Why I Left Rust • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Left Rust

#671

Post by gdcbe » Sun, May 28, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #622

pdimitar wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical. This incident in particular doesn't prove that Rust has more zealots. Every single Rust dev I've worked with is a normal programmer who prioritizes merit and rational process. If you're already unfriendly towards the Rust community then this incident will only deepen your bias. I urge you to not assess the community with this flawed thought process. Rust devs are like all others.

This incident in particular doesn't prove that Rust has more zealots. At no point did I claim it did. If you're already unfriendly towards the Rust community Where did I state this? It seems you are touchy on this front. And it seems as if saying that the rust community has some zealots, upsets you. Most other dev languages don't even have "communities".

Pretty certain any widespread dev language has communities…

Re: Why I Left Rust

#672

Post by asveikau » Sun, May 28, 2023, 6:38 PM UTC

rgbgraph wrote: post #467

jaegerpicker wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been involved with Software Development for over 20 years started with VB6 and some perl/python in 1998. I saw the "informal code of conduct" and it never worked. What really happened: many people were treating terribly and most of it was swept under the rug. CoC were created for valid and good reasons. I'm not defending the Rust community here, it seems childish to me. The past is not what you are trying to cla…

Full disclosure, I usually do not involve myself with large groups -- so my views are likely to be a bit more innocent/naive. The past that I lived in was comprised of people you personally knew; not anonymous membership in a large organization or group, where you could never hope to know everyone on a personal level. There was very little opportunity for people to be unchecked dicks to one another, because you saw e…

I do think this is kind of naive. If you consider something like a sexual assault, or even the more severe forms of harassment, that tends to happen among people who know each other, and people often don't talk about it after being victimized. So you not knowing those stories out of your tight knit community doesn't mean much -- if those stories exist you might need to have the parties involved trust you a lot to confide it, or you might need to really probe people about it.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#673

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Sun, May 28, 2023, 6:41 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #447

seneca wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think that's mostly true. The rise of New Atheism seemed to coincide with the start of decreased tolerance. Coincidence or cause, I'm not sure.

It has nothing to do with New Atheism. You will find just as much drama - if not more - in religious communities of all kinds.

I think it has more to do with social media culture, which seems perpetually hyped emotionally.

You can't release a press release without claiming to be absolutely super excited for you guys about $mildly_interesting_new_thing. You can't run a non-trivial YouTube or TikTok channel if you don't over-emote wildly all the time. [1] IG is full of people who are incredibly #amazed and #grateful and add the hashtags to prove it.

I'm currently watching a YT series where some people visit abandoned parts of London tube stations. There's an insane level of constant emoting. It's like children's TV. Everyone is smiling and happy and just fantastic, and everything they see is awesome, amazing, incredible, and absolutely their favourite thing ever.

Which is weird when they're mostly just filming dusty old abandoned corridors, some of which have some historical interest.

If this is normal for you, you can't say "I really don't like what happened so I'm going to resign" without turning it into a widescreen tentpole weepy drama movie experience.

However or whenever this happened it's clearly normalised now. I think we're going to be stuck with it for a while.

[1] I've known people who tried to cut down on the emoting and their stats went right down.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#674

Post by klabb3 » Sun, May 28, 2023, 6:41 PM UTC

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #321

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #169

Is it just me, or is this a lot of melodrama for a language. I love arguing over technical details, this seems more like "house wives of rust".

I knew the people who come up with a compiler and syntax which just screams drama would also love drama in their real lives. That's why I stick with Go. No drama syntax, no drama conferences.

And an std lib that has all you need. And tooling that evolves in a direction of usefulness, not because it’s technically challenging.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#675

Post by spangry » Sun, May 28, 2023, 6:42 PM UTC

brokenkebaby wrote: post #131

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…

>Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their demographic? Claim of "feeling uncomfortable" was invented to be a tool of political fighting which allows to declare something, or somebody as unacceptable, completely avoiding debates. As it's becoming generally normalized, it's absolutely logical that it spills into other fields of human in…

It's also great because there's no way for you to dispute my claims of feeling uncomfortable / "unsafe", since these (alleged) feelings occur in my own head. No one can dispute my feelings. And if you're foolish enough to allow my (claimed) feelings to govern your behaviour I now have arbitrary control over you. Neat huh?

