in Babel 6 was this: $ npm install babel-cli $ babel src -d lib To this: $ npm install babel-cli babel-preset-es2015 $ echo '{ presets: ["es2015"] }' >> .babelrc $ babel src -d lib It really wasn't that big of a change. Also, we did give it a new name. It used to be 6to5, and we changed the name around the intention to make it more generic. Which Babel 6 was the culmination of. As for communicating with th…

What specifically do you find 'really shitty' about that Angular 2 article? The reddit thread gets pretty unpleasant but the write-up itself is strident but generally sticks to specific issues. It doesn't seem like 'an attack on the maintainers', certainly not by title alone.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#135

Post by ww520 »

pavlov wrote: post #5

I’ve always been advised to avoid these “sub-communities” like /r/javascript and Hacker News. Maintainers say they are filled with assholes who don’t know what they are talking about, angry idiots shouting at everything and everyone, cesspools, giant piles of trash burning in the wind. Is HN really that bad? I mean, it must be, if people maintaining popular open source projects think so... But why does it feel much m…

HN can be pretty bad.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#136

Post by OskarS »

mikemcquaid wrote: post #87
OskarS wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out this comment from one of the devs behind Homebrew from HN 10 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13035438 (this was in response that he might be a good target to sue over putting Google Analytics in Homebrew). Yes, we need to treat our open source devs better. HN is not innocent.

Thanks for bringing up this example and calling it out as unacceptable. I appreciate it (and I'm sure other OSS maintainers do too).

No problem. It was so egregious and over the line that it really stood out. Your response was also really eye-opening, a thing that all of us who benefit so much from OSS needed to read and understand. Thank you for making it.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#137

Post by pcwalton »

pavlov wrote: post #5

I’ve always been advised to avoid these “sub-communities” like /r/javascript and Hacker News. Maintainers say they are filled with assholes who don’t know what they are talking about, angry idiots shouting at everything and everyone, cesspools, giant piles of trash burning in the wind. Is HN really that bad? I mean, it must be, if people maintaining popular open source projects think so... But why does it feel much m…

> Is HN really that bad?

I recently had someone here say I should be given "a prison sentence of several decades" for working on Rust. And no, they were not joking.

To be fair, the comment in question got flagged off the site, but the point remains that it very much does happen here.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#138

Post by endisukaj »

pavlov wrote: post #15
OskarS wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out this comment from one of the devs behind Homebrew from HN 10 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13035438 (this was in response that he might be a good target to sue over putting Google Analytics in Homebrew). Yes, we need to treat our open source devs better. HN is not innocent.

Holy shit. That's just insane. It feels like some people treat open source developers like government employees. Both provide a seemingly "free" service, and when you're not paying it's easy to ask for more and get upset about trivial things. (Of course neither group deserves this kind of thing.)

> Both provide a seemingly "free" service

I'd argue that open source maintainers provide a free service. Government employees do not.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#139

Post by yegortimoshenko »

Klathmon wrote: post #127
yegortimoshenko wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand. The critique itself, whether constructive or not, is something to learn from. Just like breaking changes in Babel 6. There is a lesson waiting to be learnt, namely, don't make breaking changes to existing software. As a matter of fact, I honestly don't understand why you take it so personally. Sometimes I do stupid things and people call me an idiot, and it's helpful to know that. Someti…

If I can ask, what's your alternative to breaking changes? Most of the time when I see a large library make breaking changes, it's to solve a problem which can't realistically be "fixed" without breaking changes. And even if they can provide a "shim" to allow people to use the old way of doing things, people see that the same as they see maintaining an old release. That you need to upgrade to the latest version or yo…

I'd argue that most breaking changes are not about fixing problems. They are about API consistency and taste, like Babel 6 mentioned above.

If problem is a bug that people might rely upon, I don't mind fixing it. If problem is fundamental design-wise, however, the right way is to create a new library.

There are a lot of designs that never break anything (or at least try hard not to): Linux, macOS, Erlang, Java, Clojure, x86 instruction set, life on earth, and they all improve over time. And they obviously didn't get everything right the first time.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#140

Post by pavlov »

endisukaj wrote: post #138
pavlov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit. That's just insane. It feels like some people treat open source developers like government employees. Both provide a seemingly "free" service, and when you're not paying it's easy to ask for more and get upset about trivial things. (Of course neither group deserves this kind of thing.)

> Both provide a seemingly "free" service I'd argue that open source maintainers provide a free service. Government employees do not.

Many prominent open source projects are supported and often initiated by corporations. I imagine Google pays the core Angular team quite well.
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