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Why I Left Rust

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Re: Why I Left Rust

#391

Post by seneca »

surgical_fire wrote: post #282
naasking wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What the OP is actually saying is that he's extremely angry and pissed off that this was allowed to happen [...] But if he said that in no uncertain terms [...] he might fall afoul of the official Code of Conduct for being aggressive and threatening towards other contributors. So they need reverse psychology to express anger at injustice because of the Code of Conduct? What is this world we're building?

> What is this world we're building? It's the same as the world that existed before. A hundred years ago I would be going to mass on Sunday just so people thought I was a good Christian. Now I nod my empty head in fake agreement to all the "progressive" nonsense being spewed in professional circles. Well, except here. This is essentially a throwaway account with no ties to my professional self. "Give the man a mask a…

You're basically correct. The frustration many of us have, largely people slightly older than the core HN crowd, is that for a brief moment in the 90s and early 2000s we didn't have any of this dogma that could demand you nod along. You could be openly gay, openly Christian, conservative, leftist, or apolitical.

There were groups that still tried, but they were all too weak. The cultural conservativism of the 80s had no real hold anymore, and the political correctness of the 90s was mostly a joke. People would make fun of their opponents, but everyone openly disagreed. You wouldn't be fired from your job, or banned from otherwise unrelated communities.

We really thought that the internet was going to keep making this better. Instead we ended up with the most restrictive and widespread regime that has existed in most of our lifetimes. Luckily that seems to be losing its hold, but the specific doctrine isn't really the point. The frustration is that we had something closer to the ideal, however imperfect, and completely lost it, and have almost an entire generation that has been taught to think that that's a good thing.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#393

Post by bcrosby95 »

scns wrote: post #365
twic wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, lots of people high up in Rust have a background in JavaScript, where drama is common, which I believe has helped normalise it as a mode of social interaction.

Drama is common in human Comunnities.

In high school.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#394

Post by Capricorn2481 »

redeeman wrote: post #235
neonsunset wrote: post #29

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.

this is well in line with the woke culture, everything is about feelings, and not rational arguments. They need trigger warnings, and if things hurt some feefee's, its simply unacceptable regardless of factual matters. that is why it is so disruptive in a professional setting, and kills all real honest cooperation

Just completely pulling your agenda out of your ass on HN, huh?

Re: Why I Left Rust

#395

Post by mwcampbell »

quotemstr wrote: post #388
monkeywork wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should care because this becomes more and more the reputation of the language and as it pushes more and more talented people away the staying power of the language (and its ability to be "great") begins to diminish. People don't need to be perfect, but if people are going to REPRESENT something (ie the Rust Language) they need to be better than the petty drama that the Rust team has been involved in over the last…

As Rust the technology becomes increasingly important commercially, Rust the community will become more professional one way or another. Large companies want calm and predictable management of their core infrastructure. They have multiple levers, some overt, some less so, for getting it. Rust's leadership will either adopt professional standards of business conduct (as Linus did) or it will be replaced (like W3C was)…

So what can we who use Rust, but don't have those levers of power, do to help accelerate this professionalization?

Re: Why I Left Rust

#396

Post by quotemstr »

GuB-42 wrote: post #389
junon wrote: post #77

Wait. Let me get this straight. Someone is an expert in this field. They're asked to speak at RustConf after a leadership vote. They've also written an article about reflection in Rust - a purely technical thing that is already pretty widely disliked conceptually. (EDIT: the talk was about this, but it's also compile time reflection and came with the usual disclaimer that it was not representative of any of the Rust…

While the language itself looks fine, I find the community a bit off-putting. First the thing with the code of conduct and all that, that I think distracts from the technical questions. It is important to be inclusive, as not to exclude people who could make valuable contributions, but if it becomes a topic of argument, then it becomes counter-productive. The second is the "rewrite it in Rust" crowd. I mean, no langu…

> While the language itself looks fine, I find the community a bit off-putting

I have wondered now and then about how the Rust community culture might have damaged the language. In particular, I've said for many years that Rust botched error handling by eschewing exceptions yet including panics anyway, leading to a doubling of the error handling infrastructure (you pay for both error objects and stack unwinding support) and the inability of the standard library to survive allocation failure.

