[HN Gopher] Why I Left Rust
___________________________________________________________________
Why I Left Rust
Author : SmileyKeith
Score : 761 points
Date : 2023-05-28 05:46 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jntrnr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jntrnr.com)
| distcs wrote:
| For the Rust ignorants like me can someone be kind enough to
| explain who jntrnr is? The only info I can find is that he worked
| on Rust core. Can't find an about page or any other information
| about this personality?
|
| Is his role significant enough that his departure from Rust will
| force Rust leadership to fix their internal problems?
| di4na wrote:
| Who is he. He was part of the 4 person "leadership" team and
| worked on the compiler team. He is one of the maintainer of
| nushell. He also used to work on Typescript. This is definitely
| someone with experience and knowledge in these areas and we are
| all poorer from losing him. I probably missed a lot of his
| other work, sorry.
|
| Is it role significant enough? Yes. Will it force a fix to the
| problems? He was the leadership. And they lost other big
| figures in the past to this kind of shenanigans without change.
| So probably not
| [deleted]
| 0zemp2c wrote:
| crablang was started as sort-of satire...if Rust folks aren't
| careful it might just take off
| idiomaticrust wrote:
| 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.
| perihelions wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35592005 ( _" CrabLang
| (crablang.org)"_, 77 comments)
| WesSouza wrote:
| [flagged]
| Lanz wrote:
| I love how everything has to be spun into something about race by
| the left. You win today's award for the Wokest Bloke.
| anta40 wrote:
| I think the title is "click bait-ish" because it implies the
| person stopped writing in Rust :D
| raphyjake wrote:
| No, he's a known compilers guy and it was known he worked on
| Rust.
| mberning wrote:
| Is there anything more pathetic than the internecine fighting of
| a bunch of nerds? The level of emotional maturity and "life
| experience" on display is of a 15 year old level, at best. The
| fact that this is still going for many days after the fact proves
| my point. The histrionics over a very minor slight is over the
| top. Just quit it.
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| time to hard fork and create Virtuous Crablang
| fndex wrote:
| https://github.com/crablang/crab
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I see so much angst here, an awful lot of it hinging around:
|
| * it's a language and technical thing so human emotions and
| feelings don't matter HTFU
|
| * there's a race and diversity aspect and anything that has to do
| with race and diversity offends me HTFU
|
| Or some variant.
|
| These are people doing stuff they're passionate about. You may be
| an end user and don't care about the internal politics, but for
| these folks it's a group of humans working together with all the
| emotional complexities of such things. It's more like a job for
| them than a technical project - with all the HR issues those
| entail. If you've ever worked on a standards effort it's _even
| more_ the human complexity roller coaster than a job. Add in
| they're a bunch of socially maladjusted nerds, and the thresholds
| for drama are lower and the ability to navigate is even worse.
|
| So, I think empathy for those who are hurt and their reasons
| isn't uncalled for. Hearing the other side would be useful too.
|
| On the race and diversity side: having a black person give a key
| note at a conference of this technical depth would be good.
| Arguing it shouldn't matter doesn't consider black engineers in a
| field where there are no peers like them that are visible. In
| your life where you're surrounded by people like you everywhere
| you go it's likely hard to understand directly, but as a nerd
| remember when you were in middle school and you just wished for
| one other person who loved assembler as much as you. That
| scratches the surface of the feeling of exclusion minority
| engineers feel - except it didn't end in middle school, it
| happens every day in every interaction. Then when someone dares
| say "hey yeah I get you," they get shouted down for "making it
| political," which sounds an awful lot like "I don't like black
| people standing up for themselves" to black peoples ears -
| further isolating them. I'm sorry you find that inconvenient and
| you feel like it shouldn't matter. But as the person who doesn't
| fit in and is made to remember that in situations and discussions
| like this, it's bound to hurt. Hence, hence the emotions of hurt
| and betrayal on display.
| sxhunga wrote:
| A so-called "Leadership" cannot bring out of the conference what
| I think differently. Leadership must have the power of the word
| if it has a mind in the head. I think these are the traits of
| Leadership.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| This reads like lots of drama ensued internally (whether
| justified or not) and now a person writes about it creating more
| drama externally, or at least tries to.
|
| It would have been interesting, to write about who and what topic
| was chosen as a replacement as well. I guess, I can understand
| not wanting to have to do much with people, who for not
| justifying reasons demote a speaker, whom one thinks highly of.
| It probably raises the question of what is more important to
| oneself. The project or the other people involved in it.
| Apparently the project was not important enough.
|
| This blog post has a feel of creating more drama though. The
| person considers themselves important enough, that people may
| wonder why they left Rust. Well, normal people leave and when
| people ask, they answer. Possibly in detail, possibly a canned
| answer. If people really want to know, they can ask. Making it a
| public announcement has the drama feel to it.
|
| I get this feeling often with rather publicly well known
| projects. Supposedly prominent people who are so kind to donate
| their time to the cause, but at a hickup leave the project and
| write a drama blog post or worse tweet or something. Seemingly
| making us think, that they are a great loss for the project. Well
| apparently their priorities were different. More about the people
| or prestige of working on the project than the actual project,
| which they might even be harming with their drama blog post.
|
| And then that section:
|
| > I also felt the weight of the context of the decision. JeanHeyd
| isn't just a recent grant recipient of the Rust Foundation.
| JeanHeyd has important history with the Rust project.
|
| > It was JeanHeyd who called Rust out for having no Black
| representation among Rust conference speakers. Rightly so, as
| both the Rust organization and the conferences had little to no
| Black representation.
|
| > When I saw an organization that not only could act so coldly to
| an expert in the field, but also to one who was a vocal critic of
| Rust's lack of diversity, it was hard not to see the additional
| context.
|
| > Systems have memory and biases. If the people that make up the
| system don't work to fight against these, they are perpetuated.
|
| No, no, no. Firstly, no explanation, what JeanHeyd actually did
| for Rust. Nagging about lack of diversity OK, but did they make
| suggestions for people to invite? Or was it just complaining? I
| would not call it "important history" then. Complaining about
| diversity or the lack of is easy. Did they do anything themselves
| to change it? And why the racism? What inherent qualities does
| JeanHeyd ascribe to "black" people? And what significant
| contributions did JeanHeyd make?
|
| I am for diversity, but it needs to be based on actual merit and
| not just that stupid "Oh we got no blacky, lets invite one, then
| we are good!". Make it a reasonable choice! Look for the talent
| and invite it, not because of some skin color ideas. Make sure
| you do not fall into bias avoiding other ethnicities because of
| who they are. But also make sure not to overlook greater merit,
| because you haven't ticked a bock on your skin color check list
| yet. If a "black" person is the best fit, choose them. If not,
| then choose someone else. Don't friggin base it on color. If you
| base these things merely on color of the skin, you are opening
| the doors for the unpleasant crowd, who will argue, that a person
| did not get into their position by merit, but by skin color. You
| don't want such crowd, so don't attract them with such
| argumentation.
|
| > As my buddy Aman pointed out, the context that this would have
| also been the first keynote by a person of color at RustConf
| should not be lost here.
|
| And the value in that is? Just to be aligned with ideology? Or
| some racism behind it?
|
| As a viewer I want a good keynote. I don't care what the color of
| that person is. Why do you make it a color question? What does it
| have to do with color? This kind of argumentation makes me think,
| that they are actually more racist than others. It is all so
| forced, it is no longer authentic. Let it be done in authentic
| ways. And again, don't argue on the basis of skin color,
| otherwise you are just as racist as the guy who rejects a person
| on the basis of skin color.
|
| In some situations one can argue on the basis of additional
| diverse cultural background being brought into a situation,
| group, company, etc. It needs to have something to do with the
| subject at hand though. Say for example a teacher in a primary
| school. There it could make a difference to have a person with
| different cultural background, to teach the children more things
| and make them aware of different culture. It is an argumentation
| one can follow. But just arguing: "We don't have 10 'black'
| people at our conference yet." is very weak and ethically
| slippery terrain.
| [deleted]
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| That's what happen when you fanboy for a product, instead of
| using tools for what they are when you need them, you become
| their puppet, and they leverage you to push whatever BS they have
| in their pocket
|
| The people with a crab or the electric zig on their social media
| profile thing are all the same and will end up being disappointed
| the same way at some point
|
| Don't fanboy, stay critic and reevaluate your tools needs
| whenever possible
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| Bro wtf is happening at rust. How does a programming language
| have this much drama WEEKLY
| stcroixx wrote:
| Languages that don't have a built in police squad don't have
| issues like this. The 'community' around Rust is its biggest
| handicap right now.
| 0xbadc0de5 wrote:
| When presented with a vast malicious conspiracy, I try to default
| to Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be
| adequately explained as stupidity.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| But why not both? Malicious and stupid, the best of two worlds.
| lr1970 wrote:
| First, the entire moderator team (BurntSushi et el) resigned
| citing inappropriate actions of a Rust core team member (details
| were not made public). Now JT resigns for a similar reason. Rust
| project governance has been a problem for a while and it seems to
| be getting worse.
| neilv wrote:
| Rust is supposed to help keep the programmer from shooting
| themself in the foot, but lately the Rust community/leadership
| keeps shooting itself.
| syngrog66 wrote:
| this belongs to that genre of HN stories that I characterize as
| "yet another niche political tempest in a teapot among the
| extremely spoiled & well-off."
| s9w wrote:
| [dead]
| vpastore wrote:
| [flagged]
| ianzakalwe wrote:
| Organization that is "uncomfortable" with being criticized is
| always going to struggle to expand and adjust.
|
| I have being part of rust community since 2013, I have seen lots
| of oddities over the years in this community. While it is
| inspiring to see such a dedicated and passionate community it is
| also upsetting to see same community kill off its own members
| based on disagreements and inability to carry any sort of
| constructive discourse.
| Yasuraka wrote:
| >I wept because of the cruelty. But I also wept because I helped
| create the system that could do this to someone.
|
| I believe these must've been Oppenheimer's words
| ojosilva wrote:
| BDFL or atomic leadership-led groups are more streamlined and
| decisions tend to be less questioned, dissidents are erased out
| and egos crushed. It's easier because all the gravitas, and all
| the blame, is pinned to a monolith. "When he/she/it woke, the
| dinosaur was still there" would say Guatemalan writer Monterroso.
|
| Participative leadership, otoh, is a pain. Every topic is a tug-
| of-war. Every decision has a significant party that disagrees and
| is unhappy with the outcome. Every ego flourishes. Even the
| serene will feel poised and entitled to raise endless issues.
| There's a general lack of perspective and very few people
| celebrating what has been accomplished. All milestones are
| muddied by buts and ifs and people feel like shit.
|
| Yet in every disagreement lies opportunity. Multiplying successes
| is the heart and soul of teamwork. That's why participative
| groups are better because worse is better. I hope the Rust team
| doesn't lose perspective and keep, as before, working hard to
| drive such a great language, toolchain and open community
| forward.
| mfru wrote:
| Can someone explain to me the reasoning the original persons [1]
| blog post is flagged but not this one?
|
| (I don't agree with flagging either)
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36091242
| totallyunknown wrote:
| Is there already a ChatGPT Plugin out to summarise blog posts?
|
| tl/dr: "The key message in this text is a call for accountability
| following the decision to downgrade JeanHeyd Meneide from keynote
| speaker at RustConf due to disagreements with his blog post. The
| decision was perceived as disrespectful and cruel, lacking in
| appropriate organizational procedures. This has highlighted a
| larger systemic problem within the Rust organization and prompted
| the author's resignation. They call for a full investigation, a
| greater focus on accountability rather than diplomacy, protection
| of individuals from such unjust actions, and the implementation
| of safeguards to prevent similar incidents in the future."
| Twirrim wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. Lots to chew over.
|
| This bit stood out to me as the main thing that's probably at
| least rationally explainable:
|
| > Why did RustConf leadership go along with this decision and not
| protect the speaker? Why wasn't Rust leadership notified of the
| time period in which to change the decision?
|
| which feeds from:
|
| > A person in Rust leadership then, without taking a vote from
| the interim leadership group (remember, JeanHeyd was voted on and
| selected by Rust leadership), reached directly to RustConf
| leadership and asked to change the invitation.
|
| I can easily picture the RustConf leadership believing that the
| person from Rust leadership was either operating with full
| knowledge of the leadership, or would be communicating with them.
| revskill wrote:
| Emotional is cheap. Show me the algorithm (to resolve the whole
| process).
|
| More empathy is welcome (from the keynote person, too). Instead
| of giving up, let's try to improve things and avoid blaming
| instead. Blaming is not the best way to improve things, even if
| it hurt you.
|
| Input: Presentations on some topics from some people.
|
| Output: Fuzzy logic here right ?
| locusofself wrote:
| What's up with all the petty drama in the Rust community.. is it
| uniquely problematic?
| grt_thr wrote:
| You start a project that aims to be inclusive of everyone you
| end up with people who aren't accepted anywhere else.
|
| In short: gates are there for a reason.
| brgcx wrote:
| [flagged]
| Hamuko wrote:
| I'm having a hard time remembering any recent Python
| controversies. For Rust, I can very clearly remember the
| trademark shitshow and now there's this.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Guido was pissed over people being pissed over some syntax
| change a while ago, right?
|
| The Python community seems way more loose and hacky where
| as Rust's treat decisions like they risks derailing trains
| and anyone disagreeing want to derail trains and kill
| people.
| [deleted]
| kzrdude wrote:
| Rust was forged by a close-knit group since they were working
| at Mozilla, I think the culture has not been able to adapt to
| the growth since then.
|
| I don't at all mean that the people involved then are at fault,
| instead: It created structure where Rust community expects Rust
| leadership to be coherent, close-knit and well connected with
| the community. It also expects pretty top heavy governance.
|
| I think that is fragile and prone to personality drama when the
| project grows and the connection with community becomes
| impossible. A more loose organization would be better. Leaders
| at the top then don't expect they can steer the project much,
| teams are independent, the whole thing chugs on with loose
| governance.
|
| Modern corporate culture expects control, "control of the
| message" and control of everything. Here we have to release
| control, it's contrary to other goals of the open source
| project.
| Jare wrote:
| I think what you are seeing is a community with problems like
| any other community, but which has a significant amount of
| people who are willing to risk public visibility in order to
| fight and fix them.
|
| Other communities either try to actively hide problems, or
| handwave them as "boys will be boys _shrug_ ".
| adrianN wrote:
| I don't see evidence that there is more drama in the Rust
| community than in other communities. Posts with Rust in the
| title just have better chances to make it to the HN frontpage.
| weebull wrote:
| Sorry, but no. The leaders in the Rust community appear to be
| particularly tone deaf and on a power trip. I think the
| explosions going off in their faces are needed right now.
| depr wrote:
| What would the evidence you are looking for look like?
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Ruby certainly has had it's own trials and tribulations.
| Linux had that whole code of conduct fiasco, but it does seem
| that rust has those trumped when it comes to internal
| politics.
| jstx1 wrote:
| Similar things might happen in other communities but Rust
| drama seems much more visible, and this isn't because of HN
| bias - the foundation having weird guidelines, controversy
| around governance, prominent people in the community
| badmouthing other languages in bad faith, now this. It's
| quite ugly.
| josephg wrote:
| I also think part of it is rust's unique and complex
| governance model. Python, Go, C++, Ruby and Nodejs all had
| (mostly) a single leader who was in charge of the project
| for the first few years and who set the tone for the
| decisions which came after. If there was drama like this in
| Python, Guido would step in and that would have been that.
|
| Rust has no leader - and as far as I can tell, it never had
| a leader. Rust is a motley crew of people who disagree
| about what rust is and what it's trying to be fighting it
| out in unreadable GitHub issue comments.
|
| Who is responsible for the decisions that led to this
| drama? It sounds like it's some nameless committee that
| made bad choices here. But committees of people with mixed
| political skills don't average out to being an effective
| organisation.
| jakear wrote:
| How ironic that Rust should have the most problems
| arising as a result of shared ownership.
|
| Perhaps they should consider a model where the entity has
| a single logical owner and requests to change its state
| are made by passing messages to that owner...
| josephg wrote:
| I don't think its ironic. Its just that a shared
| ownership model is more complex than having a single
| person in charge, making decisions. And its a reasonably
| new idea - not many of us have the experience and skills
| we need to make it work. Inevitably, more mistakes
| happen.
|
| In many ways its sort of incredible and impressive how
| _well_ rust functions. There 's probably hundreds of
| people involved, from core compiler tooling, language
| design, cargo, crates.io, things like rustconf, steering
| and governing everything else. The fact that for the most
| part, it all works to make the language and ecosystem
| improve constantly is a pretty impressive feat.
| another_story wrote:
| I think op is making a rust joke more than anything else.
| jakear wrote:
| You understand a central tenant of Rust is forbidding
| shared ownership?
| josephg wrote:
| Oh, whooosh. Thankyou.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Still, how much simpler, more efficient, and less drama-
| filled would it be with fewer people, and particularly
| with a single person in charge? It's like the
| inefficiency of a prematurely distributed system full of
| microservices versus a monolith that runs just fine on a
| single modest machine.
| arp242 wrote:
| You're still going to need a team of people to do all
| sorts of $stuff with a BFDL, and when people get involved
| conflicts happen. Python has been without a BFDL for
| almost 5 years, and seems to be doing fine. I'm not so
| sure this is a huge factor.
|
| I think the bigger reason is that Rust tends to go to
| great lengths to avoid drama and overemphasises kindness
| a bit too much, which somewhat paradoxical seems to
| invite drama like this. Things that should be said are
| left unsaid, pressure builds up, resentment and
| suspicions linger.
|
| The entire Rust moderation team resigned a year ago,
| without offering a reason. Who knows what happened, but
| if three people all resign on principle then it sure
| gives off a certain smell, and it's not a good one. Being
| more open would have invited drama, yes, but now the
| lingering vibe remains "there is something fishy with the
| core team, but we don't know what". This sort of "there
| is something but we don't know what" seems to be a
| recurring theme in _RustEnders_. I 'm all in favour of
| the goals as such, but I'm a lot less sure that the
| methods actually achieve that.
|
| In addition: kindness _also_ means being forgiving of the
| unkindness of others (within reason, of course). People
| sometimes seem to forget that. Everyone is an asshole
| sometimes.
| pepa65 wrote:
| It illustrates the weakness of this model of governance,
| with no clear leader. Politics can tear a project apart,
| and even ill-intentioned actors that do not want the
| project to do well can infiltrate and cause divisions.
| When a leader/founder is the BDFL, they usually want the
| project to keep flourishing according to their original
| (or evolving) vision.
| bitwize wrote:
| 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 oversight. Major projects no
| longer follow the BDFL model, instead using incorporated
| entities like the Linux Foundation to direct development
| replete with boards and committees, leading to more "office
| politics" in how major decisions get made. A tradeoff for the
| greater continuity and community input a foundation provides.
|
| 2) Open source is more diverse than ever before, and becoming
| more so. More diversity means more perspectives coming to the
| table.
|
| 3) Fully 25% of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ. Among hackers that
| number is higher; it's likely a _majority_ of late Gen Y or Gen
| Z hackers are queer. And a significant fraction -- again,
| perhaps even larger than previous generations -- are
| neurodiverse. With these identities comes greater awareness of
| intersectional issues, and greater awareness of oneself as a
| member of certain classes. Pretending that this is irrelevant
| to software work -- hsistorically, predominantly a white male
| dominated pursuit -- is a fool 's game. There are going to be
| struggles and clashes as members of different classes assert
| their grievances and call each other out.