Re: Why I Left Rust

#676

Post by nindalf » Sun, May 28, 2023, 6:43 PM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #517

nindalf wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m less interested in collective blame/punishment and more about “how do we prevent this from reoccurring?” I’m not seeing any obvious solution. If one member of the leadership team does something stupid on a Friday, it can only be resolved by Tuesday or Wednesday. Folks are going to pick up their pitchforks on Sunday and say that “leadership failed”. Sure. But I don’t see a way around this.

The solution is to pick better leaders. This should never have happened in the first place. Whoever is responsible for this needs to go.

You must be fun at incident review. "The solution is to hire better engineers. Our root cause analysis shows that this should have never happened in the first place. Whoever is responsible for this needs to go."

Re: Why I Left Rust

#677

Post by Glawen » Sun, May 28, 2023, 6:46 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #515

jitl wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouting in the workplace and three martini lunches?

You're joking, but you're not wrong. The lack of emotional (and explicitly confrontational) experiences in modern society are underdeveloping skills to deal with them. Consequently, you get childish spats over what should be a technical disagreement, because people aren't comfortable saying "I think you're wrong, but I respect your opinion. Here are the reasons I think you're wrong..." As the quip goes, anonymity and…

It's true that people are less and less ok being confrontational. I don't mind having a spat, but it is becoming increasingly rarer

Re: Why I Left Rust

#678

Post by dathinab » Sun, May 28, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #643

bruce343434 wrote: post #183

As a non-american I must say I don't understand where the latter half of the article comes from. Why care about race? Why must a racist reason be sought behind everything?

In a culture that values free speech and critical thought, why would you expect anybody to stay silent about the elephant in the room? And where do you live that inequities have never existed?

what the previous comment probably meant is that in many countries there is no elephant in the room

not because there is no racism in the country and neither because everyone is racistic but because the situation in general is very very different

Re: Why I Left Rust

#679

Post by moomoo11 » Sun, May 28, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

jrsj wrote: post #428

phpisthebest wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the very beginning Rust was a political movement first, and a programming lang second. People seemed to have forgotten some of the early events from years ago when Rust was less popular. >>The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins to fester It has been there since the formation of the Lang, it is built into the DNA of the community. people that want technical merits to shine are the ones trying t…

And of course now that the people who wrote the CoC aren’t even following it we know that was really just a political tool

Everyone knows those are a childish tool used by bully nerds to wield power over others with this fake better than thou outlook on things that have nothing to do with programming or the computer.

Like seriously I’m on a computer remotely discussing tech with people. I don’t personally care about who the other person is or does beyond their contribution to the repo and topic at hand. Beyond that, to weaponize decent behavior as a tool to do additional things, is not right.

Sorry but when can we stop taking “developer advocate” type people seriously? They’re usually not devs or technical (at least in my own experience), and add all these side things which make no sense except in political organizations.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#680

Post by klabb3 » Sun, May 28, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

dumpster_fire wrote: post #122

jenadine wrote: post #11

I once got a talk demoted from a normal talk to a lightning talk at some unrelated conference to make it work with the schedule. That was indeed not nice. But also not "Cruelty". I just acted professionaly and accepted the change.

Melodrama from the blog post aside, publicly downgrading a talk for an industry wide conference is very much a slap to a speaker's face. "Hey we think you have great ideas to share, and would really like you to share them." On short notice: "One of our team members thinks your ideas aren't that important after all, we are going to remove you from the headline. Please keep it short kthxbye." It shows bad planning, bad…

Make a joke about it in the presentation. This talk was downgraded to get less visibility. So I’ve renamed the talk to “What Rust leadership doesn’t want you to know”.

I agree that it’s bad planning. And in particular, the reasons of “discomfort” are really terrible. However, it’s a very small hill to die on. Like, a mound.