It's an unfixable mistake, although the language designers have walked it back the best they can over the years, culminating in the current yeet proposal.

Did Rust end up with both errors and panics because the community suppressed robust debate in the name of kindness and "safety"? Was the current approach a way to try to make everyone happy without conflict?

Re: Why I Left Rust

#397

Post by 4RealFreedom »

revelio wrote: post #262
orangetuba wrote: post #119

I've attended a few Rust conferences and events, and they have all been unusually politicized. There has been a very strong emphasis on how inclusive the community is, which raises some red flags. It is akin to someone repeatedly expressing how smart or funny they are... it makes you wonder why. I was waiting for something like this to happen.

It seems to be a recurring problem with Rust (the ecosystem, not the language). One of the nice things about the Kotlin and Java communities is that they lack this kind of endless drama. Technical events stay technical.

I agree with this 100%. As soon as you bring in outside topics, this kind of thing is inevitable. Rust should be about Rust. Whatever your personal beliefs are about BLM, abortion, the existence of aliens, whatever - putting any energy into external topics detracts from what should be the primary focus.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#398

Post by rgbgraph »

waboremo wrote: post #374
twic wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, lots of people high up in Rust have a background in JavaScript, where drama is common, which I believe has helped normalise it as a mode of social interaction.

Not sure there's a real connection between the languages at least when it comes to "drama". Especially considering JavaScript is the most used language, or at least in the top 5 at this rate due to how low the entry barrier is for serious use. So purely from numbers, there's bound to be a bunch with a background in JavaScript, as with any other new language. You could have also said the same thing about Python for th…

Wow, no kidding:

https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/vxgzrl/changes_in_the...

Mod response:

> For all those wondering about removed comments, there was some trolling going on which was summarily removed by the mods.

> Please avoid any trolling and/or drama seeking comments and remember our subreddit rules.

"Trolling" on display in the archives of that thread: https://www.reveddit.com/v/rust/comments/vxgzrl/changes_in_t...

And then there's Graydon's reply to the "we will exclude you," in the code of conduct, and the subsequent drama: https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/6ewjt5/question_about...

Frankly, even though no one has asked for my opinion, the amount of effort people put into the code of conduct (and the discussion around it) is ridiculous; utterly ridiculous. In a time long ago, before everyone was incapable of compromising and cooperating with one another, we had two rules in an informal code of conduct for interacting with one another:

1. Be cool

2. Don't be an asshole

And then we all went back to trying to achieving the task at hand.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#399

Post by [deleted] »

jasmer wrote: post #244
whinvik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nobody cares but the speaker themselves. There is obviously some legit cred here, and it's a definite downgrade - but it's not being sent to the woods either. G Given that 'nobody else cares at all, whatsoever' - that adds context to this which we should include in our understanding. Nobody is missing grant money, or getting a stain on their resume, not getting a job, publicly dragged, meaning the slight is ultimatel…

[deleted]

Re: Why I Left Rust

#400

Post by pdimitar »

marcinzm wrote: post #357
lolinder wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if we can all figure out how to adult Part of adulting is responding proportionally to childish behavior in others. Events like this feel like my toddlers fighting—he takes her pencil so she tears his paper so he hits her so she comes crying to mommy. The adult in the room deescalates, they don't write an emotional blog about how betrayed they feel on behalf of someone else.

That depends on the power balance. Adults have power over children. The author does not have power over the people involved. Deescalating when you lack power is often little different from not saying anything at all. This is why most non-generational change to existing power structures involves large groups of very angry people. Same reason complaining about your Google Account getting locked on social media is more…

No power over anyone is required. Reasonable and well-grounded arguments seeking to resolve conflict will do.
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