|
| In short, this kind of "drama" is a growing pain of open source
| becoming a real _movement_ that invites and incorporates
| diverse voices. We 'll muddle through it and move on.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Holy crap. How do I shield myself from this political
| bullshit and keep simply coding?
| s1mplicissimus wrote:
| meditating on the void does it for me :)
| esperent wrote:
| > Fully 25% of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ. Among hackers that
| number is higher; it's likely a majority of late Gen Y or Gen
| Z hackers are queer
|
| The figure is 20%, from on Gallup poll in the US and is
| unlikely to be a global figure.
|
| Jumping from that to a "majority of hackers" is quite a
| statement to throw out offhand with nothing to back it up.
| Kind of undermines the rest of your argument which was
| otherwise interesting.
|
| > a growing pain of open source becoming a real movement
|
| Oh wait, and there goes the rest of it. Diversity issues
| aside, open source has always been a real and important
| movement. It doesn't take having a diverse membership to make
| a movement important, and making that a requirement before
| you'll take something seriously is quite problematic,
| frankly. I say this as someone who is generally delighted by
| diversity and the growing numbers of people who feel safe to
| identify as LGBTQ.
| lamp987 wrote:
| >Fully 25% of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ.
|
| What does typing on a computer keyboard have to do with where
| you put your genitals? No one cares and most importantly, no
| one should care. Keep your sexual and romantic life to
| yourself in a programming community.
|
| >There are going to be struggles and clashes as members of
| different classes assert their grievances and call each other
| out.
|
| Thats a bad thing that must be nipped in the bud.
|
| >In short, this kind of "drama" is a growing pain of open
| source becoming a real movement that invites and incorporates
| diverse voices.
|
| More like its death convulsions.
| foldr wrote:
| >Keep your sexual and romantic life to yourself in a
| programming community.
|
| It's normal for people to mention their romantic partners
| in casual conversation. Straight people do this _all the
| time_. So it 's really really hard to interpret this
| request as anything other than a request for LGBTQ people
| specifically to hide the fact that they're LGBTQ from their
| coworkers.
|
| Examples of straight people doing this:
|
| > I have to leave early today to pick up my kids from
| school.
|
| > I'm taking pat/maternity leave because we're having a
| baby.
|
| > Can I bring my husband/wife to the team social?
| [deleted]
| sensanaty wrote:
| And normal (aka non-insufferable) people would just frame
| these pretty much in the same exact way?
|
| - Gay people can have children as well - Gay people will
| also take paternity/maternal leave? Refer to the above
| point for this one - This one is the one where people
| usually just substitute the word "wife/husband" with
| "partner"
|
| Again, none of this has _anything_ to do with software
| engineering or programming languages in the _slightest_ ,
| so why bring it up?
| foldr wrote:
| I think we're talking at cross purposes. My list isn't
| intended to be a list of things that _only_ straight
| people do. I'm in a gay marriage myself, so I'm perfectly
| aware that gay people can have spouses, children, etc. My
| point is exactly that gay people should be free to
| mention all the things on the list in just the same way
| that straight people regularly do (in programming
| communities and many other contexts).
|
| As for why people bring this stuff up, I think that
| reduces to the question of why people make small talk. I
| don't know, but they do.
| brabel wrote:
| > LGBTQ > neurodiverse > greater awareness of oneself as a
| member of certain classes.
|
| What the actual f*ck does all of that have anything to do
| with the topic being discussed?? Unbelievable! This is about
| a person being demoted by the Rust Project, going against the
| actual vote of "The Rust Project Leadership", with a slight
| reference to the race of the person in question being a
| potential factor - but without any convincing evidence, so
| it's hard to keep focus on that only - the main thing being
| already plenty bad enough (the lack of consideration for a
| person, the lack of respect for the democratic vote...). But
| going from this to what you're saying seems absolutely
| ridiculous and makes me question the sanity of anyone making
| such sort of connection.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| [dead]
| sensanaty wrote:
| > Fully 25% of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ...
|
| Good lord does it sound exhausting to be a dev in the US if
| this type of boring unimportant crap occupied peoples minds
| so heavily
| lionkor wrote:
| There is and always has been a problem parallel to this:
| People who are part of a group they believe to be
| fundamentally segregated and discriminated against are much
| more likely to let this influence their judgement.
|
| A promotion of someone else quickly becomes favoritism, and a
| demotion or reassignment (or rescheduling) quickly becomes
| discrimination, even if those decisions were made on a
| different basis.
|
| A lot of these kinds of public outcries are people of a
| minority group misunderstanding why some decision was made.
| Of course there is discrimination, but not as much as some
| people believe. Most people, in my experience, just dont
| think too much about skin color, religion, sexuality, or
| anything, of their employees, speakers, and so on.
|
| As you said, a huge amount of the population, especially in
| tech, are LGBTQ+ or similar. Its incredibly difficult to do
| anything that really discriminates, because its not a
| minority group anymore. Even a very large number of "white
| male" tech people are LGBT, they just may not care to tell
| you.
| cinntaile wrote:
| You are wrongfully framing him as someone taking advantage
| of his minority "status". If you read the explanation by
| Jeanheyd Meneide himself you will see that it's not about
| that at all.
|
| https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
| foldr wrote:
| >A lot of these kinds of public outcries are people of a
| minority group misunderstanding why some decision was made.
| Of course there is discrimination, but not as much as some
| people believe.
|
| It's easy to miss the discrimination when you're not a
| member of the affected group.
| fsociety wrote:
| Unfortunately being in the position of, "I don't see color"
| or "I don't care about your sexuality" might work in an
| ideal world but leads to more inequality in the real world.
|
| For example, LGBTQ are in a war with a government party who
| want to put laws in place which directly threaten them. Not
| giving a shit about them makes it easier for said
| government party to eradicate them from their country.
| Sounds hyperbolic but some folks are on a hell-bent
| ideological mission against non-straight/non-cis/non-
| conforming people.
|
| So no, it is still easy to discriminate against non-white
| males in tech groups. It is also easy to discriminate
| against, but in less proportion, against white males in
| tech groups. Real life is messy.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| [flagged]
| orangetuba wrote:
| 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.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Is it a case of people repeatedly talking about grand
| principles that you never felt were actually naturally followed
| ?
| flumpcakes wrote:
| I agree. I've been scolded before by saying how unwelcoming the
| "Rust community" can be, and everyone comes out of the woodwork
| to say how inclusive it is. They're not the same thing. All of
| this is childish drama, around a _programming language_.
| Strange...
| revelio wrote:
| 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.
| 4RealFreedom wrote:
| 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.
| infamouscow wrote:
| The Rust(tm) community is only welcoming and inclusive to those
| that completely agree with everything their monoculture
| believes. Any deviation will paint you as a heretic worthy of
| being condemned or burned at the stake like a witch.
| arp242 wrote:
| I've been to plenty of conferences over the years, and I never
| really knew who was a "keynote speaker" or "only" a "speaker".
| Does anyone pay attention to this?
|
| You give a talk. People show up. They clap at the end. Does it
| really matter what some title on some conference website is? The
| communication was perhaps a bit more confusing and hectic than it
| should have been, but does that really matter? Is that really a
| big deal?
|
| I don't even understand why anyone would overly care about this
| in the first place, and now it's also an example of systemic bias
| against black people, "cruel", and "heartless"?
|
| If the talk had been outright cancelled: sure, what would have
| been a right dick move. But from what I can see all that happened
| is that the "status" (that I don't think many pay attention to)
| got "downgraded" and (maybe) moved to a different timeslot. I'm
| just confused why this would spark such strong reactions.
| edem wrote:
| woke people cannot react in any other way. whatever you do
| you'll get some sort of knee jerk reaction. it is best to just
| ignore it and move on
| JdeBP wrote:
| In academia, yes. To some people these details are important
| and matter. They have professional and sometimes even personal
| impacts.
| TobyTheDog123 wrote:
| I'd love to hear from someone who could outline the distinction
| between the two.
|
| I could certainly believe that it means the difference between
| the amount of attendees, length of presentation, venue, etc
| etc. In those cases, it's quite a big deal and quite the dick
| move, especially given the seemingly unilateral process to
| "downgrade" the presentation.
| weebull wrote:
| Headliner Vs support band
| arp242 wrote:
| It's possible, but those weren't mentioned unless I missed
| something. The _keynote_ was "start of the day, shared slot
| with somebody else, 30 minutes".[1] No mention of different
| length after the change, but I would assume it will mean a
| different timeslot.
|
| I think what happened is just the regular chaos, hub-hub, and
| disagreements that's involved with organising these things;
| since JeanHeyd himself already indicated he wasn't sure he
| wanted to give keynote the organisers probably figured it
| didn't matter much to him. Classic expectation mismatch. For
| reasons that are not entirely clear to me JeanHeyd assumed
| "somebody is pulling very weird strings behind the scenes",
| "shadowy decisions that are non-transparent", and "vindictive
| behavior". The best explanation I can come up with for that
| is that this is not so much about this talk, but rather
| expressing general unhappiness with the Rust leadership, and
| this is merely the "the final straw". But who knows...
|
| [1]: https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-
| rustconf-2023
| Aeolun wrote:
| > just the regular chaos, hub-hub, and disagreements that's
| involved with organising these things
|
| I dunno about you, but when I'm organizing these things the
| subject matter experts that you invite to take part are
| more important than the paying guests.
|
| I would absolutely not invite them until I was 100% certain
| they'd have a spot. If something goes wrong there, it'd be
| either an extensive excuse or simply 3 keynotes.
| byroot wrote:
| It depends from conference to conference, but generally
| speaking "keynote" means: - The very first or
| very last talk of the day. - A larger time slot,
| looking at the Rustconf 2022 schedule, keynotes are 45
| minutes long, regular talks 30 minutes.
| https://2022.rustconf.com/schedule - The speaker is
| featured much more prominently in the promotional materials.
| - If the conference has multiple tracks, no other talk are
| scheduled at the same time than keynotes. It's assumed all
| conference attendees will hear the keynote.
| twic wrote:
| I suspect it's a big deal to people who speak at conferences,
| and not a big deal to people who don't. Court intrigue,
| essentially.
| jxf wrote:
| 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 ceremony and not
| the reception or party.
|
| In short, it's hard not to feel like you just got baited and
| switched, even if the withdrawal is for a good reason. "But
| you'll still be at the ceremony!" isn't a good argument because
| that wasn't the original invitation, and because you're putting
| them in a very uncomfortable position having to decide whether
| to continue to go or not.
|
| For context, I've spoken at over 100 conference events. There
| are very significant differences in terms of the keynote
| speakers and regular speakers -- generally in compensation,
| status, time, and prominence, at least for conferences that are
| larger than community events. Not all of these may not be
| obvious to attendees, but overall it's a fairly serious snub to
| pull the rug out from under someone like this.
| ghusto wrote:
| > The equivalent situation is something like being warmly
| invited to a wedding > ... > Later, you're told you can only
| come to the ceremony and not the reception or party For
| context, I've spoken at over 100 conference events.
|
| Is it though? I can tell you from an audience point of view
| it almost certainly isn't. Nobody cares very much what
| "status, time, and prominence" your talk has. Which leads me
| to ...
|
| > There are very significant differences in terms of the
| keynote speakers and regular speakers -- generally in
| compensation, status, time, and prominence
|
| So it's an ego thing?
|
| Just give the talk, forego whatever glory you get from it.
| jxf wrote:
| > So it's an ego thing?
|
| It's a respect thing. It costs time and money to produce
| and give a talk.
|
| That very often isn't visible to the audience. It takes
| weeks of dedicated preparation to deliver a high-quality
| keynote talk, and people have day jobs and other
| obligations. If they're going to travel hundreds or
| thousands of miles and now have to pay for the privilege,
| they might want to not be treated as disposable.
|
| That doesn't seem like too much to ask.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Why not just make all talks keynotes then. Change the
| label and everyone gets respect.
| cookieperson wrote:
| People often get time off of work or school to be honored
| with formal talking gigs. IE your boss will let you off
| the hook to prepare for it because it makes your
| company/school look good. It'd be pretty embarrassing to
| have to explain to your boss or your PI that "oops I'm no
| longer a key note speaker"
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Man, you really don't understand social dynamics do you?
|
| Status, credibility and respect are real and tend to matter
| a lot.
|
| It's not "an ego thing".
| Aeolun wrote:
| > Is it though?
|
| It's like being center stage on the PR poster for the movie
| and then only being an extra.
|
| Like, being invited to perform on the main stage of the
| concert with your band, and then later being told you'll
| have to perform from side stage 3 instead.
|
| The audience is confused, and the whole thing is just
| disrespectful, yeah.
|
| The thing itself is not the problem, performing on stage 3
| by itself would be fine. It's the disrespect and
| incompetence implied by the switch from one to the other.
| arp242 wrote:
| 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 organisers are essentially being called a bunch
| of cruel racist assholes here, all without any real evidence.
| I bet that's fun after an honest mistake, miscommunication,
| or mismatch of expectations. If we want to talk empathy then
| no is coming off well here.
| sanderjd wrote:
| This goes both ways though? The organizers also turned this
| into a big drama and could have instead chosen to just
| chill and accept there was going to be a keynote some of
| them didn't love.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| On an object level it's not a big deal, but you're not
| thinking about it with the correct framing.
|
| Being invited as a keynote speaker lends you credibility
| and status. It means you have been acknowledged as someone
| worthy of giving a keynote. You may not care about this,
| but other people do.
|
| To downgrade someone from a keynote speaker to regular
| speaker is extremely disrespectful. Especially someone that
| you _invited_.
|
| It makes it seem like you are toying with this person, and
| based on JT's account someone on the Rust team _was_ toying
| with JeanHeyd because they went behind the rest of the team
| 's back to downgrade his talk.
|
| It's like giving a child a toy then snatching it back. It's
| just cruel. Whether it was a mistake or not doesn't change
| that.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I mean, they haven't re-invited him to the event have they?
| Kind of hard to see how it could be anything like a
| mistake.
|
| Of course you can just not care and let people walk all
| over you every single time, but that's not a healthy
| strategy either.
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| > It's not like they lost their job or something; it's just
| a 2-day event.
|
| One wrinkle I haven't seen called out is whether this was a
| paid speaking event (I assume it was) and if the demotion
| came with a part cut. If there was a pay cut that pretty
| shitty IMO, and does get a bit closer to losing ones job.
| [deleted]
| jxf wrote:
| > 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.
| arp242 wrote:
| Just being "up close" doesn't mean your perspective is
| objective truth, or even reasonable. If anything, quite
| the opposite. The author of this post seems emotionally
| invested and may very well be ascribing motives to people
| that simply don't exist, and/or may have a coloured view
| of events.
| Veen wrote:
| It's a very clearly disgruntled senior member of the
| community who has just ragequit, following which they
| wrote a lament about their broken heart and their copious
| weeping over the intolerable cruelty of a withdrawn
| keynote invitation. It might be worth asking for a bit of
| evidence of their claims, given their penchant for
| melodramatic overstatement.
| lordfrito wrote:
| Perfect summary of what happened here. There's a million
| stories like this out there. Not sure why I should care
| about this one.
|
| Seems a very immature way of dealing with things. Recent
| phenomenon or am I just becoming callous in my old age?
| bigiain wrote:
| > It's a very clearly disgruntled senior member of the
| community who has just ragequit
|
| That's leaving out the important context that it's just
| the latest in a string of senior members in that
| community who have been disgruntled enough to quit. The
| entire moderation team quit all at the same time. Since
| then the leadership team has been "an interim
| leadership".
|
| Rust governance has been an ongoing shitshow for at least
| several years.
|
| As someone who's not directly affected since I stay well
| out of "the community" I'm less concerned about
| "community drama", but as someone who makes (and will be
| held responsible for) long term strategic technical
| decisions for my company I can't help but wonder if I
| want to hitch my company (and my reputation) to a
| language run by the sort of people who've let this drama
| fester for so long. Is some language feature going to be
| voted on, implemented, publicised, become a critical
| dependency in my codebase - only to get rugpulled by some
| anonymous core team member like this keynote speaker? I
| mean, probably not, but Rust leadership sure as hell
| haven't done anything to earn my trust and seem to
| actively be working toward eroding it. In ways that I've
| never even had to question to myself about the leadership
| of Perl or Python, or even Java.
| geodel wrote:
| Well other languages are just programing languages, they
| are not virtuous like Rust. And I am not just overstating
| it. In so many contexts Rust people come swinging at
| whoever not using or _competing_ with Rust, are not just
| making bad technical choice (still debatable) but morally
| lacking.
| aranke wrote:
| Can we avoid using a gun analogy here?
|
| Nobody involved has died.
| bckr wrote:
| It's just an expansion of the "smoking gun" idiom.
| weebull wrote:
| Giving a keynote is being honoured by the event organisers.
| You've been specifically invited to talk. You're the headliner
| of the event. It may not matter to you as a listener, but I
| expect it would matter to you if you were asked to give such a
| talk.
|
| To have that taken away because you voiced a technical opinion
| some people didn't agree with is petty and childish. It wasn't
| even a political opinion, and it was public before he was voted
| on and invited.
| psychphysic wrote:
| This reasoning makes no sense. If keynote and a regular talk
| are not meaningfully different why did Rust leadership switch
| it?
|
| If it's purely ego then there are even more serious concerns if
| ego dominants an entire conference organising committee then
| withdrawal was the only reasonable option.
|
| For the uninitiated, a keynote sets a theme and tone for a
| series of talks.
|
| Usually it's less technical and more personal than later talks.
| Explaining the significance of the topic that will be discussed
| in upcoming talks.
| OJFord wrote:
| You've been to more than me then so what am I talking about,
| but I always understood it to be the _one_ talk given to kick
| things off or maybe conclude, i.e. nothing else is going on at
| the same time, 'everyone' is listening (or else skipping it).
|
| Maybe it's just been watered down to
| 'featured'/'sponsored'/'recommended' talk? I haven't been aware
| of that.
| arp242 wrote:
| It depends on the conference; sometimes it's something like
| "creator of the language shares their vision for the next
| five years", other times it's "talk from the most famous
| person we could book", and sometimes just "the talk we liked
| best from a relatively unknown person". If there are multiple
| tracks then sometimes the keynote will be the only talk for
| the timeslot, other times it's not.
|
| Looking at the schedule for this conference, it seems that
| there's just a single track and all talks are 30 minutes. I
| wouldn't expect any substantial changes beyond a different
| timeslot and title.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| At the very least I would expect a keynote to be more
| inspiring, interesting, groundbreaking and possibly a little
| less technical/routine. It would be a different speech with a
| different preparation. So there is that. Plus bragging rights
| on CV and what people think of you and how many people turn up,
| how big the hall is etc. I think I would be annoyed to be
| downgraded.
| samastur wrote:
| I haven't been to a conference in years because of COVID, but
| I've been to plenty mainly web and Python related before.
|
| Almost all of them had keynote speakers, who received a
| prominent spot, usually in the morning and on multi-tier
| conferences the only talk scheduled at that time slot. Based on
| content of most of those talks the expectation was to take a
| wider or deeper or just different look at our fields and not
| mainly present a smaller idea or solution.
|
| But it also doesn't matter if you or I personally do or don't
| care about distinction. There is one made clearly and as soon
| as it is made, there is an implicit promotion or demotion
| depending on which way a person is being moved and one should
| have very good reasons to demote anyone publicly as they did
| here.
| arp242 wrote:
| 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 to me anyway.
|
| Or to put it this way: if it was me I probably would have
| been a bit disappointed, but I would also assume that's just
| the chaos of things.
