A Sad Day for Rust • Hacker News Board

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#281

Post by rcxdude » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

jsjohnst wrote: post #55

manish_gill wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one expects you to write perfect code, but we do expect you to fix flaws when you learn about them. It's not like he was getting paid to work on this, was it? And people do have a life beyond open source. People could have forked and worked on the issues themselves, but that's asking too much. Why do the hard work when you can just write a comment/tweet blaming someone else, right? Your comment is precisely what…

I don’t have the full picture here, but the source article implies that folks weren’t just complaining, but also offering PRs to fix the issues, which were rejected. That feels less like entitlement to me and more like bad stewardship of the project, but again, most of my info is biased by source article.

The initial back and forth isn't the issue, it was reasonably civil, if putting a bit of resistance to fixing the issue. The problem was the escalation which happened when it got posted to reddit, where the suddenly things got a whole lot more virtiolic and most of the vitriol was coming from those not involved in the original discussion at all. A similar thing tends to happen with systemd issues, for example (generally in that case they close the original issue to stop more comments and make a new issue or move discussion to a different platform, but still this will spill over into making new issues, PRs, etc). This behaviour is basically worthless to harmful whenever it happens, because it doesn't further the discussion in any way and just causes headaches for maintainers.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#282

Post by boris » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #242

I remember when people were claiming Common Lisp community is toxic, but I find that it is the languages which tend to focus on "building community" with Community Managers and Codes of Conduct that end up becoming truly toxic cesspools in the end. See also node.js. The focus on community attracts people who aren't interested in programming, but rather those who want a playground for gaining clout and trolling. You n…

Oh, there is plenty of drama on /r/cpp/.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#283

Post by pfortuny » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

deng wrote: post #155

cforrester wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean it's wrong to criticize his choices, so long as it's done without being insulting.

Of course you can criticize, but people are continuously demanding things, like "he should have labeled it as a toy project", "he should have given reasons why he didn't accept the patch", etc. And Drew is very right to say: No, he didn't have to do any of that.

You can criticise but you are not allowed to COMPLAIN. That is my view.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#284

Post by Klonoar » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

I love Rust and use it daily.

Unsafe isn’t something you live without, you just avoid unless there’s a decent reason. Setting aside actix-web, the community has this really annoying obsession with not using unsafe anywhere. You’re not replacing decades of computing overnight, though, and it’s not the end of the world if it’s there sometimes.

It often feels like newcomers and zealots preaching the unsafe issue, too. I have to wonder if the Rust docs couldn’t better point out “the goal is less unsafes, but unsafes will exist - this is fine”. I know it kind of explains this already, but perhaps being more blunt?

Actix-web even with a few unsafe is still more sound than most frameworks IMO. I’ll take slightly better with crazy good performance over not better at all with no guarantees.

Also, look, the other problem is Reddit: I’m starting to think larger projects should squat their name there and redirect to better discussion places. I comment on Reddit sometimes and I roll my eyes every time I’ve done it lately.

End rant, I guess.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#285

Post by tus88 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

birracerveza wrote: post #267

tus88 wrote: post #239

LOL rust is a shit language that will never replace C, and this situation was entirely predicted by doubters, despite the assurances of rustophiles who claimed unsafe was not a problem, won't be abused etc. The emotion unveiled by this incident shows a deep anxiety in the rust community that the doubters are correct. C forever!

I don't know man, the emotion unveiled by your comment shows a deep anxiety in the C community that Rust is going to replace you.

Actually most of us would welcome a "better C", it was just obvious from the outset rust wasn't it. Rust with unsafe - as dangerous as C in the hands of a amateur, as comprehensible as poorly written machine code.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#286

Post by XelNika » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #25

Question: why didn’t the more safety-focused developers just fork the project? I feel like fork-o-phobia causes 90% of the incidents like this.

I think it's worth pointing out that this is about an article and a Reddit discussion posted literally yesterday. A fork might already have been on the way. Maybe someone was working in a private repo. It's clearly a worse solution than fixing the original so even assuming someone was willing to maintain a fork, it's not surprising that they wouldn't do so at the first sign of trouble.

If you do look at comments by safety-focused developers from earlier actix drama, you'll see that quite a few simply use a different project. The answer might be that actix doesn't provide enough value compared to alternatives to be worth forking for those people. The people aggressively attacking actix might not even be interested in the project for their own use, but merely there for the outrage.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#287

Post by endothrowho333 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

SkyBelow wrote: post #217

endothrowho333 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above was from personal experience and observation from having been a part of many online communities -- pre-dating reddit -- in all ways including: here-and-there member, first-hand maintainer and manager, and antisocial member causing a ruckus. Armchair psychology? No, I've made many friends and acquaintances, both online and in real life. The ones that bubble around posting online heavily, have developed antis…

>Armchair psychology? No, I've made many friends and acquaintances, both online and in real life. The ones that bubble around posting online heavily, have developed antisocial tendencies that were reinforced through social exclusion. A self-fulfilling prophecy. I know this, because I know those people well and because I was there at one point in my life as well. This would still qualify as anecdotal data, and thus ar…

You got me there.

My connotation of armchair psychology is more informal and doesn't match the more rigorous, APA definition.

I'll make one note: the psychological profile I wrote of, is based on first-hand experience, as well as pieces of mental notes recovered from internet-addiction and FBI profiling papers.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#288

Post by cycloptic » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #143

manish_gill wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one expects you to write perfect code, but we do expect you to fix flaws when you learn about them. It's not like he was getting paid to work on this, was it? And people do have a life beyond open source. People could have forked and worked on the issues themselves, but that's asking too much. Why do the hard work when you can just write a comment/tweet blaming someone else, right? Your comment is precisely what…

> It's not like he was getting paid to work on this, was it? That is completely beside the point. Do the Debian maintainers that were responsible for famous security slipups regarding SSH keys got paid? No. Would the backlash if they had been unwilling to fix the issues been warranted? Absolutely. Once you are a part of people's infrastructure and these people rely on you to not be irresponsible, you can't afford to…

>you can't afford to play the but-I-dont-get-paid-card

Yes, you can. The projects that have persisted over the long term have had a long history of people being paid to work on them, Debian included. There is no need to do something to "let other people take over" either. The code is open, you just type "git clone" and boom, now you've taken over.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#289

Post by lostmyoldone » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

vunie wrote: post #6

I don't know how to word this so I'll say it bluntly (and probably bear the blunt of this community as a consequence): If you're a developer of a project that is used in a security-sensitive context, you either be receptive to security concerns or you clearly label your project as a toy project. No one expects you to write perfect code, but we do expect you to fix flaws when you learn about them. Of course, you could…

I'll be blunt too.

If you use other peoples work for free and makes demands, then you should really stop using others free work and start paying for what you need.

It's your responsibility to choose what code you use, and unless the author has explicitly given specific guarantees they promise to uphold come hell or high water, it IS a toy project until proven otherwise.

It's such absolute nonsense to expect other people to submit to your wishes and whims without any compensation or prior consent.

But chastising someone in public for not submitting to your wishes?

That's straight up bullying.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#290

Post by gowld » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

What's wrong? There was a popular but dangerously broken library, and the maintainer didn't want to fix it, and so it shut down. Everyone is better off now. The code is still free for anyone who thinks they can fix it. It was a bit messy along the way because people get emotional about bad security, and people on the Internet have freedom to make comments you are free to ignore. This is an open source success story.