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Dear JavaScript

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Re: Dear JavaScript

#21

Post by throwanem »

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?

It seems like there are some people trying to drive it downhill in a hurry - I know it's fashionable for anyone who's been on HN for any time at all to say it's going downhill, but turn on showdead for a while and see if you don't start to feel the same.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#22

Post by vorpalhex »

It seems there are two things going on here.

1. Upset that people are now reacting negatively to this change as opposed to voicing criticism earlier

2. Being upset that criticism exists

(2) is the sort of problem I can't help with except to say maybe grow a thicker skin or be a bit more aware of what it was you signed up for, but in regards to (1) -

It's important to note that the people heavily invested in your project (enough to follow every new issue on Github and respond to them and have opinions) will be very different from your mainstream users. There is no shortage of people who heavily use a project and yet probably don't follow them in any way. So it's important to note that using that source of feedback likely subjects us to bias.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#23

Post by igotsideas »

Some people tend to forget that a lot of time goes into all these tools and they are free to use. Some of these engineers spend time fixing OSS problems instead of hanging out with their kids. Good read..

Re: Dear JavaScript

#24

Post by Bahamut »

juice_bus wrote: post #6

I remember reading that Angular 2 thread and walking away disappointed with the baby-like, nonconstructive screaming. (disclaimer: I'm using NG2 and enjoy it). This article has reminded me that there are people behind these projects, even the ones I don't like.

In general, even if you don't like some things about projects, it's worthwhile investing time to see if you can learn from it for down the road. I'm an expert in the Angular ecosystem, but I experiment with other frameworks to learn & get the most I can. The author of that terrible Angular 2 article didn't even try to understand the system he was working in.

As an open source maintainer (UI Bootstrap/ng-bootstrap)/contributor (Angular 1 & 2, Universal Angular, UI Router, Ionic, karma), I respect those who work on other projects, even if I disagree with approaches.

We need to have less holy wars and more constructive discussions instead, and demand more from fellow developers to foster this atmosphere. I've been guilty of using emotional language in the past, but time has led me to mature in this aspect - it would be nice to see everyone else make this jump as well and join us in making software better for all.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#25

Post by woah »

usurpers wrote: post #13

> It almost feels like you’re a politician at times. Because that's what he is. He's a self-chosen software politician who admits he loves his job. He's paid to travel the world and interact with his constituents. But he is upset that his audience sometimes writes a blog post, or worse, nominally approves of adding an arbitrary number to a database associated with a blog post. Somehow this is construed as a problem w…

Is he being paid?

Re: Dear JavaScript

#26

Post by to3m »

throwanem wrote: post #21
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? It seems like there are some people trying to drive it downhill in a hurry - I know it's fashionable for anyone who's been on HN for any time at all to say it's going downhill, but turn on showdead for a while and see if you don't start to feel the same.

But this is why you leave showdead off.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#27

Post by LyndsySimon »

This sort of thing isn't unique to software. The same human behaviors that first-line tech support has to deal with on a daily basis are driving this; it's especially bad in F/OSS because it's often the case that the developers and the supporters are the same people.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#28

Post by thejameskyle »

usurpers wrote: post #13

> It almost feels like you’re a politician at times. Because that's what he is. He's a self-chosen software politician who admits he loves his job. He's paid to travel the world and interact with his constituents. But he is upset that his audience sometimes writes a blog post, or worse, nominally approves of adding an arbitrary number to a database associated with a blog post. Somehow this is construed as a problem w…

You assume I was being paid to work on Babel. I was not.

I worked on the UI team for Cloudflare, where we didn't even use Babel until earlier this year shortly before I left. I worked on open source on the weekend.

The vast majority of open source maintainers are not paid in anyway whatsoever. Conferences pay me to fly places and stay in hotels because they make a profit off of me.

Even now as I am paid to do open source. I don't think a single person on my team would expect me to tolerate people yelling at me. I'm not a politician, I can and do ignore plenty of people. Most of the time negative people arent saying anything useful anyways.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#29

Post by wmil »

STRiDEX wrote: post #20

I remember that angular 2 thread. Half of the problems were the breaking changes between release candidates. I was one of those early adopters, pushing my code along between releases. It was bad, but nothing I didn't expect. They talked about the changes and explained the motives clearly. I think the problem is people want to be bleeding edge without joining the community. Edit: question for James. What did you build…

I think that's something that hurt Ember.js early on. Their community was hyping each pre 1.0 RC / Beta but the public API was making breaking changes regularly.

Too many devs got burnt.

Re: Dear JavaScript

#30

Post by zeveb »

rohannair wrote: post #9
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…

Many HN posts about JS devolve into a "I don't like Javascript because I'm a real programmer, not a frontend" slugfest. As someone who is invested in the long-term success of the JS ecosystem, it becomes a lot easier just to remove yourself from the discussion because a lot of the community is so negative about the (older versions) of the language and ecosystem, purely on ideology.

> As someone who is invested in the long-term success of the JS ecosystem, it becomes a lot easier just to remove yourself from the discussion because a lot of the community is so negative about the (older versions) of the language and ecosystem, purely on ideology.

If a lot of people are so negative about it, is it worth even considering whether they might be correct? Is it not ideological to refuse to do so?

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