|
| But like I said in my other comment: I suspect this is really
| about general dissatisfaction with the Rust team, and that
| this is merely the final straw:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36102292
| nailer wrote:
| > "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 article is not claiming that
| downgrading the speaker was racism.
| arp242 wrote:
| 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.
| nailer wrote:
| Yep I think we see it pretty similarly regarding the
| first paragraph.
|
| Re the vindictive part: I read it as someone having a
| personal issue with JeanHeyd and downgrading him as
| punishment.
| glogla wrote:
| It is funny because at least for me personally, it is the
| other way around.
|
| I am most interested in deeper technical talks (or cool
| lightning talks that broaden my horizons) and keynotes often
| feel like highlevel generic talks that are very skippable -
| often aimed at CTOs and not engineers. Also, "prominent spot
| in the morning" is exactly the opposite for me as well,
| because conferences are all about networking and evening
| networking means hangover ...
| irjustin wrote:
| In that sense I loved the Ruby conferences where the
| keynote was commonly matz or tenderlove talking about some
| crazy deep problem ruby was tackling about memory, jit, or
| speed tradeoffs.
|
| Sadly haven't been to one in years since they haven't come
| back to SG
| rurban wrote:
| Usually a keynote speaker is invited, and gets his travel and
| hotel costs reimbursed. Without reimbursement you usually think
| twice if you visit a conference or not. And I never heard of
| downgrading a speaker before, even if I heard of plenty of
| conference drama before.
| cookieperson wrote:
| I haven't and I've followed various academic fields for 10
| yrs or so.
| whinvik wrote:
| 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 declining the talk was the correct thing to do and
| raising the lack of due process is also the correct thing to
| do.
| fwungy wrote:
| Its a CV brag. It means you're a big shot if you're giving
| the keynote at a top conference. Most people never do that so
| it's a big deal.
|
| It grants high credibility in the outside world which gets
| you invited to additional opportunities.
| jasmer wrote:
| 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 ultimately very personal.
|
| There is a legit grievance here, but it's overstated.
|
| Most gripes have a kernel of truth, the issue is to match up
| the size of the truth, with the size of the kernel.
| [deleted]
| viraptor wrote:
| > Nobody cares but the speaker themselves.
|
| You're not speaking for everyone. I care about the Rust
| leadership behaving properly for example, because issues
| like this may be a sign of other problems with respecting
| the community. And I would like to trust them to resolve
| issues fairly and quickly since I will rely on the
| project's progress in the future and don't want people
| leaving because of mishandling social issues.
| jasmer wrote:
| Yes, we care that people behave themselves, we're
| referring to 'who cares' about whether the nature of a
| talk being 'keynote speaker or not'.
|
| If Jim Smith is keynote, great, if they're in a
| conference talk, great, nobody is going to fathom one way
| or another but the speaker themselves.
| jemmyw wrote:
| If nobody cared then why did someone make such a big deal
| out of the talk making them uncomfortable and therefore
| needing to downgrade it. It obviously did matter to more
| than just the speaker.
| IlliOnato wrote:
| A regular slap in the face is not doing you any physical harm.
| If anything, it may even improve your blood circulation. So, if
| you saw someone slapped in the face, would you be confused "why
| this would spark such strong reactions"?..
| flagrant_taco wrote:
| I did that would have to depend on what the strong reactions
| were in that case. There are reactions to someone getting
| slapped in the face that I would consider to be
| overreactions.
| sanderjd wrote:
| It's funny, I have this same "who cares?" prior about it being
| a keynote, but draw the opposite conclusion. A simple
| disclaimer that the idea's appearance in a keynote doesn't
| imply that it will land in the language would have sufficed.
| It's just a talk, it's fine.
| auggierose wrote:
| You get an invite to a conference as a keynote speaker, which
| is then rescinded, for no good reason even? That's a big deal.
| I don't know about "heartless" and all that emotional stuff,
| it's just plain disrespectful.
|
| You make up your mind about that kind of stuff BEFORE the
| invitation.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| 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".
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| 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.
| klabb3 wrote:
| And an std lib that has all you need. And tooling that
| evolves in a direction of usefulness, not because it's
| technically challenging.
| bckr wrote:
| This comment feels like it could be from the show Silicon
| Valley, in a good way.
| brazzy wrote:
| >a compiler and syntax which just screams drama
|
| A _what_ now?
| sidlls wrote:
| The Rust community (in aggregate; I'd hope I wouldn't need to
| state the obvious that it doesn't apply to all individuals,
| but...Rust community) fosters this sort of melodrama.
|
| There is a core of extremely zealous "Rust wins all the things"
| types who don't stop at advocating for a language on its
| technical merits: they have to belittle and berate _users_ of
| other languages because their choice (or not: employment is
| what it is) isn 't "correct." The Rust community has (a well
| deserved, in my opinion) reputation.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Its just so odd to me. It used to be that a language was like
| an impartial technology that could be evaluated. Back in the
| day would anybody ever say "wow those C++ people are noxious,
| I'm not going to use objects".
| andrewflnr wrote:
| > It used to be that a language was like an impartial
| technology that could be evaluated.
|
| In the era of open source and package managers, this can
| only be an illusion. It's sort of possible to ignore the
| community, but if nothing else it will affect the volume
| and quality of packages available for you. That said, you
| can keep it pretty minimal, you don't really need to
| interact beyond reading docs and downloading packages.
| revelio wrote:
| Sadly yes, it's not a new thing. Lisp is a good example of
| an old language that attracted a very particular community
| around it that did put some people off.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Guess, now that I think about it, Python and the 'white'
| spaces was kind of drama. But think it was still about
| technical merits, like do you prefer that style or not,
| don't remember the 'community' being melodramatic.
| pitaj wrote:
| > they have to belittle and berate users of other languages
| because their choice (or not: employment is what it is) isn't
| "correct."
|
| I keep hearing people claim this to be the case, but I've
| never seen this behavior as described in the wild - I only
| see the complaints about it.
|
| Yes, Rustaceans will evangelize and whatnot but I don't see
| the belittling or berating.
| sidlls wrote:
| Just search "rust" in HN comments (or on Reddit, or pretty
| much anywhere you see someone asking questions likely to
| invoke discussion about language choice): you'll find
| _plenty_.
| aogaili wrote:
| Rust is not a humnan, you are dealing with humans, and humans are
| flawed, accept it and protect what you care about.
| wirrbel wrote:
| I would have expected such a resignation after two weeks time to
| see whether the organization would improve their decision making
| process
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Perhaps the person has already seen enough to decide this was
| the last straw.
| wirrbel wrote:
| valid
| swiftcoder wrote:
| You are maybe missing the context that the organisation is
| already many months deep into attempting to improve their
| decision making process
| vpastore wrote:
| [flagged]
| pyrelight wrote:
| Even if none of this was rooted in retribution or racism or
| unilateral decision making, the fact that a group representing
| some of the brightest developers working today did not have the
| foresight to see how this would play out in today's social
| climate, is too bad.
|
| Event organizers need someone who can think through all the
| angles of decisions made and how it affects attendees and the
| communities being represented. The fact that a group made up of
| logical thinkers couldn't foresee this (or maybe they did and
| just don't care), is sad.
| [deleted]
| da39a3ee wrote:
| The article notably avoided the topic of WHY the technical talk
| was objected to.
|
| Are we to surmise that some people in the Rust leadership felt
| that the speaker was invited because of their race/skin color,
| and objected on this basis?
|
| Or is it less dramatic than that -- simply that some people in
| leadership felt that the technical content just wasn't good
| enough, and the author of the article we're reading can't bear
| someone being judged on technical merit?
|
| Either way, to put it in simple terms, I think we're reading an
| article from someone on the woke/progressive side complaining
| about the actions of the other side, right?
|
| Perhaps it's actually this article (a complaining article with
| bizarre overly emotional language) which is evidence of problems
| with Rust's leadership community and the decision being
| complained about was reasonable?
| [deleted]
| mtzet wrote:
| > as best as I understand it, because of the content of
| JeanHeyd's blog post on reflection in Rust.
|
| I'm having trouble finding it. Can anyone link this post?
| krasin wrote:
| I believe, this is it: https://soasis.org/posts/a-mirror-for-
| rust-a-plan-for-generi...
| mtzet wrote:
| Thanks!
| Grum9 wrote:
| posted a day or so ago and was flagged, I think it was this
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36091242
| forty wrote:
| If they don't have bigger problems than that, I'd say it seems to
| be a pretty nice community...
| fndex wrote:
| Oh, boy... they do have bigger problems than that.
| jenadine wrote:
| 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.
| depr wrote:
| If there are malicious actors, by "acting professionally"
| (probably meaning to ignore your emotions) you are allowing
| those who are malicious, and do not act professionally, to
| continue doing that.
|
| Others acting professionally is the best outcome for those who
| do not do so.
| dumpster_fire wrote:
| 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 organization, lack of cohesion, and
| outright disrespect of your professional time. You may choose
| to accept that slap to your face (signaling that it's okay to
| do that to you), but there's nothing unprofessional about
| rejecting the attendance and rightfully criticizing the
| organizers for their rudeness.
| klabb3 wrote:
| 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.
| vpastore wrote:
| I hope you cried, left your field forever and wrote 5 blogpost
| where you whine about it and reposted on every possibile social
| platform because that's seems to be the right way to handle it
| vikramkr wrote:
| I think it would have also been perfectly professional to
| decline in that case, since it's clearly poor planning on the
| part of the folks organizing the talk. And demoting the keynote
| speaker is even worse - especially when in this instance
| something like scheduling doesn't seem to be the excuse
| cookieperson wrote:
| It is always professional to remove yourself from
| unprofessional situations.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| Was it a talk that you submitted on your own choice, or were
| you asked to give the original talk? In this case, the speaker
| was asked to keynote-speak, when they had not planned on doing
| so.
| _joel wrote:
| How long was the talk you originally wrote, perhaps they
| thought there wasn't enough content for a full one (playing
| advocate)?
| unixhero wrote:
| I see. The proposed keynote made it about identity politics. I am
| going to side with the Rust Board on this one.
|
| To me this was a great and necessary decision.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| No it didn't, what are you talking about? It was a strictly
| technical keynote
| unixhero wrote:
| Thank you for reaching out. This is what I am talking about:
|
| > "It was JeanHeyd who called Rust out for having no Black
| representation among Rust conference speakers."
| aigoochamna wrote:
| I can try to summarize my understanding of events.
| 1. Dude gets invited to do a keynote. 2. Dude gets his
| keynote invite withdrawn because some members of the rust team
| were "uncomfortable" with the content of dude's blog. The content
| which was technical and not of the standard Twitter/cancellation
| variety. 3. Second Dude leaves rust leadership because he
| seen how the rust community treated first dude.
|
| Totally understandable. Why waste more time with a community that
| can't discuss things critically even if they go against many
| ideas of the tech in question? Maybe a bit of an over reaction,
| but it's likely he knew a lot more of the community and what it's
| really like. This was likely the last straw.
|
| Alternatively, look at the Go community and leadership. The Go
| team discussed generics and eventually implemented them although
| leadership and the community was often against it. They certainly
| didn't cancel keynotes or speakers that were pro-generics.
| edem wrote:
| why did the they have discomfort? is it because of reflection of
| is it because he was a black dude? does someone know the answer?
| raphyjake wrote:
| Mostly because of Reflection. The "black dude", who was already
| featured a bunch of times on HN and works on C/C++ (we'll have
| #embed thanks to him) was invited as keynote speaker (start of
| the day).
|
| Now, since he was working on his own rust compile time
| reflection framework/proposal/vision, he decided to talk about
| that. Made it clear immediately to anyone he interacted with,
| and made clear that the whole idea was his own and doesn't
| reflect any opinion of the language team/etc.
|
| Someone probably felt like making this a keynote talk would
| give the impression that his compile time reflection was
| actually going to be implemented. So after a week or so someone
| awkwardly decided the talk wasn't going to be a keynote, just a
| regular talk. After this, JeanHeid simply refused to attend
| RustConf at all: no one was accountable, no one really told
| JeanHeid they had a problem with his talk up until later, it
| wasn't clear if the decision came from RustConf organizers or
| Rust foundation, blah blah.
|
| On the racism part, I can't say it's entirely irrelevant. You
| only see white rich dudes complaining about "all the woke stuff
| and the inclusivity". The fact that "no rustconf keynote
| speaker has ever been black" isn't really shocking to me, but
| simply because I don't see "being a keynote speaker" as
| something relevant. But when you could've been the "first black
| keynote speaker at rustconf" and then suddenly someone changes
| his mind about it, it's probably going to ring some bells if
| you've faced systematic discrimination for your whole life.
| julienfr112 wrote:
| It looks like JeanHeyd is unwittingly used as a weapon in a
| conflict internal to the Rust leadership. It look to me as an
| escalation of the conflict : - First, a power move to invite
| someone outside of the community that have a strong point of view
| on a technical subject. As any organisation, you have to make
| move to make your agenda move forward. - Second, an escalation
| with the uninvite. Not polite, but asserts the power you have
| within the organisation. - Third, a resignation with a strong
| post that is another level of conflict.
|
| What will happen next ?
| owenmarshall wrote:
| I'm glad someone else had this read.
|
| I do not want to pass judgment on either side or the claims
| made, but simply note this feels awfully similar to the way
| I've seen people treated at big corporate jobs when rival
| senior leaders go to war.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| This is certainly strangely phrased. The version I got from
| another member was that the content of the talk was to be about a
| proposed feature that may not actually end up in Rust (in my view
| it _likely_ would not), and having that be the keynote talk would
| imply to a lot of people that it _would_ end up in Rust and put
| the language in an uncomfortable position where something other
| than the feature 's merit would be pushing for its inclusion.
| Moving the talk away from being a centerpiece, in such a case,
| _makes sense_ , and I have no idea whether this counts as poorly
| handled or not but saying it _shouldn 't have happened at all_
| seems a bit naive to me.
| tssva wrote:
| That may be completely true and a justifiable reason to change
| the decision, but it also is largely irrelevant. Preferably
| such concerns should have been raised prior to the vote. If
| they were and the vote was still to issue the invitation then
| that should have been the end of it. If it wasn't raised prior
| to the vote such concerns should have been brought back to the
| voting body and a re-vote taken. The decision of that vote
| should have them been the final word. Instead the decision of
| the voting body was subverted. That is the main issue.
| [deleted]
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I would _love_ if every language conference included a segment
| dedicated to "language ideas" where the expectation is that
| these ideas are unlikely to land but are fruitful to explore.
| flerovium wrote:
| > something other than the feature's merit would be pushing for
| its inclusion
|
| What do you mean?
| viraptor wrote:
| > and having that be the keynote talk would imply to a lot of
| people that it would end up in Rust and put the language in an
| uncomfortable position
|
| People inviting the author knew about the content and the
| author double checked if they're ok with that direction. This
| wasn't a surprise or something missed. The original vote was
| done by enough people who can make the decisions.
| matklad wrote:
| There are two completely orthogonal questions here:
|
| - Is the content of the talk suitable for a keynote?
|
| - Given that the talk _was_ accepted as a keynote, is it ok for
| the organizers to change their mind and unilaterally demote the
| talk?
|
| https://hackmd.io/mwCWfJpIT024vBYvKeHCtw?view gives an informed
| perspective on the second question.
| DocSavage wrote:
| Agree. They should've allowed for more discussion before
| sending invitations and more effort should've been made to come
| to a mutually beneficial solution. But going from an invited
| keynote (great honor) to an invited talk (honor) is not what I
| would call a deliberate attempt to "disgrace one of the experts
| in my field." It's a single track conference where the speaker
| would be heard by all attendees and could've championed his
| ideas to the larger Rust community.
| firstlink wrote:
| If you had taken 2 seconds to look up the history of this, you
| would find that the person who was going to give the keynote
| already brought up these concerns with rust leadership and was
| cleared to talk on the topic anyways.
| Havoc wrote:
| With this and the trademark drama it sure looks like leadership
| could do with a change of guards
| meindnoch wrote:
| This!
|
| Preferably at least 50% women.
| maniflames wrote:
| They're working on it. RFC: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfc-
| leadership-council
| cashsterling wrote:
| This behavior is the Rust leadership team is completely juvenile.
| Y'all need to grow up.
|
| Disagreement in technical development is highly valuable...
| alternative points of view should be prized and inspected, not
| ostracized. Quashing alternate views and opinions is a sign of a
| small intellect and/or a narcissistic personality disorder.
|
| For the good of the Rust community, there needs to be some
| transparency on who exactly did what and those people who
| deviated from Rust leadership rules need to apologize. It will
| probably be very uncomfortable for those individuals, but too
| bad... get over yourselves... you screwed up... you should try to
| make it right.
|
| There is probably no salvaging this current situation, but a
| description of what happened, mistakes made, and an authentic
| apology would go a long way. If folks can't own their mistakes,
| they need to evaluate their character and consider stepping
| aside... although, if folks don't understand what they did was
| wrong, they are probably incapable of real introspection (see
| comment above about narcissistic personality disorder).
|
| To those Rust leaders who felt uncomfortable with Keynote
| speaker's probable topics of address... and decided it was okay
| to let your discomfort lead to this disgraceful outcome... shame
| on you. You need to take a good look in the mirror and learn some
| scientific history (remember, it's computer SCIENCE): scientist
| who use politics to quash alternate theories and views almost
| always acted from narcissism and almost always harmed scientific
| progress. Your actions are probably harming Rust.
| artyom wrote:
| Jeez, I miss the days of strong open source leadership.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2lhwb_OckQ
| tomaaron wrote:
| From my observations rustis are very much about drama. Reminds me
| also of the drama of Actix web. There's also a video about it:
| https://youtu.be/enLUX1TtNyE Better Go :)
| meindnoch wrote:
| Rust could be a nice language if it wasn't for its insufferable
| "community".
| cookieperson wrote:
| The rust community is great, but definitely avoid the power
| structures. Thats the same for any niche programming language
| by the way. That said rust does seem to have a lot of public
| drama, the whole team or something quit last year, I don't
| remember. Just remember OSS is a game of trying to get people
| to do a lot of work for zero compensation beyond social
| recognition or the fun of doing things... There's going to be a
| lot of slimy stuff around the organizations behind that.
| troad wrote:
| 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_
| tjwherw2342 wrote:
| [flagged]
| chclt wrote:
| People seem to conflate two things in this discussion:
| interpersonal issues (which are valid to talk about) and
| technical disagreements. Conflating these two can only lead to
| drama and reflects really poorly on the participants. Come on
| aren't we all adults here?!
| bsenftner wrote:
| This continual tech industry drama, doesn't matter if one is
| talking Rust, Go, Node, or pretty much anything, technology
| industry members will treat their personal situations and
| perspectives as litanies of outrageous violations of their
| integrity.
|
| Fact of the matter: our entire industry is never taught how to
| professionally communicate, and these constant drama fests are
| the manifestation of immature communication skills, across the
| board, our entire industry.
| wyldfire wrote:
| I wonder if Rust would be better off with a BDFL. It sounds like
| the antithesis of some of the governing goals that were
| established but perhaps it would deliver some consistency.
| slackfan wrote:
| A member of the rust committe (Uber for C) well known for their
| histryonics makes a hystrionic blogpost about another rust
| community member acting hystrionic. The comments divide into two
| camps among US political lines and spend the rest of the time
| debating woke culture. No tech is discussed.
| Roark66 wrote:
| I was with you until this part: >It was JeanHeyd who called Rust
| out for having no Black representation among Rust conference
| speakers. Rightly so, as both the Rust organization and the
| conferences had little to no Black representation.
