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Dear JavaScript

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Re: Dear JavaScript

#161

Post by FlorianRappl »

ww520 wrote: post #135
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.

I agree, but I was quite surprised to see it being mentioned alongside some quite uneducated, brutal, bash-only communities. I always had the feeling that in any discussion on HN something new to learn pops up.

Besides that as an active OSS contributor I fully understand and support the author's points.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#162

Post by b123400 »

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…

> 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.

This. Especially when he is giving an example of "feedback, not complaining", those points are mostly rephrasing some aggressive sentences into nicer one.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#163

Post by jasode »

magicalist wrote: post #157
jasode wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You've also shifted your criticism here to "Ok, but how?" from the original criticism that sounded like "Well, humans suck. Boo hoo." It's not shifting positions. My 1st post was general commentary on JK's post. My 2nd post was asking Mouq to clarify his "solution" since he didn't actually state a concrete solution. >So, here's one answer to how: as I am doing right now, we can encourage others to be optimistic Yes,…

> > So, here's one answer to how: as I am doing right now, we can encourage others to be optimistic > Yes, did you notice that I already made that suggestion in my post that you replied to and you just repeated it? Hmm, let's see... > Ok... so exactly how do we address it? Do we repeat, "From now on, let's all be nicer with more positive energy and feedback!" Ok, now that we've done that, is the problem solved? Why n…

>, no, that's not the same thing at all.

Are you being literal? I wasn't saying that "repeated" meant lexical equality:

  string.compare("more positive", "optimistic") == TRUE
Instead, I meant this:

  semantic_intent("more positive", "optimistic") == TRUE
It's naive to think GavinMcG's "solution" of disapproving others negativity hasn't already been done thousands of times before across other disciplines and other forums including Linux/Lisp/C++/PHP/physics/autism/etc. Yes, nice communities do exist (often because of heavy-handed moderation/censorship) but that's orthogonal to the inevitable formation of other uncensored communities that freely share negative criticisms. Therefore, the reasons that motivated JK's original post will always exist.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#164

Post by hitekker »

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…

The syntax of your first example is so, so much easier to grok than the syntax of the second.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#165

Post by fooey »

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…

Someone saying "Angular 2 is terrible" really isn't that harsh.

If you're going to get all worked up over something that slight, maybe doing work in public isn't the way you want to spend your time.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#167

Post by bryanrasmussen »

I thought the purpose of the Angular 2 is awful article was not to get the Angular 2 people to improve it but to make an argument for why people should not use it.

Just as in art you can say that there are technologies that you believe are not to your taste and ones that you believe are bad (and there can also be technologies that aside from these categories are also morally bad - AMP). Angular seems to me to be one of those technologies people often think are bad. In the interest of avoiding pointless argumentation (god I'm getting old!) I guess I won't put my opinion here.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#168

Post by halis »

This isn't unique to open source software development. Anytime you're a public figure or a public company or otherwise working in some highly visible capacity, there are going to be haters in the building.

It doesn't matter what you do, you could say that you're against the strangulation and drowning of kittens and there would be someone(s) out there shouting to the sky that you should be shot in the head for saying so.

Fuck em! Ignore it. Move on.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#169

Post by GavinMcG »

jasode wrote: post #163
magicalist wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > So, here's one answer to how: as I am doing right now, we can encourage others to be optimistic > Yes, did you notice that I already made that suggestion in my post that you replied to and you just repeated it? Hmm, let's see... > Ok... so exactly how do we address it? Do we repeat, "From now on, let's all be nicer with more positive energy and feedback!" Ok, now that we've done that, is the problem solved? Why n…

>, no, that's not the same thing at all. Are you being literal? I wasn't saying that "repeated" meant lexical equality: string.compare("more positive", "optimistic") == TRUE Instead, I meant this: semantic_intent("more positive", "optimistic") == TRUE It's naive to think GavinMcG's "solution" of disapproving others negativity hasn't already been done thousands of times before across other disciplines and other forums…

Another big difference is that I'm not advocating for us to "repeat" that we should all be positive. It's not about public proclamation – it's about addressing individuals and their individual acts. That's what the communal discourse is made up of. Like you're saying, simply shouting "let's be nice" obviously doesn't work.

I'll add another thing to my list of suggestions: be really deliberate about educating people on the principle of charity. Instead of assuming that the other person is dumb/shortsighted/etc., assume that you're not giving their thinking enough credit.

> that's orthogonal to the inevitable formation of other communities

So what? Drive the downers out of JS-land, or whatever community you care about. You had been saying that even that shouldn't be bothered with. But if it can be accomplished, who cares if they all go off to learn Brainfuck, if that's the only community that will accept their behavior?

Re: Dear JavaScript

#170

Post by spiderfarmer »

michaelmcmillan wrote: post #120
dham wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

James, I reached out to Sebastian, on multiple occasions in January to apologize. Phabricator via the chat feature, Twitter(blocked), email, etc. I can't even remember all the mediums. So if you can pass it a long that would be cool. Sure, Sad state got a little personal, but I'm not too stubborn to admit when I'm wrong. I'm sorry it affected the team so much, obviously not my intention. Just tried to use hyperbole t…

Not invested in this discussion, but it sure is refreshing to see someone change their mind in "real time" and show self awareness. I appreciate that!

It's what the world needs right now.
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