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Why I Left Rust

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Re: Why I Left Rust

#831

Post by hnfong »

tialaramex wrote: post #829
hnfong wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes. It's strange but I can explain. Cantonese is a bit different from the "standard" Mandarin Chinese, so that's one factor. I also grew up in a very bilingual environment in Hong Kong, and had a short stint living abroad during my younger years (I started primary school in Australia, so I basically learned to write in English before I learned to write in Chinese.) My schooling is like 80% in English, and even to…

Thanks for explaining what you meant by "somewhat". One of the people whose opinion about JFK's quote gets a lot of play is Victor Mair, Victor thinks it'd be better to focus on teaching Pinyin rather than get Chinese kids to invest so heavily in the Han writing system which makes alphabetic systems look trivial - and if you're willing I'd be interested in what you think of that as somebody who learned the Latin alph…

Learning the Han characters is difficult, and for a foreigner learning the language, if you mostly want to communicate verbally it's quite obvious which the easy path is.

But for native Chinese children, learning Han characters is a matter of cultural identity :) Also, once you've spent the time learning it, the ability to comprehend ancient Chinese texts up to ~2500 years old is pretty nice. Most people don't need to do this (but I do), but it's kind of a culturally accepted overhead of keeping the cultural continuity. I think most learned Chinese teachers recognize this "problem", but it's just accepted as a fact of life, and I don't think it's gonna change any time soon.

I personally paid this "cost" too, Chinese was my most dreaded subject in school, and I while I never had any issue recognizing/reading characters, I couldn't hold them all in my head and I'd often forget how to write random characters (up to this day it happens - and I've written a lot of stuff). It's not a problem now because on a computer/phone I can type the pronunciation and I'd find what I wanted, but still.

FWIW, note that in the countries that used to be influenced by Chinese Han culture (Vietnam, Korea, Japan), they all used to have some form of Han character writing system, which then they subsequently switched (fully or partly) to a pronunciation based system. Outsiders rightly think we're nuts to keep the existing system, but it's just not gonna change.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#832

Post by pdimitar »

depr wrote: post #810
pdimitar wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But what if year in year out it doesn't happen? Then the intersection between "Black people" and "people willing to speak on a Rust conference" is extremely small and nothing can be done about it. Well, nothing that's not already being done I mean: like encourage everyone to be in these circles because nobody is going to show you the door for doing so, and nobody is going to discriminate you. What else should one p…

>Then the intersection between "Black people" and "people willing to speak on a Rust conference" is extremely small and nothing can be done about it. Perhaps. That is an explanation that fits your worldview. But whether it is true is not so easily determined. >I've never in my life discriminated anyone on any race or gender grounds and I also don't plan to ever do so. But constantly guilt-tripping whites that they sh…

> In your view _you_ and many other white people have never discriminated anyone and you have never witnessed it and therefore there is no racism.

You just demonstrate how hard it is to discuss with you because NOBODY SAID THAT. I even included pieces of context in my parent (and other) comment(s) and you still ignored it.

Racism and various other discriminatory actions absolutely exist. Why do you accuse people of lack of basic common sense? Do you think you'll make allies this way?

And finally, why is the Rust Foundation the place to try and fight stuff all over the world? It comes across as opportunism; previously oppressed people using any and all channels as a megaphone. Rust Foundation is inclusive which is already HUGE progress. Can we leave it at that and move on? I wanna be back to a programming language foundation, being, you know, a PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE FOUNDATION.

Outrageous, I know. Surely I will again be made to look like I am the ultimate nemesis of... somebody.

> and see that even without us being racist or doing anything wrong, there can be some injustice and the situation can be improved.

I am asking again: what does that have to do at all with the Rust Foundation? It's a programming language foundation, not a world-wide charity fund-raiser that aims to eliminate all exclusivity around the world.

IMO let's get our scopes right first. Otherwise all discussion flies out the window, as has been evident throughout the several threads made on this topic on HN already.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#834

Post by kazinator »

> A person in Rust ... reached directly to RustConf leadership and asked to change the invitation

Programmers are control freaks.

If you don't let yourself to reach into things and flip bits in the machine's memory, that's going to boil over somewhere.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#835

Post by lyu07282 »

ra1231963 wrote: post #445
lyu07282 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought "rust culture" came out of this sort of super SJW/woke culture of mozilla? Nothing against that sort of mindset in theory, but it sometimes leads to a certain irrational hypersensitive intolerant mob behavior and authoritarian/anti democratic tendencies. There was also the recent easily preventable drama [1] around the trademark guidelines some people left rust over. I don't really find any of this drama co…

> Nothing against that sort of mindset in theory, but it sometimes leads to a certain irrational hypersensitive intolerant mob behavior and authoritarian/anti democratic tendencies. Really? Nothing against a thing that leads to hypersensitive intolerant mob behavior and authoritarian/anti democratic tendencies!?

well its a difficult terminology to use because the right/conservative people are of course also against sjw/woke ideology. The distinction is that I'm criticizing very specific tendencies of some people whom could be best described as woke, not the underlying ideology. Such as when they weaponize privilege, language, race or sexuality in order to achieve some secondary unrelated or overarching goal. It's "the ends justify all means" mentality, if by democratic process you won't achieve consensus that agrees with your personal particular set of beliefs, then the rejection, destruction and undermining of collective decision making processes is justified. Which ignores the original reasons for why democratic structures exist in the first place (such as term limits and adversarial structures vs. corruption and abuse of power). This is essentially my criticism of some woke people.

It is very difficult to use the terminology even though it is the most accurate, because conservatives are the most loud adversaries of it, but they are just hateful racists, bigots, ableists, sexists, transphobes, homophobes, islamophobes, xenophobes, etc. Which of course invalidates everything they ever say.

Re: Why I Left Rust

#836

Post by atoav »

rtpg wrote: post #804
atoav wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't get here is the following. No matter how egalitarian you organize such a conference, doesn't it make sense that the organizers get the last say in what the keynote looks like? They have an rough overview over all contributions and they can decide if what you contribute is best suited to be a keynote. Of course that gives them a certain level of power of the discourse, but what is the alternative? Communi…

In this specific instance, there was a vote to have this keynote. Then somebody seems to have circumvented this process to get the keynote downgraded (leading to the OP resigning, as they had been behind the initial vote!) There was somebody who circumvented the intended governance structures to make this happen, and this is probably where the frustration and this blog post come from.

Okay that is a tad bit more problematic, but I still think it is not that dramatic of a thing, especially without hearing the reasoning of the organizers.

They could (or should) have been more transparent with communicating their reasoning, but again: Anyone who has ever organized any decently sized event knows that in the end the buck will stop with whoever has to do the actual work. And if you ask me (you probably didn't), giving organizers that power and trust is generally reasonable. They have the best insight, they have to carry the consequences if it does not work out, etc.

Of course that trust can be lost and a community can decide to let other people organize their event next time. But the way I see it those made responsible for an event should be able to shape that event.

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