|
| Am I the only one that considers such arbitrary "diversity
| enforcement policy" horribly racist?
|
| No organisation should be "called out for a lack of - insert-
| race-here- representation unless that organisation is in fact
| discriminatory. No one should be discouraged, relegated, skipped
| for mentoring or removed from a membership or a leadership role
| in an organisation because that person is the wrong race.
| Regardless of the reason why you feel that race is wrong. Calling
| out a group "for lack of Black representation" is basically
| telling every single non-Black member of that group they are less
| valuable because of the color of their skin.
|
| People are not exchangeable units whose defining feature is the
| color of their skin. How can intelligent people not see this kind
| of thinking leads to the worst of social divisions?
|
| Personally, I was with the author until that quote. If I was a
| member of that organisation I too would not be OK being
| represented by a person that makes such horribly offensive
| personal opinions known regardless of their technical expertise.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| I don't think it's racist, but I do think it's tunnel vision
| and not taking into context in the greater context of society.
| There is obviously and undeniably a paucity of black people in
| STEM. So yeah, I think that having someone get a +1 for being a
| POC in a group of several +1's in choosing something like a
| keynote speaker. It's a chicken-and-egg problem in STEM. It
| should never be the sole determination, but if you're down to
| keynote speaker of basically identically talented keynotes,
| then being a non-white person can be that +1 to make a
| decision. Fairness does not always equate to exactly the same
| treatment
| dagmx wrote:
| Out of curiosity, are you a minority?
|
| Have you ever been part of a community where you can see there
| are minorities of groups you belong to that are overlooked?
|
| Do you really believe that in a very wide community there's no
| minorities that would fit the bill?
|
| Let me flip your quote back on you: how can intelligent people
| still believe in unbiased meritocracy being the default? Do you
| really believe that everyone involved is bias free?
|
| How would you prove that they're bias free if you don't first
| call out the homogeneous makeup of their choices?
|
| Why do you also assume that minorities who'd be picked would be
| picked solely because they're minorities? Perhaps just raising
| the question is enough for people to start looking at notable
| minorities who have the standing on their own but were
| overlooked.
|
| This whole "reverse racism" card that people like yourself play
| is always off putting to me. Reality has shown time and time
| again that your logic isn't pragmatic.
| klyrs wrote:
| I, for one, would love to see compile-time reflection in Rust
| and I'm genuinely curious how somebody exploring the
| feasibility of that feature could make anybody feel
| _uncomfortable_.
|
| As a minority, I've been subject to firm decisions made on
| the basis of extremely dubious reasoning before. Is it bias?
| Who knows, it's never clear-cut in any specific example. But
| when it just seems to keep happening and nobody can explain
| why, it certainly feels fishy.
|
| And of course, being on hiring panels and hearing comments
| like "I don't like how she talks" or "I don't trust men who
| wear scarves" or "I don't think he'll fit the culture (which
| is mostly white)" made about candidates, and "I don't see any
| problem with hiring based on attractiveness" as a "joke"
| after a hiring decision was made in favor of a conventionally
| attractive woman... and later hearing comments like "I've
| never discriminated against anybody" come out of the same
| mouths? I don't buy it. I don't think I'm unbiased. I don't
| know how anybody could possibly think that about themselves.
| dagmx wrote:
| I share your experience here.
|
| I'm a minority, and arguably now considered an industry
| expert as well in my domain (graphics). The vast majority
| of time I'm the only minority involved in several circles.
|
| I am trying to raise diversity in these groups, across age,
| ethnicity and gender.
|
| But it's so difficult to do when few others also join in
| that effort. Not because they're necessarily bigoted
| (though some are), but they don't see it.
|
| The only effective means I've found is to actually
| highlight the disparity between diversity in the industry
| versus representation in the committees. Then suddenly
| people have an amazing colleague that they forgot to
| invite, or a rising star Junior dev who could be mentored
| into the role.
|
| Sometimes people just need to be reminded that the status
| quo isn't above questioning and that they have their own
| implicit biases that they just never reflect on.
| philstephenson wrote:
| > Let me flip your quote back on you: how can intelligent
| people still believe in unbiased meritocracy being the
| default? Very few people I think would argue that systems
| based on meritocracy have zero bias. This is not the point.
| The point is that today's conventional wisdom by the
| progressive left is that these biases must be resolved by a
| system of affirmative action where every sub culture or group
| somehow is proportionally representative of the overall
| population based on race, gender, etc. For some reason, that
| outcome is thought to be the best way to affirm that no bias
| exists in a group. Personally I think that premise is just
| very flawed. Meritocracy is not a perfect system. No one is
| saying that. But it's the best system we have for engaging
| with the actual content that is relevant to any given group.
| As far as bias is concerned, the best we can do is call out
| specific instances of it and try to squash and correct those
| (and maybe this case in this blog post is one). There is no
| commonly understood way to measure bias or racism that
| everyone agrees with and so why would we think that measuring
| representation would somehow be the best solution?
| dagmx wrote:
| You're ascribing affirmative action to this when that
| wasn't what was suggested.
|
| The person in question called out bias and then asked what
| could be done.
|
| That's exactly the same as you suggested. The person I
| replied to then spun that out as reverse racism.
|
| Which is a very common tactic to squash actual discussion
| on the topic of biases in the industry.
| philstephenson wrote:
| I agree with you though about the cries about reverse
| racism. Not helpful to the discussion.
|
| But I also believe that when someone cries out bias or
| discrimination by some group because of
| underrepresentation or lack of diversity, they are
| implying that affirmative action is the way to solve it.
| Maybe I'm putting words into people's mouths there, but
| it's just anecdotal
| dagmx wrote:
| "They are implying" is putting words in their mouths like
| you say.
|
| There's a whole field of nuance in between "do nothing"
| and "affirmative action". People deserve the benefit of
| not having someone else's argument ascribed to them.
| tkfu wrote:
| > No organisation should be "called out" for a lack of -
| insert-race-here- representation unless that organisation is in
| fact discriminatory.
|
| I don't think you're being very reasonable here. A lack of
| diversity is just a piece of data: it might be complete
| coincidence, or it might be related to some underlying bias or
| discrimination. "Calling out" a lack of diversity is just
| bringing attention to that piece of data. If you want to ignore
| it, fine. If you want to make a case that the lack of diversity
| isn't a problem and/or has nothing to do with bias, by all
| means do so. But you can't just tell people to shut up about
| inconvenient facts until discrimination is proved in a court of
| law (or to your own satisfaction, or whatever unstated burden
| of proof you think is sufficient).
|
| Free speech and dissent is important. You might not like it
| when people point out obvious and available data like "hey,
| this group seems to be pretty homogeneous", but that doesn't
| mean those people should shut up.
| pdimitar wrote:
| I'll risk the downvotes then.
|
| > _A lack of diversity is just a piece of data: it might be
| complete coincidence, or it might be related to some
| underlying bias or discrimination._
|
| I say it's a coincidence. I've known racist people but they
| were an overwhelming minority and had no power. Let's stop
| there. Find me a systemic racist in a position of power where
| I work or participate in local events and I promise I'll
| fight to eject them from their place of power. Done.
| Discussion should be over at this point: let's have
| actionable steps. We don't have them? Let's do something
| else.
|
| "Might be related to some underlying bias or discrimination"
| is not a convincing thing to say. Going witch-hunting for
| witches that are 90% likely to not even exist is
| unproductive. The Sun's magnetic storms might influence our
| moods, that too falls in the "it might" category, but I don't
| base my life decisions on it.
|
| > _" Calling out" a lack of diversity is just bringing
| attention to that piece of data_
|
| A lot of people have been "bringing up attention" to many
| things. What are you doing to help? I had a few technical
| talks held in my city and in one occasion I insisted the
| discussion after the talk be in English and not my native
| tongue because we had just two English-speaking participants
| in the audience. I am helping in practical terms. Are you
| helping practically?
|
| Many people in more privileged countries are _completely
| blind_ to the fact that "raising awareness" is being done
| ever since the 1970s yet very little progress has been made
| in many areas (happily racism and sexism were reduced, which
| is good!). When are you going to understand that somebody at
| one point should actively do something about the problems and
| stop "raising awareness" until the heat death of the
| Universe?
|
| Many people are quite aware of a ton of problems, believe me.
| I go outside and talk to people of many nationalities and
| races. The people willing to do something outside virtue-
| signalling are very few and far between though, sadly. And
| you strike me as a virtue-signaller.
|
| I realize my tone is a bit combative but honestly, it's
| getting tiring and at one point I find it hard to talk
| entirely calmly when the other side of the discussion is
| content to only repeat the same things like a broken record.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >Find me a systemic racist in a position of power where I
| work or participate in local events and I promise I'll
| fight to eject them from their place of power.
|
| How hard are you fighting to eject Trump? Do you need any
| more examples of racist people who have an overwhelming
| number of supporters and extreme amounts of power?
| pdimitar wrote:
| I will assume you missed the "where I work or participate
| in local events" piece of context on purpose. :(
|
| I am well-aware of many prominent a-holes and racists all
| over the world. It's beyond my sphere of influence
| however.
|
| Also let's stop derailing a localized issue with "but
| what about..." kind of "arguments" (which aren't
| arguments, just ways to hijack discussions).
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Then don't attempt to deny that outright blatant
| systematic racism isn't extremely common and widespread.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Nobody is denying it. Don't fight straw men.
|
| It's also severely off-topic for this discussion.
| drew-y wrote:
| I see where you're coming from and it's clear you have strong
| feelings on this matter. However, I believe there might be a
| misunderstanding here. The goal of diversity initiatives isn't
| about devaluing any particular group, it's about ensuring that
| the opportunities and benefits are more equitably distributed
| across different communities.
|
| When someone mentions a 'lack of Black representation', they're
| not saying that non-Black members are less valuable because of
| their skin color. Rather, they're highlighting that there
| appears to be a systemic issue preventing people of that
| particular race from participating or advancing in that space.
| By addressing these systemic issues, we can make organizations
| more inclusive and more representative of the broader
| community.
|
| Nobody is suggesting that people are exchangeable units defined
| solely by their skin color. On the contrary, it's recognized
| that everyone is unique and has a diverse set of skills,
| experiences, and perspectives to contribute.
|
| This does not mean discarding merit or reducing people to their
| race, but rather acknowledging that societal, cultural, and
| systemic barriers have created unequal access to opportunities.
| The ultimate goal is to ensure that everyone, regardless of
| their race, has an equal opportunity to succeed.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > When someone mentions a 'lack of Black representation',
| they're not saying that non-Black members are less valuable
| because of their skin color. Rather, they're highlighting
| that there appears to be a systemic issue preventing people
| of that particular race from participating or advancing in
| that space.
|
| "Appears to be systemic racism" might be half a step too far.
| I would say, "The possibility exists. We should look
| carefully and see if there is, and if so, what we can do to
| fix it." But we should not _assume_ systemic racism every
| time there are racially unequal outcomes.
|
| Asians get into top colleges out of proportion to their
| numbers. Should we say there "appears to be a systemic issue"
| in _favor_ of Asians? Or should we, perhaps, not take
| disparate outcomes as _prima facie_ evidence of systemic
| racism?
|
| I'm not saying that we should sweep it under the rug:
| "Nothing to see here." By all means, when there are disparate
| outcomes, look carefully. It's just that the wording went a
| bit too far, in the absence of further evidence.
| jorenbroekema wrote:
| What makes you think speaker slots aren't equitably
| distributed? If there are 4 black Rust devs among every 100
| Rust devs and there are 10 speaker slots, odds are there are
| no black speakers but that would still be an equitable
| distribution.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > The goal of diversity initiatives isn't about devaluing any
| particular group
|
| It is, however, always the result.
| slily wrote:
| When were these supposed "systemic issues" ever identified?
| In my experience "systemic racism" is a vague pretext to
| implement racist policies that push out white people (and
| sometimes Asians) in favor of black people (and people
| considered "brown enough"). I see this at my job and at
| conferences: people are explicitly promoted or selected as
| speakers in part _because_ they are not white (or not male).
| This isn 't just something I observed, they say it openly
| when the "diversity", equity, and "inclusion" strategy is
| discussed. I've also seen conference attendees openly say
| that there should be fewer white males at a certain event.
|
| In none of those cases was a specific policy or practice
| identified that would explain the existence of "systemic
| issues" preventing minorities from getting hired, promoted,
| selected, and that would justify implementing discriminatory
| policies (aka "affirmative action"). So ironically we're
| discriminating against the "majority" (white males) over
| something that's mostly imaginary, at least in the US tech
| industry, based on nothing but demographic statistics. The
| fact that there's fewer qualified people of a certain color
| (proportionally to overall demographics) in the pool isn't
| evidence of systemic racism at the level we're operating.
| Meanwhile you would get laughed at for suggesting that we
| need gender parity in waste management jobs, or early
| childhood education.
| dagmx wrote:
| There are actually lots of initiatives to increase gender
| diversity in early childhood education.
|
| Also systemic bias exists. That's not an arguable point
| because the US has a history of anti-black rules like red
| lining that affect opportunities till this day. Or rules
| like how women could manage their funds that held women
| back. Other countries similarly had rules like that against
| various demographics.
|
| Things are better but generational issues still exist. The
| history of these things isn't even so far ago that most
| millennials would be somehow unaffected.
| slily wrote:
| I don't disagree that historical systemic discrimination
| has effects that lasts generations and I'm not against
| affirmative action when applied carefully, but I think
| it's presumptuous and counterproductive to try to
| "counterbalance" a perceived systemic bias that occurred
| in the past at one level (for example in education),
| today at another level (employment or public speaking
| opportunities).
|
| Equal opportunity was the right idea and technologies
| like the Internet helped equalize the playing field to
| the point that socio-economic background matters less
| than ever. Now we're regressing back to judging people
| first and foremost based on their skin color, sex, and
| even sexual orientation. I see my company's DEI leader
| making shameless statements saying that they will make
| sure to promote more "people from underprivileged groups"
| (that means people who are not white or Asian by their
| own definition) with no apparent regard for performance
| or merit. It's racist to a comical degree.
| dagmx wrote:
| The internet doesn't equalize things like hiring and
| conference representation though. Imho it's a complete
| non sequitur to this discussion about the real world.
|
| I think assuming that the anonymity afforded by the
| internet extends to real life is naive.
| slily wrote:
| What does anonymity have to do with this?
|
| The Internet gives you unparalleled access to
| information. There's virtually no barrier to learn about
| a subject you're interested in, _especially_ software-
| related. You don 't even have to be able to travel to a
| public library nowadays, which is what I did as a kid,
| reserving time slots on public computers to access the
| Internet. It's easier than ever to teach yourself a skill
| like programming, as well as build a portfolio through
| open source contributions, and that certainly directly
| translates to work and public speaking opportunities.
| dagmx wrote:
| Having access to knowledge isn't an equalizer in terms of
| biases in the real world though.
|
| Have you been judged by the color of your skin and denied
| opportunities ? I have.
|
| the internet doesn't do anything for me when people can
| see me.
| slily wrote:
| > Have you been judged by the color of your skin
|
| Yes. I'm pretty sure I've been judged for every single
| one of my identifiable immutable characteristics. For my
| skin color, out loud in the street, for sure when I lived
| in a place where I was the minority.
|
| > and denied opportunities
|
| Do you mean directly, aside from that conference where
| white males were told to attend less, or my employer
| openly favoring people who are neither white nor Asian in
| upper ranks? If so no, no one has told me that I couldn't
| do something specifically because I'm white. Have you? In
| what circumstances? And was it an isolated event or
| evidence of a systemic problem?
| dagmx wrote:
| Told to attend less because there needed to be space for
| other demographics? That's not discrimination because
| it's not preventing white men from attending, it's just
| allowing other people to also attend unless you believe
| that you're also somehow better than everyone who was
| allowed to attend.
|
| the same goes for favouring people in your job. If you
| have a systemic issue in your place of work, then report
| it.
|
| But otherwise people are chastising the person in
| question for pointing out that there isn't diversity in
| representation. So what? They're not meant to even
| mention what they think is an issue because somehow the
| systems are just and fair because of the internet???
|
| Anyway I won't be responding further. I don't think you
| actually care about understanding or supporting equality,
| or letting other people prosper if they're not your
| demographic.
|
| The fact that you think the internet is an equalizer of
| opportunity just shows how people here don't actually
| want to understand the issues people in other
| demographics go through.
|
| Edit: ah and of course the reply below is it's the
| minorities fault they're not represented enough. This is
| why I don't care to respond to people who are so deeply
| rooted in the idea that the world is somehow a just and
| fair representation. It's the same argument for decades.
| slily wrote:
| I'm sorry but discouraging white males from attending a
| conference has approximately nothing to do with "allowing
| other people to also attend". It's a weird brand of
| discrimination (racism and sexism) based on the unfounded
| idea that any coveted group must have a racial and sexual
| profile equivalent to that of an arbitrary overall
| population. Additionally, there would be no need to
| exclude people on the basis of their race and sex if the
| minorities they'd like to include simply participated in
| the desired proportions, and in fact equity programs
| originally prioritized outreach to achieve that, but as
| it turns out, few industries have a demographic profile
| that matches the overall population. Therefore some have
| turned to racist and sexist exclusion.
|
| Prioritizing non-whites and non-Asians for things like
| university admissions, employment and promotions is the
| same thing. You're not just giving your preferred groups
| the opportunity to compete, you're lowering your
| standards for them and raising them for the disfavored
| groups, creating barriers based on an immutable
| characteristic, which is skin color. Plain and simple
| racism.
|
| You don't have to post your alleged experience with
| racism if you don't want to, but to then imply that _I_
| am racist for sharing mine and asking you to reciprocate
| sure is disingenuous. For the record, I care about
| equality, which is why I reject _equity_ , since its
| implementation is predicated on the discriminatory
| policies that I described.
| depr wrote:
| He is saying there weren't any black speakers. Sure we can say
| how that should grow "organically", as some other poster did.
| But what if year in year out it doesn't happen? Maybe there
| aren't any black people in the Rust community and if they
| stepped forward with some good talks they would just be
| invited? Or maybe the situation is a little more complicated.
|
| On the one hand you have your "diversity enforcement policy"
| which is arguably racist. On the other hand you have black Rust
| developers but never any black speakers or organization leaders
| (in a community which doesn't hesitate to toot their diversity
| horn) which also arguably racist. So what gives?
|
| >Personally, I was with the author until that quote. If I was a
| member of that organisation I too would not be OK being
| represented by a person that makes such horribly offensive
| personal opinions known regardless of their technical
| expertise.
|
| You could ask yourself why something that someone else might
| see as a simple (minor) disagreement caused such as strong
| reaction in you.
