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Why I Left Rust

jntrnr.com

81–90 of 880 posts

Re: Why I Left Rust

#81
post #73
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying the process was brilliant, but there's a difference between "the organizers were chaotic, didn't have their shit together, and need to do better" and "the organizers intentionally acted cruelly in an act of racist vindictiveness out of sheer malice". That's really my main objection to this post; and in the context of the accusations it makes the change of title is not really a big deal, or so it seems…

> “the organizers intentionally acted cruelly in an act of racist vindictiveness out of sheer malice“ The characterisation of those actions as vindictive seems accurate, but I don’t think the blog post is stating that the actions were racist, rather that it was a missed opportunity to represent the wider population at rustconf. Whether you think that’s good or tokenisation is a separate matter, the point is that the…

The sentence "Systems have memory and biases. If the people that make up the system don't work to fight against these, they are perpetuated" in particular came off as more than merely "missed opportunity", although "racism" is probably too strong of a word too, but I don't know of anything else that fits better.

Either way, I don't really see why it would be vindictive either? Maybe I missed some information somewhere, but I've seen nothing that would indicate anything other than the most likely explanation: they rescheduled because they assumed JeanHeyd just didn't care as he indicated he didn't want to do a keynote at first, some petty infighting, and all of this communicated this in a bad and chaotic way.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#82
post #42
post #28

[flagged]

> Nothing wrong… Well, thanks, I suppose. > …allow it to work organically. This is a bit unclear. Would you object to finding mediocre speakers from underrepresented groups just to boost representation? I imagine so, and so would I. Would you object to, e.g., posting to a mailing list mostly for black or women developers to encourage applications (without any alteration to the subsequent application procedure)? Well,…

If the reasoning behind him being selected for the keynote was his race, then it is a poor reason for choosing him - but that's a justification for rethinking the process for the selection of future speakers, not for changing the speaker after he's already been chosen.

Either way, the justification that a technical blog post caused "discomfort" to some of the team (what does that even mean?) is bullshit.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#83
post #78
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who don't think this is a big deal are either lacking some empathy or don't understand how conferences work. The equivalent situation is something like being warmly invited to a wedding, which you accept. The bride and groom then spend time gushing over how great it is that you'll be there, telling everyone they know, insisting that you book tickets right away. Later, you're told you can only come to the c…

It's up to you how you deal with stuff like this: you either turn everything in to a big drama or you just accept that these things are a part of life and can happen because the universe is a chaotic place. It's not like they lost their job or something; it's just a 2-day event. If adding some perspective makes me "lacking empathy" then so be it, but I resent the accusation. We can also turn that around: the organise…

> We can also turn that around: the organisers are essentially being called a bunch of cruel racist assholes here, all without any real evidence.

You're getting evidence directly from someone who is a senior member of the Rust community and who participated directly in the original decision.

Imagine you hear a series of bangs, walk into your living room, and see Alice holding a smoking gun and standing over Bob's bullet-ridden dead body, holding a note saying "I wish Bob was dead".

One response is "well, we don't know what Bob did or if Alice actually pulled the trigger". Another response is "um, Alice, can you explain why you seem to have shot Bob?", and if Alice doesn't want to explain anything, you might start to draw inferences. But either way you might not want to hang around Alice until it gets cleared up.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#84
post #38

crablang was started as sort-of satire...if Rust folks aren't careful it might just take off

Do you mean memelang?

The person who forked that language didn't have any experience regarding languages/compilers before that fork. Later he tried to create BrainFuck like an interpreter and some unspecified lang parser/lexer.

Recently there were a few commits in this language after 3 weeks of silence. It's a vanity project of one twitch influencer.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#85
post #9

What's up with all the petty drama in the Rust community.. is it uniquely problematic?

No, open source is just like this now. I think it's a confluence of factors: 1) Open source is more about interpersonal collaboration than it ever has been. The lone hacker throwing tarballs -- or patches -- over the fence is dead. Open source projects now more closely resemble "real world" software projects: a team of engineers using collaborative tools, working toward a defined shared vision with management and ove…

[flagged]

Re: Why I Left Rust

#87

Rust could be a nice language if it wasn't for its insufferable "community".

I've lost track of the amount of things where the thing itself is cool but the fan club is insufferable.

I've grown to really like Rust over the years, but this was very much despite the Rust fanatics, not because of them.

Now that ChatGPT has come along, I find it much preferable for coding assistance than dealing with the Rust fandom. "Why are you bothering with all this FFI stuff? You should just rewrite all your dependencies in Rust!" shudder

Re: Why I Left Rust

#88
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…

Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling uncomfortable"

Rust the language is pretty good but the community around it has become really off-putting. The thick veneer of empathy and compassion quickly devolves into "idiot compassion" and emotional blackmail. Even the linked post contains the following:

"I left because when I felt JeanHeyd's pain and disappointment at being mistreated and betrayed, my heart broke. I wept because of the cruelty. But I also wept because I helped create the system that could do this to someone."

Re: Why I Left Rust

#89
I guess one real benefit of rust is that it will encourage C++ to find way to be a bit more safer. cpp2/cppfront is one such initiative, and there are a few other programming practices that encourage safety.

But other than that, rust is just a "modern ADA", nothing more. It cannot easily get interfaced with existing UI API either. Having verifiable code is a niche thing, it is very important, but most programmers don't need it.

Not to mention that rust is generally more difficult to read than C, and a language will always fail to be largely adopted if its learning curve is too steep. At least in C++, you can write code that resembles C, so it's still approachable to beginners. Not in rust.

I wish rust was easier to learn and had a syntax closer to C, while retaining its secure features. It has too many weird specific features and syntax that are too alien. A big reason python is popular is because it retains this "C style" and is so easy to deal with. Rust is the opposite of that.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#90
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…

I don't get what's wrong with his post about reflection, why would someone be uncomfortable with a tool?

https://soasis.org/posts/a-mirror-for-rust-a-plan-for-generi... - Is this the post ?

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