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A Sad Day for Rust

words.steveklabnik.com

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Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#931

Post by tus88 »

kragen wrote: post #858
_-___________-_ wrote: post #352

I've written a lot of Rust code that's in production in web, messaging and telephony contexts. I considered using Actix early on, but as soon as I saw the large amount of unsafe code, I stopped considering it at all. I did not go on the Internet and try to convince other people not to use it. I did not complain at the maintainer that he should manage his project differently. I just didn't see why a library doing what…

> There's no need to flame people for running their open-source project the way they want to run it. You can just not use the code. Also, you can change your copy of it to work the way you want, and if you decide to share it, other people can choose to use your version if they like it better. You don't have to bully other people to get your needs meet, individually or collectively. These are among the core benefits o…

I wonder if authors consider "friendly" forks to be friendly ...

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#932

Post by ssokolow »

brianzelip wrote: post #181

I'm just a js dev with a whole lotta love for the web. I know enough to respect the hell out of Rust. I'd just like to offer my best wishes to the Rust community, and put a call for folks to be more civil on places like reddit, etc. In closing, here's a nice little gem from the OP author's final blog post on his old blog[0]: > if there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing software, it’s to blog about error messages.…

> if there’s one thing I’ve learned from writing software, it’s to blog about error messages.

I hope I'm not the only one who just realized that "A Sad Day for Rust" is also an example of "[blogging] about error messages" and appreciated that statement even more.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#933

Post by catalogia »

tus88 wrote: post #931
kragen wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no need to flame people for running their open-source project the way they want to run it. You can just not use the code. Also, you can change your copy of it to work the way you want, and if you decide to share it, other people can choose to use your version if they like it better. You don't have to bully other people to get your needs meet, individually or collectively. These are among the core benefits o…

I wonder if authors consider "friendly" forks to be friendly ...

I think that probably depends on the nature of the words exchanged before the fork. Many forks happen after nasty comments have been thrown around.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#934

Post by ssokolow »

Traster wrote: post #500
dbcfd wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maintainers of large projects are not even allowed to have a bad day, to make a brusque comment, or to disagree with a majority -- without someone trying to stir up a lynch mob. It sickens me the lack of balance between the work done by the maintainers, and the expectations of random users. Sure they are. There's a number of projects out there with a massive caveat on the front page that says "Not for production us…

Sorry, it doesn’t work that way, come on github isn’t intended for production unless specified otherwise. The default assumption is “This is just some code I don’t own”. Even repos that do make some claim of support or quality should be treated with suspicion. The onus is on the person using the Open source project to do due diligence.

But it's not just "code on github". It has the very professional-looking https://actix.rs/ and so on.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#935

Post by catalogia »

sbarre wrote: post #755
golergka wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a cultural issue, but I honestly don't see what's so offensive about this comment (I was expecting something far worse), especially if it's factual assumptions are true. Honest question, can somebody explain the issue here to me, and how one would express these concerns otherwise? I feel as if I just don't get American culture of politeness and niceness to appreciate it.

It's a personal attack. The poster is telling the maintainer to quit writing Rust, implying he can never get better and basically demeaning his whole effort. Do you not see how that is (a) not related to the project and (b) rude in any context? If you were, say, singing karaoke and someone came up to you and said "you're awful, never sing again, you're off-key, you don't know the words"... Is that not rude to you?

Good singing is to karaoke as safety is to Rust?

I don't claim to know much about either karaoke or rust, but from what little I know of both, that seems wrong. The Rust community expects safe code, while bad singing is expected at karaoke bars.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#936

Post by whateveracct »

AaronFriel wrote: post #654

This is very difficult. I feel badly for the author of actix-web, and I agree with Klabnik to the extent that Reddit can be a terrible place. What I think this is, is a sad day for the Rust community. But it is probably a good, and necessary step for the Rust ecosystem. The bottom line is the creator of Actix made something really attractive, but not necessarily good ¹, which pulled a lot of people in to using it. It…

Not the point of this thread, but cabal is quite good now with its Nix-style local builds. The meme of "cabal is bad" perpetuated during the rise of stack is just wrong now :)

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#937

Post by catalogia »

notriddle wrote: post #895
zozbot234 wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think either side is right here, but I don't think creating a public fork and building a community around that is an unbiased and neutral response Linux distro maintainers routinely create "public forks" even of actively-maintained packages, and no one sane views that as a hostile move or something to complain about. It's part of curating a well-kept ecosystem around your solutions.

> Linux distro maintainers routinely create "public forks" even of actively-maintained packages, and no one sane views that as a hostile move or something to complain about. https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop...

The way jwz's website treats links from HN should probably give you a clue as to his personality and approach to communication. I wouldn't hold him up as a role model in this regard.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#938

Post by catalogia »

Karunamon wrote: post #344
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…

People reading your comment as entitlement really need to pay more attention to the last paragraph. People really need to stop bandying about "entitlement" as if it deflects any and all criticism. You are, of course, free to write whatever unsafe, insecure code you want. You are, by leaving the issue tracker in Github enabled, inviting public feedback on the quality of the code you write. When you implicitly rescind…

I generally agree, except for this part: "Deleting the entire project as he did is an incredibly petty and immature response."

If he no longer wants to participate in the community, then deleting the repo was a good decision. It's not like the code is actually gone, other people have copies of it, and now that the original repo is gone nobody will mistakenly go to his repo and find it abandoned. It's basically the equivalent of boarding up the windows before you abandon a building.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#939

Post by maccam94 »

roca wrote: post #915
kragen wrote: post #869

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rr is only useful to people with a minimal level of knowledge, and in most cases to people who have stood in your shoes. Firefox is useful to any six-year-old with a cellphone. Maybe that explains the difference.

That could explain the difference between rr and Firefox, but it doesn't explain the difference between rr and all the other developer-oriented projects with toxicity issues.

There's variance in developer experience and skill as well. The software's purpose functions as an audience filter. There are still probably toxic people out there using your software, but not as many so they're less likely to bother you.

From what I've read about rr, it sounds like awesome black magic, and I'd imagine most users appreciate how difficult its task is.

Re: A Sad Day for Rust

#940

Post by kragen »

tus88 wrote: post #931
kragen wrote: post #858

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no need to flame people for running their open-source project the way they want to run it. You can just not use the code. Also, you can change your copy of it to work the way you want, and if you decide to share it, other people can choose to use your version if they like it better. You don't have to bully other people to get your needs meet, individually or collectively. These are among the core benefits o…

I wonder if authors consider "friendly" forks to be friendly ...

The XEmacs fork I mentioned had some bad feelings attached. As far as I know the other examples I mentioned (Stackless, swap-to-NFS, LuaJIT) don't. But it doesn't matter what authors think. What matters is what helps the users. Would you ask for Newton's approval before calculating a planetary trajectory, or Kalashnikov’s before designing an automatic rifle? Their achievements matter precisely because they empower everyone, for better or for worse.

Emphasizing authors’ feelings in this way has the effect of diminishing their software from a contribution to the intellectual heritage of humanity to merely a service like delivering a pizza. Don't forget to tip your waiter!

Of course you should be nice to authors if you interact with them. But the whole point of open source is that you don't have to interact with them unless you want to.

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