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _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 programming language foundation be
| doing? They are not a world government that can and should
| fight systemic racism. They can only encourage people to
| participate. Which they already do.
|
| > _You could ask yourself why something that someone else
| might see as a simple (minor) disagreement caused such as
| strong reaction in you._
|
| Throwing the ball at each others' hands is never gonna
| achieve anything. I can try answering for your parent poster:
| because the average white people are getting sick of being
| blamed of being racist while a lot of places are being racist
| _towards them_ because they are white and somehow the
| problems of racism worldwide are our fault.
|
| 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 should "fight for
| more representation" is not how you win them over for your
| cause. You only alienate them. Tell me this: "please never
| exclude people from conferences based on skin color and
| gender" and I'll immediately agree with you, we shake hands
| and the world became slightly better. But tell me "it's a
| little more complicated" without giving any context or
| explanation while still implying it's somehow my fault that
| there are no Black speakers on a Rust conference, and you
| definitely have lost me for your cause. I might even start
| fighting against you, if I allow my monkey brain to take over
| that is, which I actively strive to not do.
|
| Now, _you_ ask yourself why did you try to shift blame. It 's
| toxic. We can all be better than this. Let's start somewhere
| already. We got so much more in common than you seem to
| think.
|
| Or, if I completely misconstrued your comment then I am truly
| sorry. But I do get pissed off every now and then. We should
| all just stop blaming people for things that 95% of the time
| are just not there. :(
| dagmx wrote:
| I disagree that "nothing can be done".
|
| There's lots that could be done that don't fall in to your
| description of affirmative action.
|
| Invitations could be extended to people to submit proposals
| for a talk. This already happens, but maybe the circle gets
| expanded once it's evident that the circle has been too
| small. The simple act of asking is often enough to make
| people feel welcome.
|
| I also call BS on the claim that you've never discriminated
| against someone. No person is a saint like that. Every
| human and sentient creature has inherent biases.
|
| Maybe you've never actively discriminated, but you most
| surely have passively done so at some time in your life.
| For anyone to claim they are perfect in this regard is only
| fooling one's self.
|
| That you then go on to say that it's not there 95% of the
| time withoit any actual reflection on the matter perhaps
| shows that you're not well versed enough in the dynamics of
| race and gender relations to make that call.
| fwungy wrote:
| How is your belief system different in format than a
| religious fundamentalist?
|
| I ask because I was raised fundamentalist and had to do a
| lot of work to undo that programing. It's a damaging way
| to see the world, and yet so many now seem to fight it by
| adopting its central tenets.
| dagmx wrote:
| I don't understand what that has to do with anything?
|
| Discuss the merits of the argument. Likening it
| arbitrarily to fundamentalism is just a pointless
| strawman otherwise.
| fwungy wrote:
| Dogmatic thinking leads to logical inconsistencies that
| eventually cause chaos.
|
| At some point there is no right answer anymore, only
| wrong ones and infighting. That's what appears to be
| happening here. It's the simple cause and effect of
| overriding logic with dogma. It never works for long.
| dagmx wrote:
| Your own point is dogmatic then so should be ignored by
| your own logic.
|
| The problem is you're not actually discussing the merits
| of any actual point presented above .
|
| Anything can be trivialized as dogma if you look at it in
| the abstract and elide any of the actual substance.
| fwungy wrote:
| Breaking with my fundamentalist upbringing was the
| hardest thing I've ever had to do.
|
| It is intoxicating to live in a world where you are
| always right because YOU have the power to detect the
| ultimate truth. Think about it, if someone can say they
| know what true words of "god" are, it's logically
| identical to saying they are at one with "god", and
| therefore they are doing "his" work. This becomes a
| license for objectively abusive and evil behavior, as
| witnessed by history.
|
| The left has adopted this framework of belief for
| themselves. It always ends in destruction because
| ignoring reality always does catch up.
|
| The drama on the Rust team is exactly what happens in
| fundamentalist communities. It is unfortunate because a
| lot is riding on it.
| dagmx wrote:
| Now who's being the dogmatic one.
|
| Anyway this isn't a conducive discussion. It's nonsense
| that doesn't actually address any point.
|
| I won't be responding further.
| pdimitar wrote:
| You also didn't address anything I've said and just
| called me "not versed enough".
|
| You barged in, derailed the thread, then started calling
| others out.
|
| You should know better than that. But alas indeed you
| don't.
| fwungy wrote:
| How many of <T> ethnicity are in the community?
|
| What is the average level of commitment and capability of <T>
| in the overall community?
|
| If that is low relative to the community distribution members
| of <T> may not feel comfortable seeking speaker slots simply
| because they understand their relative ranking and do not
| want to potentially disrespect the group or humiliate
| themselves.
|
| This is completely normal behavior for all <T>. Even in large
| subgroup most people do not consider themselves worthy of
| speaking at top conferences.
| laurels-marts wrote:
| > How can intelligent people not see this kind of thinking
| leads to the worst of social divisions?
|
| Intelligent people do see it. It's typically people that have
| no actual direct value to contribute but still want to score
| points that focus on all kinds of secondary topics.
| pdimitar wrote:
| I'll obviously not stop using Rust over this -- and I think
| 99.99% of the people using Rust for work will not stop using it
| either -- but this looks like a case where the underlying true
| issue (sidestepping a democratic process) was very quickly
| forgotten and people started arguing over the expressions of the
| problem using dramatic and exaggerated language, which just makes
| things worse because it makes other people jumpy. And it spiraled
| out of control extremely quickly because you know, people are
| being people. Oh well. Hopefully the dust settles and they can
| figure it out.
|
| Another thing that rubs me the wrong way: "lack of Black
| representation". So here's the question: is somebody _actively
| suppressing Black applicants_ , or are there simply _no Black
| applicants_?
|
| If it's the former, obviously that's a huge problem. But I
| suspect it's the latter and if that's really the case then this
| seems like people basically rebelling against an objective
| reality they can do nothing against, but still make a drama over
| it. If there are _literally_ no black people who want to do
| things X and Y, how is that even a reason to feel bad about
| stuff? Same way as you won 't find many Japanese golfers in, say,
| Italy. There simply are not enough people out there with the
| characteristics you are focused on that do the things you feel
| they should feel more represented in. Nothing you can do.
|
| EDIT: And before I keep receiving replies that are COMPLETELY
| OFF-TOPIC, my question to any reader or commenter is this: where
| do we draw the line on what should the Rust Foundation do when
| relating to world-wide social injustice problems? Many people
| seem to think that it's a trampoline to achieving social justice
| in the world and I strongly disagree with that stance. Let's keep
| our goals realistic and compartmentalized; there are other
| organizations out there that fight injustice as their main
| objective. Rust Foundation is not that.
| velcrovan wrote:
| There's always one of you making these same high school
| freshman arguments when something like this happens. Your
| comments make their own little sense in the tidy mental model
| you have, a totally neutral world in which all people are as
| perfectly free to accept or decline all the same opportunities
| and paths of life. But this is not reality. The only real
| antidote is for you to go out and read some history and build a
| more accurate model of the world in your head.
| thebigwinning wrote:
| Do you want to try addressing any of the claims or ideas you
| disagree with? I only see name calling here.
| pdimitar wrote:
| I will not accept being stereotyped and you implying I am
| wrong without you giving a single argument to defend your
| stance. Your nebulous claims might as well be summarized as
| "I dislike you for reasons I won't ever explain".
|
| If you want to discuss, let's go. If you are only gonna use
| thinly veiled insults then you got no leg to stand on.
|
| (If I understood you correctly, you seem to think something
| as small as the Rust foundation should fight racism on a
| world scale?)
| vector_spaces wrote:
| It's unlikely there is anyone in a position of authority in
| Rust consciously and nefariously excluding black folks and
| other people of color, but there doesn't need to be. It's a
| self-reinforcing problem that requires conscious effort to
| address. I'm a (nonblack) minority, and I tend to actively
| avoid participation in groups where I know I'm not likely to be
| understood in important ways. It can be pretty fucking
| exhausting being the only X
| pdimitar wrote:
| Fair, but let's recognize the fact that nobody has stopped
| you at the door.
|
| And I am not sure what does the Rust Foundation has to do
| with self-reinforcing problems stemming from racism.
|
| Moving the goalposts all the way to the skies is why we can't
| have productive discussions in many venues of life, sadly.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| You blame others for your own anxieties that stop you from
| participating?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| The blog post sound reasonable until the racial part started.
|
| Is this an accusation that the change was made on racial grounds?
| Otherwise I fail to see why mentioning it.
| babbledabbler wrote:
| It seems this is a case of poor decision and communication
| management rather than a machiavellian plot, however, it's no
| less harmful or toxic in the outcome.
|
| I'm actually working on an app for organizations to make clear,
| fair, and transparent decisions systematically so things like
| this don't happen.
| zamalek wrote:
| Is this the same group who conjured up that _top-notch_ trademark
| policy? If so, how would the community go about removing them?
| cookieperson wrote:
| What is the deal with trademarks and rust? See a lot of people
| talking about it...
| zamalek wrote:
| The Rust Foundation used a (per their excuse) "boilerplate"
| trademark policy. Somehow, a "boilerplate" trademark policy
| included terms about bearing arms (which has nothing to do
| with trademark, and is a concerning overreach regardless of
| how you feel about firearms) and other nonsense. The bullshit
| extended to "allowing" the community to use Ferris (to be
| clear, Ferris was already public domain and they had no say
| over it to begin with).
| cookieperson wrote:
| Weird thanks for filling me in. Uh yea I had no idea...
| Ferris is the little crab right?
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Is this the same group who conjured up that _top-notch_
| trademark policy?_
|
| No, which is mentioned in the blog post that caused the OP's
| resignation:
|
| _" As the Rust Foundation had trouble with its trademark
| rollout and the Rust Project presented itself as the capable
| group that can do the right thing, I find myself in the
| opposite situation here. The Rust Foundation has handled the
| grant work with utmost grace, respect, and professionalism for
| myself and Shepherd's time. Contrarily, the Rust Project
| deigned to effectively pass several mandates down through an
| opaque process that affected me, while refusing to air to-this-
| minute unknown grievances with the direction of the Compile-
| Time Midterm Report."_
|
| https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
| zamalek wrote:
| It's almost worse that it's not The Foundation again. Now
| there's really no redeeming parts of Rust leadership.
| erdeibit wrote:
| Exactly the kind of things that prevent me to approach Rust. Part
| of their community is very unwelcoming.
| znpy wrote:
| So basically "I don't like your article" is enough to get a
| speaker removed in the rust conf / rust leadership space?
|
| Ngl, that looks like teen drama.
|
| Really poor leadership, it seems there wasn't even an attempt at
| mediation, or a vote, or anything.
| ummonk wrote:
| Yeah, and merely over some random technical article, not
| controversial politics or anything.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Well, for context the speaker pointed out in the past that
| there were no presenters of color at Rust conf at the time,
| and they themselves would have been the first person of color
| to do a keynote if they'd been allowed to do it.
|
| I don't know if that was a motivation here by the person who
| went solo or if they were just personally jilted over a
| technical disagreement about the best way to handle
| reflection, but from the outside it looks quite bad
| regardless, which shows again more consideration should have
| been paid to this decision.
| brabel wrote:
| > Really poor leadership, it seems there wasn't even an attempt
| at mediation, or a vote, or anything.
|
| The post claims that THERE WAS a vote, and that vote was to
| give the person a keynote talk... that was somehow rejected by
| the Rust Project... as the blog post asks at the end, how the
| heck can someone just say to the Rust Leadership, your vote is
| just void as I don't like the person or the talk?! How is that
| possible? Is the Leadership vote just accepted if the top dog
| likes the result, but not to be taken seriously otherwise?? How
| do people actually accept this kind of bullshit? If you are in
| the Rust Leadership, do you just accept being just a token like
| that? With your votes being completely ignored unless it aligns
| with the real power broker?
| kitd wrote:
| Well, not removed, just downgraded.
|
| But yes, it does smell a bit drama-queen.
| znpy wrote:
| I'd say drama queens on both sides
| greesil wrote:
| So this person didn't get to speak at the conference, and they
| quit? But their technical contributions are still being added?
|
| Did I get that right?
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| They quit because they didn't get a keynote slot. They were
| still invited to give a talk.
| dimgl wrote:
| This is such a non-issue to me I'm surprised it's even at the
| top of Hacker News.
| junon wrote:
| 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 team's viewpoints or
| support)
|
| Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical
| viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their
| demographic?
|
| And then they pushed them out of the conference behind
| leadership's back?
|
| Did I miss something? This is indeed really childish behavior.
|
| EDIT: oh. It's not even reflection, it's compile time reflection.
| As in, it's not the next Java but instead something that might
| actually be very useful for the language if done correctly.
|
| https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
|
| > The sudden reversal smacks of shadowy decisions that are non-
| transparent to normal contributors like myself. It is a brutal
| introduction to the way the Rust Project actually does business
| that is not covered by its publicly-available Procedures and
| Practices and absolutely not at all mentioned in its Code of
| Conduct.
|
| Agreed. The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins
| to fester. This is incredibly stupid behavior coming from what is
| being regarded as the next C++.
|
| Come on, Rust committee. Let's grow up here, shall we?
| lost_tourist wrote:
| It's a shame that people are so thin-skinned they can't handle
| a difference of opinion on architecture. All I can say is wow.
| I feel they really need to use this as a moment of reflection.
| Is democracy dead? No committee will ever work if there has to
| be unanimous decisions on everything, unless you are living in
| an echo chamber.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical
| viewpoint
|
| FTA:
|
| > It was JeanHeyd who called Rust out for having no Black
| representation
|
| The implication here is that this person was uninvited for
| pushing a SJW agenda that the author agrees with but that
| rust's "shadowy" leadership doesn't.
| psychphysic wrote:
| > The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins to
| fester.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/23/rust_moderation_team_...
|
| There seems be something rotten at Rust and I've no idea what
| but anyone who gets a close look at Rust leadership seems to
| sprint away.
|
| It doesn't seem to be a matter of stamping something out it'll
| be an entire overhaul.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| They need to stamp out reflection before it starts to fester.
| Not a surprise that's a controversial subject.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| From Rust team discussion at Reddit, it's not that anyone
| sprints away, the answer is that no one has the time to
| balance volunteering for Rust, working on code, reviewing,
| doing technical review, and then on top of that moderation
| and doing diplomatic stuff.
|
| Essentially no-one wants to do diplomatic stuff, so it falls
| to only person that likes doing that stuff (which isn't a
| good thing). Which can leads to episodes like this.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Perhaps, I've not followed closely but I know the subreddit
| is heavily moderated from overflow in to other media
| occasionally.
|
| Here is another independent person blowing the whistle on
| rust culture.
|
| https://hackmd.io/@XAMPPRocky/r1HT-Z6_t
|
| How many times will this happen before people take it
| seriously?
|
| I'm fully prepared for some horrendous revelations in the
| future.
|
| And we'll all claim to have known nothing and seen no signs
| :)
| ssokolow wrote:
| An important distinction on their moderation style:
|
| ---
|
| It's not censorship, it's lack of resources.
|
| We're volunteers. When it's too much work to moderate a
| thread, we just nuke it from orbit.
|
| -- matthieum @ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13t
| smht/jt_why_i_left...
| ilyt wrote:
| That's probably the worst way possible to handle it,
| worse than just leaving people to have their petty
| disagreements in the thread.
| raziel2p wrote:
| Why? If it's petty it is by definition unimportant, so it
| can only cause damage by scaring people away or
| reinforcing an idea of a toxic community.
| ilyt wrote:
| ...vs idea of uncaring mods that don't want to do the job
| they signed for so they will just stifle conversation on
| topics that get too hot ?
|
| Those threads don't happen everyday either
| turtleyacht wrote:
| > _only person that likes doing that stuff... leads to
| episodes like this_
|
| This reminds me of an episode in _Scrubs_ where one of the
| residents _volunteers_ to announce bad news to patients or
| family [1].
|
| Several patients later, the lead doc tells them, "... if
| you could stop worrying so much about who does and doesn't
| notice... you. Even for a second... that'd be good; that'd
| be real good."
|
| Their plaintive explanation previously was, "I just wanted
| to be colleagues."
|
| It wouldn't surprise me volunteers pick up diplomatic work,
| and it just doesn't jive like a computer program _at all._
| With humans, who knows what we are getting into?
|
| Should we have goals up-front before we dive into open-
| source? Whether it's for respect and recognition, or a
| completely selfless quest for the good of a project we care
| about, or something else.
|
| Maybe we just love to write code; the project is cool; and
| we just want to be involved.
|
| I guess we have to be ready when the system does not behave
| like we expect, and we can't QA behavior or choices. That's
| the hard part of soft skills.
|
| [1] Season 2, episode 4 (S02E04), _My Big Mouth_
|
| Transcript:
| https://scrubs.fandom.com/wiki/My_Big_Mouth_transcript
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > They're asked to speak at RustConf after a leadership vote.
|
| > They've also written an article about reflection in Rust[...]
|
| > Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical
| viewpoint [...].
|
| As I understand their own words (your link), they wrote the
| article, were invited to talk, and decided to talk _about_ the
| content of the article and related things (because that's what
| they had been working on recently and you generally give talks
| about things you work on).
|
| Not making a value judgment, just want to point out the
| connection is less indirect than your comment implies.
| junon wrote:
| Yes you're right, thank you :)
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Bad play Rust
|
| Declining a keynote because you disagree with it just works to
| highlight a lack of welcoming of diverse viewpoints in the
| community. Having a perspective highlighted you disagree with
| would actually show how open and welcoming the community is.
|
| This assumes of course the person was not making promises on
| behalf of the project to the community (who knows maybe they
| were?) but rather expressing their own opinions.
|
| Having a keynote is not some endorsement that this is the
| future direction of the project.
| wslh wrote:
| I see similar behaviors in multiple online "tech savvy"
| communities. I tend to minimize the behavior to "they don't
| know how to handle an online community and behave in a very
| childish way". It seems we need to recap what OSS communities
| have learnt from decades.
| nindalf wrote:
| Notable that this was published on Friday evening/Saturday
| morning. The Rust project/leadership committee/RustConf folks
| need to coordinate, come to a consensus, make some painful
| decisions and communicate that with a united voice. That's not
| going to happen on a weekend because some folks might not be
| available.
|
| I agree with everything that the speaker and JT have said in
| their respective posts. This is unacceptable, it needs to be
| fixed and the person who was "uncomfortable" needs to be held
| accountable.
|
| But I think it's worth waiting for a couple of _working_ days
| before picking up our pitchforks. Let's give folks the benefit
| of the doubt. Let's not ask the Rust committee to "grow up"
| when they haven't done anything yet and haven't even had a
| chance to respond.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical
| viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their
| demographic?_
|
| As if their personal beliefs or demographic would be more
| acceptable things to have concerns over, in a technical
| conference setting?
|
| This shit has just become too normalized and acceptable in
| contexts where it shouldn't be. You're not marrying them or
| making them friends.
| azangru wrote:
| > And then they pushed them out of the conference behind
| leadership's back?
|
| If I understand the story correctly, they downgraded the talk
| from a keynote to a regular talk. Which -- if, like you say,
| was about purely technical thing that was pretty widely
| disliked conceptually -- maybe shouldn't have been a keynote in
| the first place?
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Rust is not the next C++. C++ is the next C++, rust is
| something else.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Compile-time reflection is great in principle. It gets us quite
| close to the aim of compile-time dependent types, which would
| be a great feature for Rust and bring it close to parity with
| newer languages such as Zig, as well as lay the groundwork for
| further important developments such as proof-carrying code. It
| would be quite important to know why this Rust team member felt
| "uncomfortable" with the technical contents of this talk which
| were clearly described by the author as highly speculative, and
| thus inherently open to discussion.
| brokenkebaby wrote:
| >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 interaction. It's simple, and
| efficient, so why not?
| spangry wrote:
| 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?
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| > As it's becoming generally normalized, it's absolutely
| logical that it spills into other fields of human
| interaction. It's simple, and efficient, so why not?
|
| Is this sarcasm? I think it's pretty obvious why not. Broken
| communication, poor decisions, and the obvious fallout.
| kyleee wrote:
| Not sarcasm I think you just didn't understand; they are
| not asking for reasons why it would be bad for this
| behavior to spread, but rather asking what's stopping it?
| And it sounds like a rhetorical question as posed
| LouisSayers wrote:
| This is like a modern day version of "they're a witch!", with
| the towns people rallying behind to burn them at the stake.
| hamburglar wrote:
| The corresponding magic phrase in liberal US school systems
| has become "equity issue." I'm a pretty progressive guy but
| the number of times I've seen people "win" debates by
| declaring that their opponent's ideas cause an "equity
| issue" with absolutely no rationale is unreal. And it can
| be applied no matter what position you'd like to support.
| Online work is an equity issue because poor kids don't have
| computers. Giving all kids free laptops is an equity issue
| because poor kids don't have professional parents who know
| how to help them use them. You can't win.
|
| And, related to the OP, I believe one reason this ends up
| being used as a weapon is that it's so arbitrary, you can
| never predict when or how it might be sprung on you, so it
| behooves you to go on the offense and invent the equity
| issues, vague "discomfort", and declare others witches in
| the interest of self-preservation.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I'm reminded of Sayre's Law [1]:
|
| > Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of
| politics, because the stakes are so low.
|
| Conference speakers is the definition of low stakes rife for
| pointless politicking.
|
| I honestly don't understand why the Rust compiler reflection
| tech talk was the slightest bit controversial. Even if no one
| is in favor of the proposal, it can still be an interesting
| thought experiment. Such issues may expose design issues.
|
| I agree with other commenters: anyone who is prone to playing
| politics with these low stakes issues needs to be pruned before
| they do real damage.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
| gymbeaux wrote:
| I feel like I've observed similar "childish" behavior from the
| Go community more so, and to some degree in even the C#
| community where people were upset at Microsoft's probably-
| malicious decisions (like removing Blazor debugging from non-
| Windows environments). Some of their proposed and implemented
| C# changes in the last couple of years seem really asinine too,
| not just to me but hundreds+ who voice their disappointment on
| Github.
|
| This is a very egotistical industry and this is one of many
| ways that manifests.
| lolinder wrote:
| Some important context that's missing from your summary (and
| something I wasn't aware of until I dug into it more) is that
| the author was a member of Rust's core team [0] and the interim
| leadership group responsible for designing Rust's new
| governance structure [1]. They were the one who posted the new
| RFC on project governance [2].
|
| This isn't a case of one person who was powerless to stop what
| happened and felt that making a big stink on the internet was
| the only solution--this was one of the primary decision makers
| shaping the future of Rust. I think there's a lot of context
| missing from this blog post about why they felt the need to
| resign rather than use their position to improve decision
| making.
|
| For now I'm withholding judgement on who will turn out to be in
| the right.
|
| [0] Still listed here: https://www.rust-
| lang.org/governance/teams/core
|
| [1] https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-
| rust/2022/10/06/governance...
|
| [2] https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3392
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| phpisthebest wrote:
| 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 to change the community,
| not the other way round
| riskable wrote:
| No, no. Groups that have endless infighting/debates are the
| ones that evolve, stick around, and gain support. It's the
| groups that are cock-sure about everything with everyone
| falling in line behind the leadership that end up stagnating
| and ultimately end up being replaced with something better
| (often with bitter or explosive endings).
|
| In the world of technology, fundamental tech like programming
| languages can persist seemingly forever but the truth is that
| there's great big winners and a whole lot of losers. We also
| don't like to compare seemingly-unrelated languages to each
| other because of their fundamental differences in how they're
| meant to be used but the truth is that a lot more people know
| and learn Python than will ever learn C or C++ (or Rust).
|
| It's because C and C++ never really evolved into better
| languages. They never got rid of the bad ideas (e.g. goto)
| and just kept piling on new stuff, leaving new learners of
| the language just that much more to have to learn.
|
| Languages like Rust and Python actually _remove_ old, bad
| syntaxes /ideas and implement checks and helpful compiler
| messages regarding bad patterns. IMHO, this makes them vastly
| more likely to be around 25, 50, or even 100 years from now
| than languages (or OSes) that never remove technological
| debt.
| overgard wrote:
| Python removing "bad" old ideas caused it to stagnate on
| 2.7 for a decade and probably did irreversible harm to the
| ecosystem as people left for languages that didn't have a
| nasty split in the community.
|
| C++ has evolved tremendously so I have no idea what you're
| talking about there. Removing "goto" would help nothing,
| and the more or less deprecated features keep old codebases
| alive while allowing for better things (shared pointers and
| so on)
| jrsj wrote:
| 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
| moomoo11 wrote:
| 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.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| [flagged]
| nullc wrote:
| You don't normally needs a CoC to do the right thing, you
| need a CoC to justify doing the wrong thing.
| [deleted]
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| > _And then they pushed them out of the conference behind
| leadership 's back?_
|
| My understanding is that they (unilaterally) changed the talk's
| status from "keynote" to "regular talk", so they didn't quite
| push them out.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _Come on, Rust committee. Let 's grow up here, shall we_
|
| Rust may, or may not, be the next best thing. However, the
| zealotry expressed by some rust pundits, is very off putting to
| me. One thing I have learned, is that zealotry is where moral
| compromise enters, it is where "for their own good" and "the
| ends justify the means" starts, followed by concepts such as
| "we need to force people to understand".
|
| Some rust pundits seem to be such zealots, injecting rust
| commentary into everything. Almost religious.
|
| Thus, I am not surprised by this. To speak ill of the holy
| relic, to utter dissent, drives zealots to mad excess!
| pdimitar wrote:
| You are generalizing. This is a very isolated incident, and
| one that I as a Rust dev am baffled about. It seems poorly
| handled by _all_ sides involved.
|
| Have in mind that 99.99% of Rust devs out there chose it on
| technical merits and couldn't care less about their internal
| infighting even if we were paid to care.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _You are generalizing_
|
| No, my statements about zealots in the rust community, are
| not generalizations. Rust has more zealots, than every
| other language combined.
|
| Note, advocates are not the same as zealots.
| pdimitar wrote:
| 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.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _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".
| gdcbe wrote:
| Pretty certain any widespread dev language has
| communities...
| analogdreams wrote:
| natural extension of the woke/SJW nonsense. it will ultimately
| be the downfall of all OOS as people refuse to
| contribute/engage.
| zeteo wrote:
| >Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical
| viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their
| demographic?
|
| >And then they pushed them out of the conference behind
| leadership's back?
|
| >Did I miss something? This is indeed really childish behavior.
|
| You're jumping to a lot of conclusions here. The article was
| written by someone who is clearly upset about the incident and
| doesn't go into a lot of detail about the motivation of the
| other party ("as best as I understand it, because of the
| content of JeanHeyd's blog post on reflection"). Would the
| "uncomfortable" team members agree that it was a matter of
| "comfort" that was caused primarily by the topic of a blog
| post? Are any relevant facts, by any chance, left out of the
| article? We don't know.
|
| What we do know is that it didn't happen behind the
| leadership's back: "This discomfort was brought to the interim
| leadership group [...] A person in Rust leadership then [...]
| reached directly to RustConf leadership [...] RustConf
| leadership decided to wait a week [...] giving Rust leadership
| time to change its mind."
| GuB-42 wrote:
| 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
| language is strictly better than another, it is all about
| tradeoffs. And rewriting a piece of software is not a decision
| to be taken lightly, see the "second system" anti-pattern. Rust
| has a place, maybe an important place, but I dislike fanaticism
| in general.
|
| The first point seems to have died off a little, and most
| discussions I see about Rust now seem to be technical, which is
| a good point. And I expect the second point to become a bit
| less prevalent as the language becomes mainstream and stories
| about people being miserable with Rust will inevitable surface.
| I don't think a language can be considered mature unless (some)
| people start hating using it.
| quotemstr wrote:
| > 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?
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Unwinding is optional, and not available on all platforms
| that Rust supports (including WebAssembly). The language
| made the right choice here IMO. Lack of faillible
| allocation in the stdlib is a major issue, but it's also
| fixable.
| ssokolow wrote:
| > 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?
|
| I've been hanging around /r/rust and poking at other venues
| since at least 2013 and my understanding was that the
| exception-like appearance of panics arose organically from:
|
| 1. Let's have monadic error handling for catchable stuff
| and an ASSERT equivalent for bugs that cannot be reasonably
| handled.
|
| 2. Our ownership system and mutex poisoning allows us to
| make strong guarantees about where invalid state is
| observable. Let's let a thread ASSERT without taking down
| the whole program.
|
| 3. It'd be nice to have RAII cleanup on an ASSERT
|
| 4. It'd be nice to have automatic diagnostics on an ASSERT
| failure
|
| 5. Gee, it's really awkward to have to spawn a thread in
| order to be able to translate an ASSERT failure into an
| error code when we're exposing a C API from Rust code.
| Let's add catch_unwind. (std::panic::catch_unwind didn't
| get stabilized until Rust 1.9.)
|
| The clearest expression of this is that libraries cannot
| opt back into unwinding when the application that depends
| on them sets panic=abort. If an application says "I have no
| need to continue with the following job/request/etc. after
| a programming error in a single unit of work", the
| libraries it depends on aren't allowed to countermand that
| and, if they try, it's their fault for abusing panics.
| Panics are overgrown ASSERTs, not an underbuilt exception
| system.
| riskable wrote:
| Other replies have made excellent points but I'd also like
| to point out that in the world of Rust the only time you
| _want_ your code to panic is when something irrecoverable
| (at a very low level) happens. Like if you 're messing
| around with bare metal/embedded stuff and you just set a
| (hardware) register but for whatever reason that call
| failed so now you can be guaranteed that the rest of your
| code just can't work. It's panic time!
|
| If a crate is using panic because it encountered bad input
| or whatever then the crate isn't doing things in a rusty
| sort of way. Even if it's a wrapper around an unsafe C
| library that uses panic everywhere the language has tools
| to work around that which is not the same thing as having
| made an inherent, unfixable mistake in the design of the
| language (by having more than one way to deal with errors).
| Taywee wrote:
| Actually relying on panics for unwinding in any way is not
| encouraged in any way, and compiling with `panic = 'abort'`
| is really common, and completely removes all stack
| unwinding support.
| fwungy wrote:
| As someone learning the language on production code I must
| agree that the error handling of Rust is terrible.
| Exceptions have never been a struggle point for me with
| other languages, but Rust error handling has literally
| given me headaches.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins to
| fester. This is incredibly stupid behavior coming from what is
| being regarded as the next C++.
|
| >> Come on, Rust committee. Let's grow up here, shall we?
|
| It is too much power held by one group with too little
| accountability.
|
| More transparency is needed and more people from different
| organizations need to be involved.
|
| The fact that JT and the rest of us have to _guess_ what really
| happened speaks volumes.
| dralley wrote:
| It seems like the problem here is not even power of one
| group, but an individual doing an end run around the group.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> It seems like the problem here is not even power of one
| group, but an individual doing an end run around the group.
|
| If so where is the transparency and accountability?
|
| Who was the individual? Why did they do what they did?
|
| If they do not represent project leadership, what will be
| done to fix this situation and prevent similar problems in
| the future?
|
| If they do represent project leadership, why weren't the
| changes and the reasons for the changes communicated
| better?
|
| A group of people mysteriously calling the shots in a
| closed room ultimately alienates the community and will
| stifle the long-term success of Rust.
| generalpf wrote:
| This person claims to be one of the individuals. https://
| pony.social/@sgrif@hachyderm.io/110447363468527189
| dralley wrote:
| Keep in mind that this whole thing started only about 36
| hours ago. The internet conditions us to expect immediacy
| but this is all being done by volunteers on a holiday
| weekend, not a corporate PR department. I doubt the full
| teams involved will even be able to convene until Tuesday
| at least due to people on vacation.
|
| The accountability _must_ happen and shouldn 't be
| ignored, and I hope that various parties step forward to
| handle the mea culpa responsibly, but it's a bit early to
| grab the pitchforks, light the torches and march to the
| town square.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> Keep in mind that this whole thing started only about
| 36 hours ago.
|
| Fair enough.
|
| How the situation is handled matters, so I suppose we
| will see.
| amelius wrote:
| Looks like the Rust community could use some reflection ;)
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Perhaps the people feeling most uncomfortable about
| reflection are those who need it most.
| cookieperson wrote:
| [flagged]
| indy wrote:
| 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."
| junon wrote:
| Agreed, that part was a little ehh for me too. And I think a
| resignation is a complete overreaction, but hey, I'm not
| close to any of these people so what do I know.
|
| The original behavior is childish. And the quoted paragraph I
| have there about it revealing some internal mechanics of the
| leadership group is an important observation, one I'm much
| more concerned with.
|
| It's revealing that Rust's open operation may not be so open
| after all. That can quickly cause a lot of problems if not
| quelled.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Yeah seriously. Still putting my eyes back into their sockets
| after they rolled out from reading that
| wokwokwok wrote:
| Is it bad of me to say I really just don't care?
|
| If he did the talk. If he did it as a keynote. If someone
| else is "leaving rust" because of it?
|
| It all seems so fabulously irrelevant, I really struggle to
| understand why:
|
| 1) I should care (I don't, currently)
|
| 2) People are coming out of the woodwork to criticise the
| rust team / foundation whatever when they're not involved.
|
| 3) Why people having emotions (eg. The person above, who
| _does_ care) is somehow a bad thing?
|
| 4) Any kind of positive out come is going to come of this.
|
| I really struggle to view doing anything else as not hostile
| to the rust project or having an agenda ("stop rust being
| woke!!") which is non technical, and unhelpful.
|
| Rust is great. It's not perfect. The people who build it are
| not perfect, the foundation is not perfect.
|
| People _are not perfect_.
|
| It's ok.
|
| Call out problematic behaviour, don't obsess over it.
| underdeserver wrote:
| People are literally calling it out. Nobody's obsessing.
|
| It seems to me that OP feels like he is forced out by this
| behavior. To be forced out of a project you put your heart
| and soul into over several years, that can hurt.
|
| Also the governance of the project is important if you want
| to invest in the ecosystem. These are the people who make
| the decisions for Rust. If you want to rely on Rust, you
| better trust them to make the right ones, and this here is
| (ostensibly) a strong example to the contrary.
| monkeywork wrote:
| 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 while.
| kyrofa wrote:
| This. I have avoided rust so far because I don't like the
| community around it and the reputation it's building.
| This type of drama really does effect the ecosystem.
| quotemstr wrote:
| 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).
| There's too much riding on Rust now to leave its future
| up to emotion and chance.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| So what can we who use Rust, but don't have those levers
| of power, do to help accelerate this professionalization?
| junon wrote:
| From my understanding the Rust team _was_ involved and they
| sidestepped democratic processes put in place to make sure
| the Rust foundation doesn 't kill itself with unchecked
| mismanagement essentially.
|
| The point is more that this sort of unilateral decision
| should never have been possible to make in the first place.
| It should have been discussed and voted on before the talk
| was downgraded.
|
| Perhaps that _specific_ incident is inconsequential, sure.
| I think even the speaker agrees so. But the fact that this
| lapse in process could happen within the Rust foundation
| _at all_ is a red flag for other, more language-specific
| dangers.
| wokwokwok wrote:
| How? Everything is done openly on
| https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs
|
| I mean, I hear you. I understand what you're saying, I
| just don't understand how you (or others) think this is
| related to the technical aspects of the language.
| ReleaseCandidat wrote:
| > Everything is done openly on https://github.com/rust-
| lang/rfcs
|
| But the RFCs are written and reviewed by people. And they
| need to have the feeling that the work they do isn't
| useless because the one who actually decides is somebody
| else who hasn't been involved in the process at all until
| the very end. It's ok having somebody being able to veto
| stuff, but this must be known and communicated beforehand
| - "yes, that's ok for us, but $PERSON has the last word
| on this so we have to await his approval".
| junon wrote:
| Because the same _people_ are involved, and they
| knowingly sidestepped these exact sorts of processes
| without care. It might not be important to you, but this
| seems like a red flag to many.
| auggierose wrote:
| If leadership acts so carelessly with regard to matters
| concerning a human being in such a shady and
| disrespecting manner, why would they act less careless
| with regard to technical matters? Will they just enforce
| their biased opinion, ignoring valid and generally
| accepted technical arguments? Rust leadership sounds a
| bit like the elite leadership of a communist state. I'd
| prefer an open dictatorship over that.
| nindalf wrote:
| Notable in this backlash that this happened Friday
| evening/Saturday morning. So many of whom you're
| characterising as the "elite leadership of a communist
| state" might not have seen this yet. They need to
| coordinate, build consensus and speak with one voice. I
| expect that might take a couple of days so they might
| have a response by Wednesday or so.
|
| Also, my understanding is that the consensus among the
| committee was to invite and then one person broke that
| consensus. You're characterising this as a careful,
| considered decision made by all of Rust project
| leadership but that might not be the case at all.
| auggierose wrote:
| No, I am not presenting this as a careful, considered
| decision. I was just responding why this incident could
| possibly also reflect on technical matters (not saying
| that it actually does). I have no clue what went on
| exactly. But clearly leadership somehow failed in this
| incident. Looking forward to hear more about how exactly
| this has happened.
| nindalf wrote:
| It's possible to characterise anything as a leadership
| failure because the buck stops with them. But I don't see
| what they could have done differently other than all
| being available on weekends to troubleshoot issues like
| this.
| auggierose wrote:
| If just one person inside leadership fails, that's also
| leadership failure. If that's the case, most likely the
| remaining leadership will distance itself from this soon
| enough.
| nindalf wrote:
| 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.
| auggierose wrote:
| The solution is to pick better leaders. This should never
| have happened in the first place. Whoever is responsible
| for this needs to go.
| nindalf wrote:
| 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."
| lakomen wrote:
| It's called being an empathic human being
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Part of empathy is realizing when someone is
| authentically upset, and telling that apart from when
| they are being cynically melodramatic.
|
| > 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.
|
| This shit does not come off as authentic even a little
| bit.
| tux3 wrote:
| Keep in mind that the author is on the spectrum, and the
| way they process emotions might not be the way you
| process emotions. Different cultures, different thought
| processes, different feelings.
|
| I'd err on the side of believing people, unless and until
| they prove themselves to be insincere. Which is very much
| not the author's reputation, as far as I know.
|
| People can be melodramatic sincerely. There's no reason
| to look for cynicism here.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You're right, it's not authentic or to be taken at face
| value. But that doesn't mean that there's not _some_
| authentic meaning that 's being clearly communicated
| here. Look beyond the surface message!
| gilmore606 wrote:
| No, don't, because it's not good to normalize such
| manipulative ways of communicating.
| peyton wrote:
| I think he's just calling somebody an asshole.
| talkingtab wrote:
| Cause and Effect. You say "Rust is great". Why? Because
| People who work together effectively created Rust. And
| people working together have created most of the other
| things that are great. So if you want Rust, better Rust or
| more Rusts, then you may want to care whether the Rust
| organization will continue to work together effectively.
|
| My 0.02 is that we live in a time where we are losing site
| of communities and focusing on individuals. Your comment
| appears to be an example of that. Human beings are adaptive
| and successful in general because they effectively work
| together. If you want to think about that idea, one of the
| things I've been pondering is _how_ the Ukrainians have
| stood up to the vast power arrayed against them?
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Or maybe Rust is great because Graydon was (presumably
| still is) an exceptionally skilled language designer and
| implementor. An increased focus on individuals makes
| sense to me because advances in technology give
| individuals more power, and it makes sense to me to
| minimize the overhead of coordination by making the most
| of that power to accomplish greater things with fewer
| people.
| bennettnate5 wrote:
| Did Graydon write the Rust analyzer? Did Graydon
| personally pen all of the documentation (let alone the
| books and tutorials) that contribute to Rust's usability?
| Rust is great primarily because it has a community of
| contributors that all work in various fields of the
| language to make it what it is. The sheer volume of work
| that needed to be done to get Rust to where it is today
| could not be shouldered on the backs of a small
| collection of skilled individuals; coordination and
| collaboration is _essential_ for a project like Rust.
|
| You can find countless research papers out there that
| present a brilliant idea devised and implemented by a
| skilled individual that ultimately goes nowhere despite
| its merit. Skilled individuals still need community to
| expand their work to the scope that will allow the idea
| to really shine.
|
| (Note this is not meant to minimize Graydon's
| contributions to Rust's success, but to highlight the
| general principle that ideas require a community to grow
| into greatness)
| mathfailure wrote:
| [flagged]
| brokenkebaby wrote:
| >Why people having emotions (eg. The person above, who does
| care) is somehow a bad thing?
|
| It's a bit of manipulation as nobody stated that having
| emotions is bad. Meanwhile, people leveraging unverifiable
| claims of bad feelings to hurt somebody is apparently ok...
| unless that somebody is you, of course.
| wadd1e wrote:
| >It all seems so fabulously irrelevant
|
| Except (in my opinion) it's not, if the set of people
| responsible for the progress of the technology you(and
| mabye your company) are going to be using are able to make
| such terrible decisions, it opens doors for far worse on a
| scale where you will start to care(take a look at the code
| of conduct stuff(edit: I meant the trademark stuff); if
| they went ahead with it, which is very possible if they're
| willing to sidestep all ideas of democracy, then there
| would be some notable repercussions).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It means that, like everything that started at Mozilla,
| Rust will have some uncomfortable growth phase and then
| mature at some group that may or may not be the original
| one.
|
| We can expect some mildly bad decisions on the language
| evolution. But it's very unlikely that this will open a
| niche for another language to replace Rust.
| adave wrote:
| I think being apathetic about it won't solve anything
| either. An expert leaving a is a big issue as that brings
| about the underlying rot in the committees way of handling
| bad or fool hardy behavior from a mob. You maybe should
| care a little given the flaws it exposes in their processes
| or lack of managing the human element.
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _I think being apathetic about it won 't solve anything
| either._
|
| How so? Me, a random Rust dev, can't ever make any
| difference in how is the foundation governed.
|
| But, if you are telling us that the Rust leadership will
| e.g. actively follow this very HN thread and base their
| policy on it then yeah, then I'd agree with you.
| worrycue wrote:
| > I really struggle to understand why: 1) I should care (I
| don't, currently)
|
| It's unprofessional I guess. For the sake of Rust's future,
| it should probably get better stewardship. If you agree to
| let someone speak then you should honour it.
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| You cared enough to comment on it.
|
| Comments about how someone just doesn't care about
| something is the worst kind of comment.
| [deleted]
| bradleyjg wrote:
| _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._
|
| I wouldn't want to work with someone that wrote this. I'm not
| sure which is worse--if it's hyperbole or it isn't.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This is modern wokespeak for "what you did is
| unprofessional and I'm not sticking around for more." A lot
| of the emotional hyperbole in this blog post is essentially
| that - emotional vulnerability and sensitivity is valued in
| "hyper-woke" contexts, while words like "unprofessional"
| are seen as callous - and I kind of read it that way rather
| than literally.
| pdimitar wrote:
| I still don't want to do them the favor of normalizing
| such dramatic language by accepting it. Just call it
| "unprofessional" if you truly feel that it was.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Unfortunately, you have to write for your audience. The
| audience for this piece seems to want emotional melodrama
| combined with diffusion of responsibility.
| Ansoni-San wrote:
| Good to know you wouldn't want to work with anyone autistic
| or on the spectrum.
|
| Which is the case here.
|
| The thing is that the people on here taking about "being
| adults" are the least tolerant or understanding that people
| experience things and express things differently.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| It's bizarre that you're scolding this person for being
| intolerant while implying such language is to be expected
| of "anyone autistic or on the spectrum". To me, that is
| offensive stereotyping.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| I think it's more important to engage with the contents of
| the post rather than your misgivings with the author's
| writing style. Honestly it's a childish approach to have.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Be the change you want to see in the world.
| Levitz wrote:
| Criticizing how the author (who just left Rust) engages
| with the community while he himself criticizes how
| engagement with the community is done is rather valuable.
| adave wrote:
| Let us see you rewrite it given the community culture and
| guidelines. Can't write i left because of toxic pieces of
| shit people with zero empathy.
| kaashif wrote:
| If you're leaving the community anyway, does it matter if
| you violate the CoC through being honest about your
| opinions?
| pdimitar wrote:
| Not sure how much the empathy levels of someone -- not an
| objective metric -- should be used when making
| professional calls about speakers in a foundation but you
| do you.
|
| The underlying problem seems to be: sidestepping
| democratic processes. IMO that is what should be
| addressed first and foremost.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Here's chatgpt:
|
| ---
|
| My decision to leave was driven by witnessing the
| negative impact on JeanHeyd resulting from the actions
| taken by Rust. The situation raised concerns about the
| treatment and the breach of trust that occurred. It made
| me reflect on the role I played in the development of the
| system and whether I want to continue to be associated
| with it.
|
| ---
|
| No weeping, no histrionic claims of betrayal.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| That's actually very good
| passion__desire wrote:
| "I decided to depart after recognizing the profound sense
| of disillusionment and dissatisfaction JeanHeyd
| experienced due to perceived unfair treatment and
| deception. The depth of this unfairness, reaching a level
| that I perceived as unjust, deeply resonated with me.
| This situation highlighted a need for better
| communication and understanding within the community,
| prompting my decision to step back. I express my deepest
| regret over these circumstances, and I sincerely hope for
| improvements in our conduct and interactions going
| forward."
|
| -- another version by ChatGPT
| Lammy wrote:
| > Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling
| uncomfortable"
|
| Ironic
| https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235124.html
| bjornsing wrote:
| > "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."
|
| I'm a bit hesitant to say this out loud, but... you can only
| cry over this "betrayal", "mistreatment" and "cruelty" if you
| have lived a very protected life.
| arijun wrote:
| Pretty sure they're just using poetic license.
|
| Also, this is definitely not true---a spouse cheating on
| you would be a "betrayal" but I wouldn't fault anyone for
| weeping over it.
| lolinder wrote:
| Are you really comparing this little spat to marital
| infidelity?
|
| This further emphasizes OP's point--nothing the Rust team
| can do to you should approach the emotional impact of
| marital betrayal.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > you can only cry over this "betrayal", "mistreatment" and
| "cruelty" if you have lived a very protected life.
|
| For some people, crying is just a way to deal with
| emotions. So please don't judge.
|
| I've been a professional software developer for more than
| 20 years. I still find myself weeping at work once in a
| while, especially when overwhelmed with hardship and
| negative feelings. I don't see how this would be a sign of
| living "a very protected life."
| andrewprock wrote:
| If your workplace is _regularly_ bringing you to tears,
| you should start looking for a new position. No one needs
| a job with that level of emotional overhead.
| ksec wrote:
| > if you have lived a very protected life.
|
| You just summarised 98% of all current cultural problem in
| Silicon Valley.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| What are you saying? "Suck it up."?
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| He is saying "be an actual professional and don't bring a
| vocabulary pertaining to intimate discussions to the
| public sphere when what's discussed is a technical
| conference."
|
| It's already barely acceptable in a purely American
| context. To me as a European, this is extremely off
| putting and culturally out of line which is a recurring
| problem with Rust.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's a dog whistle. What the OP is _actually_ saying is
| that he 's extremely angry and pissed off that this was
| allowed to happen, and he's noping out for that eminently
| understandable reason. But if he said that in no
| uncertain terms (as a European very well might in similar
| circumstances!) he might fall afoul of the official Code
| of Conduct for being aggressive and threatening towards
| other contributors. Hence this weird talk about intimate
| "weeping" and "pain". Make no mistake, this is not some
| softy empath talk but quite the opposite!
| veidr wrote:
| wat
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| Why would a "this is what happened and it's the reason
| I'm not longer going to be involved in the Rust project
| going further" possibly be able to violate a Code of
| Conduct? Sure if you start calling people an asshole or
| lash out. But that's similarly uncalled for...
|
| Everyone is free to nope out. And people noping out is
| something that Rust (the community) needs to take into
| account. _Because_ it depends on them. But as is.. I'm
| unsure if this kind of emotional involvement is even
| something Rust (the project) _should_ want
| naasking wrote:
| > 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?
| vintermann wrote:
| Maybe the one he wept at helping to create.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > 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 and he'll tell you the truth" sort of thing.
| seneca wrote:
| 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.
| naasking wrote:
| 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.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| 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.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| We had a world built entirely of people who were
| technical for the love of it. Those who were fascinated
| with computers and the internet before there was real
| money in it as a career. When no one cared about
| computers and left us alone the community built by a
| largely neurodiverse group had rational rules that made
| people that would fall into the inneagram 8 category feel
| comfortable. Not just neurodiverse either, despite the
| stereotype of the neckbeard with pocket protector women
| were better represented in the 70s and 80s computing
| community than later on. We may have surpassed that mark
| now though, I haven't compared numbers recently.
|
| Edit: I used the term neurodiverse and then implied we
| all fell into one category of personality. That seems to
| conflict, but what I meant was that we didn't differ much
| in the way that we differed. It was a gatekept community
| of a certain category of people where the gatekeeper was
| just interest in the subject absent any monetary
| motivation.
| foldr wrote:
| > 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.
|
| An awful lot of people didn't have the luxury of being
| openly gay in the 90s and 2000s. Depending on how old you
| are, this is naive at best or disingenuous at worst.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| An awful lot of people _still_ don 't have the luxury of
| being openly gay in the 2020s, because they happen to
| live in militant theocratic states. People on the
| activist left often seem to conveniently forget this, in
| a way that can only be fairly described as "naive at best
| or disingenuous at worst".
| foldr wrote:
| >An awful lot of people still don't have the luxury of
| being openly gay in the 2020s, because they happen to
| live in militant theocratic states.
|
| Are you talking about Iran or Florida? :)
|
| But more seriously, your overall response is quite
| cryptic. I can't answer for the 'activist left', whoever
| you take them to be.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >So they need reverse psychology to express anger at
| injustice because of the Code of Conduct? What is this
| world we're building?
|
| All of life is change and cycles and oscillations. Not
| just human society but even whole ecosystems. Very likely
| this approach will be pushed to extremes, implode and
| then the cycle will swing the other way. There are valid
| reasons for this cultural shift and like all such shifts
| those supporting it need to experience the failure of
| going too far. Eventually some less extreme equilibrium
| will come about.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| I'm tempted to add a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md to my main
| project repo with the following:
|
| Be direct. No bullshit. Don't worry about offending
| anyone, including the project leader; just say what needs
| to be said about the technical merits of whatever is
| being discussed. We're all here to [insert project goal];
| let's do so with a minimum of drama.
|
| But it's probably better to continue to not have a CoC,
| and just quietly lead by example instead.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| There is a writers' Facebook group which states its
| moderation policy like this: "the group is moderated very
| lightly. We are not your parents; if you have a
| disagreement, work it out among yourselves." I like this
| policy.
|
| And it kinda sorta works.
|
| That's not saying that CoCs were not a kind of response
| to some pathological behaviors in online communities: you
| often are going to get either socially inept man-
| children, or people on the spectrum, and there are
| kindergarten-level conflicts. You get programmers who
| attach themselves to their work too much, have very
| strong opinions, and often will treat a set of rules as a
| puzzle you need to game, without much concern towards any
| consequences.
|
| But my oh my, do lots of popular CoCs look like solution
| for that problem invented by the same kind of socially
| inept man-children who are the part of the problem. They
| likely have read the word "empathy" in a dictionary, but
| don't understand what it means in their bones.
|
| I have an even less charitable theory of what CoCs might
| be about, really, but for now I'm applying Hanlon's razor
| and stick to what I've stated above.
| ok123456 wrote:
| CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md but it's just the Marine Core code of
| conduct.
| cmcaleer wrote:
| Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that adding something like
| that would make things worse and open the door to wasting
| your time on pointless issues like "Why are you using
| this code of conduct instead of
| $my_pet_code_of_conduct?", whereupon you tell them
| they're not working towards the project goal, which leads
| to even more drama. It's simply not worth it.
|
| Those who can, do. Those who can't, open an issue about
| the code of conduct.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| So why not just say that. All this dog whistle talk is
| extremely immature and unprofessional.
| BizarreByte wrote:
| Because this is what happens when you try to restrict not
| only speech, but how community members even express
| themselves for fear someone might be hurt or offended.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| That's ridiculous. I hope the community fixes that.
| vintermann wrote:
| You know, this pattern:
|
| * Person is invited to talk
|
| * Person asks "You know about X, right?"
|
| * They say "sure, it's no problem"
|
| * They talk in private and take decisions in improper
| venues
|
| * The guy is slighted at the last minute, told it is
| because of X
|
| ... is an all too "professional" way to do it. This is
| how professionals will do it, when they want to let you
| know they don't like you. With a little deniability, but
| not too much. If what the complainant alleges is true,
| there are _too much_ social skill at work here - skill at
| exquisitely snubbing someone.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| I believe there is a wide range of possible emotional
| reactions between weeping about something on one end and
| sucking it up on the other.
| BrotherBisquick wrote:
| Yes, that or "man up."
| kbelder wrote:
| >Suck it up; man up.
|
| In our paroxysm of righteous correctionism, we've lost
| track that that is _really good_ advice, even though
| crudely phrased.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I think he is saying that words such as "cruelty" and
| "betrayal" have a weight in them that are way out of
| proportion to the events that took place.
|
| I am a bit out of the loop (I don't know who the people
| involved are), but I tend to agree, I think. Sounds like
| a mix of miscommunication and group politics. Those are
| things that people might get upset, but the exaggerated
| response sounds like a cheap appeal to raw emotions.
| rootw0rm wrote:
| rust needs it's empaths, too. if we can all figure out how
| to adult, be decent, work together, and understand the
| strengths/weaknesses of our very different personalities
| and skills, hopefully we can all continue building cool
| stuff together without alienating important voices.
| lolinder wrote:
| > 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.
| marcinzm wrote:
| 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 effective than spending
| the rest of your life going through their process.
|
| The real question is if the Rust project has an equitable
| governance structure that minimizes imbalances of power
| or if it doesn't. If it does then the author should
| follow that instead of a large angry blog post. If it
| doesn't then he may as well go with the large angry blog
| post.
| pdimitar wrote:
| No power over anyone is required. Reasonable and well-
| grounded arguments seeking to resolve conflict will do.
| marcinzm wrote:
| That requires either both sides to be equal in power or
| both sides to be willing to stick to the process. From
| the blog the author believes neither is the case.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Yes, agreed. My objection is to their dramatic language
| and seeming over-reaction. There were much better ways to
| express disagreement and protest.
| lolinder wrote:
| The author was one of four members of the core team [0],
| "which is which is ultimately responsible for all
| decision-making in the project."[1] If there was a power
| imbalance it's because they were ineffective in their
| position.
|
| [0] https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core
|
| [1] https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/1068-rust-
| governance.html
| lolinder wrote:
| You don't have to have power to deescalate.
|
| We're teaching our children to respond appropriately to
| conflict--in the situation above, either one of them can
| deescalate by approaching the conflict reasonably. He
| could have avoided it altogether by asking nicely for her
| pencil. She could deescalate by recognizing that he
| really wanted her pencil and making a trade that they
| both are happy with. It's hard for them to do because
| their escalatory actions feel more immediately effective
| at bringing "justice", but they don't work out in the
| long run.
|
| The cycle of childishness isn't going to be solved by a
| post that triggers an internet mob, that's just another
| childish response in the cycle.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >We're teaching our children to respond appropriately to
| conflict--in the situation above, either one of them can
| deescalate by approaching the conflict reasonably. He
| could have avoided it altogether by asking nicely for her
| pencil. She could deescalate by recognizing that he
| really wanted her pencil and making a trade that they
| both are happy with. It's hard for them to do because
| their escalatory actions feel more immediately effective
| at bringing "justice", but they don't work out in the
| long run.
|
| Again you're using an example of two children who are
| equal in power dynamics. Now try having a child
| deescalate an angry adult. Most people would not find
| that a reasonable request.
| lolinder wrote:
| The author isn't a child to the core team's adult, they
| were one of four members of the core team [0]. They're
| not an individual contributor who feels incapable of
| effecting change in the wider org, they were mad at the
| way one of their _peers_ handled the situation.
|
| [0] Still listed as such here: https://www.rust-
| lang.org/governance/teams/core
| marcinzm wrote:
| To me it looks like both sides are acting very emotional
| over the situation and using very loaded language to push
| their agendas forward. I almost feel the author is using
| discomfort even more as a weapon than the person who
| originally complained.
| nullc wrote:
| Which appears to be one of the underlying cultural flaws
| in the community to begin with. "Everyone sucks here" is
| a common situation because bad behavior is often a
| product of bad project culture.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling
| uncomfortable"_
|
| If anything, people should be pushed to accepting feeling
| uncomfortable. It means they're meeting challenging ideas,
| opposing viewpoints, and getting out of their comfort zone
| and echo bubble.
|
| Except if "not feeling comfortamble" is because someone e.g.
| exposes their junk, or farts endlessly on purpose during a
| conference. That, sure, should be curbed.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Was actually super surprised by that line. Was with the post
| until then.
|
| Yes, treat people with respect, but we also need people to
| have even a marginal resilience to adversity. The bar for
| being emotionally damaged seems to be getting lower and lower
| for people.
|
| If you can't take criticism, don't work in open source. You
| will never have 100% support from all people at all times.
| Many developers will manage social interactions (and
| organizing conferences) badly. That's life
| cmcaleer wrote:
| This whole saga has been legitimate grievances clouded by
| lengthy blog posts that could have been so much shorter and
| less dramatically written. The other blog about this
| controversy clocked in at over 2000 words!
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I wonder if that quote was tongue-in-cheek. It reminds me of
| the reviews of the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt on Amazon [0].
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Wolf-Short-
| Sleeve/dp/B...
| tanepiper wrote:
| It is absolutely having an impact on the outside. I'm
| currently putting together the architecture of our new
| Content Delivery platform, and considering different parts of
| the stack. The look from the outside is of a project who
| recently has been making very bad decisions from leadership -
| it makes me consider what to get our team to upskill in, or
| to hire on, as we move away from "everything in JS".
|
| A Go stack is looking quite achievable.
| glogla wrote:
| > Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling
| uncomfortable"
|
| I think it depends what you're uncomfortable with. I remember
| some drama about removing some speakers from security
| conferences a while back, because people were understandably
| uncomfortable with them being rapists.
|
| But being uncomfortable with ... talk about how compile time
| reflection might work in future versions of Rust? Huh? What?
|
| Also I do agree about the language. People are from different
| cultures and so on, yada yada, but to me the used language
| feels very overdramatized and childish.
| patrick451 wrote:
| Yeah, this language is just such hyperbole. Cruelty is
| pulling someones finger nails out with vice grips. What Rust
| did is rude, not cruel.
| paddw wrote:
| This whole exchange feels off. Essentially, the underlying
| spat is over a strong technical disagreement, but it is being
| prosecuted in this weirdly stylized language of emotion and
| abuse. I have no idea how something like this can be overcome
| so long as the core Rust community feels this is an
| acceptable way to handle things. Clearly this is something
| which extends beyond the immediate leadership team.
| rtpg wrote:
| The problem is that the strong technical disagreement was
| not brought up the many times it could have! Instead the
| stick was stuck in the bike wheels way after the bike was
| moving forward at a decent speed.
|
| Though "downgrading keynote to talk" is obviously not the
| same as an outright disinvite, the fact that the original
| invitee asked explicitly about this content being pre-RFC
| (giving rust leadership the out to resolve this amicably!),
| just makes it hard for me to say "oh this makes sense".
|
| Perhaps this is inevitable in some sense if the critique is
| not brought up earlier. But it's something that feels
| really avoidable if people were more honest about their own
| feelings on other peoples work.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| > that the strong technical disagreement was not brought
| up the many times it could have!
|
| Consensus attained by a shouting match?
| lawn wrote:
| > I have no idea how something like this can be overcome so
| long as the core Rust community feels this is an acceptable
| way to handle things. Clearly this is something which
| extends beyond the immediate leadership team.
|
| Do the Rust community really feel this is acceptable?
|
| Everyone seems to hate it, so I can see that it's possible
| it's "just" bad leadership (which is a big deal of course).
| quotemstr wrote:
| We've deprived a whole generation of the rhetorical tools
| for healthy, impersonal and professional argument. It's no
| wonder that they've pressed this "stylized language of
| emotion and abuse" into service to fill the void: it's all
| they know.
| monkeywork wrote:
| curious - what tools were deprived to a whole generation?
| jitl wrote:
| Shouting in the workplace and three martini lunches?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| 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 the lack of physical
| presence turns everyone into an asshole on the internet
| -- and then we raised most of the world on the internet.
| Glawen wrote:
| 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
| busterarm wrote:
| Previous recent generations also had most nations sending
| large groups of their men off to kill other nations' men
| for insufficient reasons.
|
| As a result of the current geopolitics, we don't have the
| self-awareness to realize that minor conflicts are minor
| conflicts and that the absolute best place to be and
| thing to be doing is spending time at home with your
| loved ones.
|
| We certainly shouldn't be carrying out PR strategy wars
| against our colleagues like is happening here...
| busterarm wrote:
| Skins are luxuriously thin these days, yeah.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Yeah, you can't even refer to someone by a slur an not
| have them make it a big deal. People are just too
| sensitive, _it 's just words._ /s
|
| The irony is not lost to me that the "it's just words"
| crowd is also sensitive to "just words".
| busterarm wrote:
| That's not even the context we're talking about here.
| We're talking about professional argument. Disagreement
| over decisions. Hurling slurs at people isn't even in the
| orbit of that.
|
| I'm talking about people being thin-skinned, petty and
| passive-aggressive about other people disagreeing with
| their ideas, which is something I see _constantly_ in
| this field.
|
| It's much worse when the progress we've made is
| weaponized against people and minor technical/procedural
| disagreements get turned into "other person hates X"
| because they disagree with me and I'm X...which
| unfortunately happens sometimes (and mirrors the false-
| equivalency that you've presented here).
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| The previous generations didn't exactly set a good
| example for healthy, impersonal and professional
| argument.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Look at the leadership. They have a large number of non-
| technical people and placeholders. The reason why it has
| ended up becoming political is because Rust is run by
| politicians.
| estebank wrote:
| Pray tell, who do you think are non-technical people in
| https://www.rust-lang.org/governance
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Everyone here knows exactly who I am talking about. That
| isn't who the leadership is (as you well know).
| estebank wrote:
| I honestly have no clue who you are talking about.
| qwery wrote:
| Leaving (or excluding yourself from) something because of
| "personal reasons" is very different to _excluding someone
| else_ because of your own discomfort, though.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| 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 coming out of this culture very
| surprising. I write rust every day, I don't have to identify
| or interact with any sort of community around it, but I care
| about the future of it. I just hope it's already too big to
| fail at this point, because there is way more drama coming
| out of this community in the future, that's for certain.
|
| [1] https://github.com/blyxyas/no-rust-policy-change
| User23 wrote:
| Once you understand that "woke" is basically a kind of
| white internecine competition then it stops being
| surprising that the "woke" movement doesn't really care
| about non-white persons except as pieces in that game.
| These events are of course entirely consistent with that
| interpretation, and so far I've never seen it falsified.
| More-nitors wrote:
| this whole "woke" mentality is going out of hand too
| fast...
|
| I mean, someone bullying some veterans/old men because
| they're "woke and feminist" isn't going to earn any
| sympathy from me.
|
| nowadays... "woke" just means "I'm better than you (so I
| can/will do things that are otherwise unacceptable to
| you)"
|
| ...I think we chose the wrong word. Rather than "woke",
| it should have been "NO BULLYING" -- which includes all
| things the real "woke" people tried to do, and forbids
| all things the wrong "woke" people are trying to do
| ra1231963 wrote:
| > 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!?
| jbaber wrote:
| Yes. Nothing against it _in theory_ , _but_ it leads to
| stuff they don 't like. Did you read the whole comment?
| ra1231963 wrote:
| I did. I don't get why they wouldn't be against the
| theory of something so obviously flawed that leads to
| exactly what they are describing.
|
| It's like saying you have nothing against eugenics _in
| theory_ , but the leap to how that can go wrong in
| practice is painfully obvious.
|
| Or "I have nothing against giving everyone a million
| dollars in theory". Obviously that is a dumb idea, so why
| even say you have nothing against it "in theory".
| Taywee wrote:
| They said "in theory", which is a contrast to "in
| practice".
| [deleted]
| fatneckbeard wrote:
| Yeah I worry about this. There was no "C leadership", it
| was simple enough that dozens of people created their own
| compilers within a few years of C existing. this was back
| before the internet. they had companies sprouting up like
| Borland just making C compilers for personal home
| computers. C just ... spread. All these kids learning
| Arduino in school, they are learning C.
|
| There basically is no other usable compiler than the
| official rust compiler. So it has this 'leadership' thing
| that ... C never really needed
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Rust is winning market from C and C++ precisely because
| of strong technical leadership and direction. It couldn't
| have made much progress by taking similar hands off
| approach as C, because C is already more than good enough
| C.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Rust is winning marketshare because it was built ground-
| up to take advantage of the massive progression of
| Moore's Law at compile time. Compiling programs written
| in Rust would have been completely infeasible 20 years
| ago, it would have simply been too slow.
| lr1970 wrote:
| > Rust is winning market from C and C++ precisely because
| of strong technical leadership and direction.
|
| No, Rust is winning because it is 40 years younger than C
| and 30 years younger than C++. Rust incorporates advances
| in computer language design that C/C++ cannot adopt
| without breaking backwards compatibility. Rust is winning
| despite its leadership rather than because of it.
|
| EDIT: elaborated a bit more.
| conradev wrote:
| These things can be true simultaneously. The Rust team
| can have extremely strong technical leadership and
| direction while also being incredibly immature when it
| comes to conflict resolution.
|
| Conflict resolution is hard! I struggle with it as an
| engineer who wants to please everyone, but I also
| recognize that it isn't possible to.
|
| Whoever had objections to the talk and was not able to
| express those objections to their teammates in the proper
| forum before taking action without their approval is
| just... immature. It violated trust amongst the Rust
| leadership team, and trust is everything.
|
| It's actually even worse, because this person also
| wielded enough power to represent Rust to RustConf, and
| did so incorrectly. They seem problematic.
|
| Leading people is always messy and requires the maturity
| to deal with failures gracefully, and a catastrophic
| failure from a simple task is not confidence-inspiring. I
| love Rust, so I hope they get their shit together.
| pphysch wrote:
| > Rust is winning market from C and C++ precisely because
| of strong technical leadership and direction.
|
| Hmm, not sure about that one. Rust has an enormous hype
| component to it, more than any other language I'm aware
| of.
|
| It may have strong technical leadership, but saying it's
| gaining market share "precisely" because of it is
| precisely misleading.
| patrick451 wrote:
| The hype around Julia definitely gives Rust a run for
| it's money.
| pphysch wrote:
| "in Julia" yields 25 pages of results on HN, while "in
| Rust" has >100 pages alongside other popular langs.
| bluejekyll wrote:
| Wouldn't you consider the C standards committee as the
| leadership of C?
| djbusby wrote:
| The C committee started after the various compiler
| implementations. Rust seems to have had the committee
| before the compiler.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Definitely not. C was born in a different context, and
| these days it's not common for any language to have
| multiple competing implementations, certainly not in its
| early years. C _needed_ the standard because there were
| many implementations, JavaScript _needed_ a standard
| because there were many implementations, but Python or C#
| or Rust or Java don 't have a standard (although there
| are technical specifications of different degrees of
| rigor) because the standard is what the reference toolset
| does, modulo what are accepted as bugs by the technical
| team.
|
| There was no "leadership team" for Rust at Mozilla as far
| as I know. It was originally a one-person side project
| like C++ or Python, then it was elevated to an official
| Mozilla internal project as its potential in the context
| Gecko was understood by the higher-ups. But again, as far
| as I know, whatever culture formed around the project did
| so organically, but also as a conscious attempt to avoid
| many cultural issues seen in other OS projects. And mark
| my words, the Rust community as a whole is genuinely
| friendly and welcoming compared to almost any other
| internet community of similar extent, and there's nothing
| sinister underlying that friendliness as far as I can
| see.
|
| When Mozilla got rid of Rust, the leading technical
| contributors continued as they had always done (albeit
| now with considerably fewer full-time paid contributors),
| as an independent self-organizing entity, but now even
| less accountable - in regard to technical decisions - for
| any external stakeholders but the Rust community itself.
| But some organization was required to foster Rust's
| growth, to manage all the inconvenient legal things, the
| interaction with the now several large stakeholders and
| funders such as Google and Amazon, and so on. So the Rust
| Foundation was created to manage all that. But the
| foundation's jurisdiction ends where the technical aspect
| of Rust begins - all the technical teams are still
| exactly what they used to be, accountable only to the
| greater community.
|
| At any point, anyone could have experimented with
| different implementations with no "committee" saying what
| to do, but let's face it: first, modern compilers, even
| simple ones, are extraordinarily complex compared to an
| early C compiler running on a PDP-11, and second, in
| light of the first, Rust didn't grow in popularity nearly
| fast enough for anyone else _bothering_ to write an
| implementation to experiment on.
| scns wrote:
| Reminds me of The Tyranny of Structurelessness [0], even
| though there is a structure. My bet would be, no matter how
| smart you are, your ape genes have more to say than your
| brain. The rider (mind) and the elephant (emotions + brain
| stem)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structurel
| essne...
| jlpom wrote:
| I don't get the relation between structure and emotions.
| levihaku wrote:
| [flagged]
| ethbr0 wrote:
| 110%. Any organization that lacks transparency in
| decision-making _and_ accountability (that is,
| attribution of decisions to specific people) devolves
| into a shadow-hierarchy.
|
| Which is even worse than an explicit hierarchy, because
| it provides more gray area for people with power to do
| things anonymously.
| kelipso wrote:
| All this is painfully predictable if you remotely pay
| attention to their initial public facing culture,
| statements, etc lol.
| Larrikin wrote:
| [flagged]
| n8henrie wrote:
| Is there a similarly succinct but inoffensive word or
| phrase you would recommend instead?
| Larrikin wrote:
| The term at this point is so twisted that your question
| is like asking if there a similarly succinct word one can
| use for the N word. Looking for an alternative that means
| the same thing is incompatible with it being inoffensive
| dragonwriter wrote:
| While _terse_ , "woke" is not _succinct_ , in its current
| negative external use, because it doesn't clearly
| communicate anything about what it describes other than
| that it is disliked by the speaker. It communicates more
| about the speaker and the identity group they affiliate
| with than its notional referent; its a kind of right wing
| virtue signalling. (The older positive use at least had
| something like a coherent meaning, so arguably was
| succinct as well as terse.)
| gavaw wrote:
| [flagged]
| jackmott42 wrote:
| [flagged]
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| [flagged]
| nullc wrote:
| > I just hope it's already too big to fail at this point,
|
| Too big to fail can easily also mean too big to fix.
|
| Failure is often not the worst outcome -- at least failure
| creates space for a fixed alternative to arise in the space
| left open.
| snek_case wrote:
| [flagged]
| vore wrote:
| Wow, just think of how "woke" Ada must be!
| johnisgood wrote:
| Yeah... its community is entirely different from that of
| Rust. :P
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that "think of the children" is a
| position taken at least as often by people who describe
| themselves as anti-woke, such as DeSantis and his "saying
| gay is illegal" idiocy.
| infamouscow wrote:
| I think it parallels the Christian Crusades where
| crusaders believed they had a moral duty to reclaim the
| holy land and convert people to Christianity, causing
| enormous damage in the process. Similarly, the Rust(tm)
| ecosystem largely believes they have a moral imperative
| to replace all software for the cause of memory safety.
|
| Much like priests hidden away in their sacristies, the
| Rust(tm) community meets my criticisms with the silence
| of a prayerful vigil, retreating to the cowardly
| sanctuary of downvotes instead of engaging in the
| enlightening pursuit of reasoned dialogue. [1][2][3][4]
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35060939
|
| 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34925457
|
| 3: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31779218
|
| 4: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31097928
| Y_Y wrote:
| As much as I found this funny and insightful, I think
| that you misrepresent the crusades (and perhaps, by
| extension, Rust). In my partially-informed opinion,
| conversion wasn't a major goal, even though people in
| conquered lands were given the option to convert and
| integrate. It was more important to claim "holy" land for
| Christians and make a show of owning and controlling the
| significant territory.
|
| Whether or not Rustaceans want to banish C people to the
| desert to write printer drivers or to commit apostasy and
| assimilate I am not qualified to say.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I think it parallels the Christian Crusades where
| crusaders believed they had a moral duty to reclaim the
| holy land and convert people to Christianity, causing
| enormous damage in the process_
|
| Perhaps those crusaders have also witnessed several
| centuries of islamic invasions of said lands, and
| countries all around the general area, and the takeover
| by force of the local populations...
| KerrAvon wrote:
| "SJW/woke" as an epithet is a right wing trope. Can we not
| do this please?
| gameman144 wrote:
| It's also a relatively apt description of a small subset
| of left-wing groups. My assumption is that the parent
| comment is explicitly referring to this small subset.
|
| Similarly "white supremacist" is often used as an insult
| on the inverse side, even for groups that don't believe
| in or desire white dominance. If someone actually _does_
| believe in those things, though, it 's still a totally
| fine term to describe them.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Not really, you see the same term used in left wing
| circles to refer to liberals/synthetic left types.
| twic wrote:
| 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.
| scns wrote:
| Drama is common in human Comunnities.
| dmix wrote:
| The funny thing is the typical response to basic drama is
| aggressive moderation/oversight, which often generates as
| much or more drama than before.
|
| Online communities have a natural tendency to turn inward
| and become disconnected from the original purpose of the
| community. A good measure is how much meta/political
| stuff comes up in every thread.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Your Bayes is showing.
| 127 wrote:
| Only in ones that are not based on merit and long term
| relationships.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Can you give an example of one that is?
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Are there any communities that are really based on merit?
| spangry wrote:
| Pretty much every human community has to be to some
| extent, with the exception of communities that face no
| external competition. Non-meritorious communities subject
| to competition quickly disappear.
| toofy wrote:
| "...to some extent..." is, i think, the most important
| piece of your reply.
|
| sure, merit plays some kind of role, but so do many other
| things. what so many comments in this discussion (and
| every other discussion surrounding this issue over and
| over and over again ad nauseum) really seem to want to
| ignore is the many other factors that play into long term
| group/project success.
|
| merit alone? hardly ever, if ever.
| drowsspa wrote:
| What? Non-meritorious communities are known to last
| literal millennia.
| PKop wrote:
| Just because someone doesn't deserve something based on
| merit, doesn't mean they won't be resentful and
| vindictive if they don't get it. You could even say the
| concept of merit and the reality of differentiation of
| competence and ability itself leads to drama and
| conflict.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| In high school.
| waboremo wrote:
| 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 the same reasons.
|
| IMO the root actually comes from the very heavy social
| signals that were utilized by the Rust team early on (you
| can read a lot about them through the core team's reddit
| posts atp, especially under threads about the code of
| conduct). This effectively became a beacon for many
| people to gravitate towards. So when you see these sort
| of very dramatic disagreements that's laughable to anyone
| outside of that bubble, it's because that's the type of
| people Rust was (unintentionally or intentionally)
| beaconing.
| rgbgraph wrote:
| 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: htt
| ps://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: h
| ttps://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/6ewjt5/question_abo
| ut...
|
| 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.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| State your assumptions, prepare to be boarded -9front IRC
| banner.
| Klonoar wrote:
| If (2) was a core piece, then having worked on enough
| open source projects I can assure you that informal code
| of conduct didn't do shit. ;P
| levihaku wrote:
| [flagged]
| croes wrote:
| Since micro aggressions are a thing number 2 is hardly
| possible.
| levihaku wrote:
| [flagged]
| mwcampbell wrote:
| That's not my understanding of micro-aggressions [1].
| IIUC, inadvertently doing a micro-aggression isn't being
| an asshole, but persisting in it after it has been
| pointed out definitely is.
|
| [1]: Disclosure: I'm a minority (disabled), but I'm also
| a white man.
| croes wrote:
| Ever heard of the Law of Penetrance of Negative Residues?
| croes wrote:
| The question is whether everything that is called a micro
| aggression is one.
| di4na wrote:
| I will be the one pointing out that you were compromising
| and cooperating so well because the diversity of opinions
| in the room was pretty limited.
|
| It happens that not being an asshole also mean asking
| yourself if maybe everything was cooperative because you
| were excluding so much that none of the people with a
| different opinion could join.
|
| As such... Making you the asshole. And not cool.
|
| But you know, I definitely could be wrong here. But I
| will note that nothing you presented discredit that
| theory. All the arguments presented fit it as well as the
| theory that it was great before.
|
| It is readers pick for what was happening here.
| rgbgraph wrote:
| Fair point, and one I needed to reflect on.
|
| I think in my past, whenever I've been in a leadership
| position over a group of people, we've all been there to
| achieve some goal. We were all cooperating to reach the
| same end -- and those with a different opinion of that
| "end" were excluded.
|
| I have also been on the opposite side of this: I've been
| a member of groups whose goals I did not agree with. And
| no amount of civility or communication would bridge that
| chasm; therefore my opinions and thoughts were excluded
| (and I voluntarily left).
|
| There is no right or wrong here -- if I step back and
| stop injecting my own feelings into the conversation:
| there are just differences.
|
| I don't like theories. I don't like abstract things that
| try to become a source of truth, while completely
| ignoring and marginalizing the very real human element
| involved. I have no respect for them.
|
| In my view, "don't be an asshole" is basically: you join
| a group of people, do not carelessly or intentionally go
| against the norms of that group. Do not insert yourself
| into a group of people that you know you will not get
| along with. There is no right or wrong, but there is
| conflict and no conflict.
|
| But even now, as much as I have tried to take a step back
| with an objective lens, and disassociate from my very
| real thoughts, feelings, and beliefs: what is the point?
| I hold all of these because they are integral to who I
| am. As do the people of the Rust community.
|
| Disjointed thoughts, without a goal to neatly encapsulate
| them all. Or perhaps my goal was to share my human
| experience with others? To socialize and create bonds
| with others? Quite a silly thing to do on the internet.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| > I have also been on the opposite side of this: I've
| been a member of groups whose goals I did not agree with.
| And no amount of civility or communication would bridge
| that chasm; therefore my opinions and thoughts were
| excluded (and I voluntarily left).
|
| What if you couldn't leave? Perhaps the cost of leaving
| is too high, or you're required to for a job. Membership
| in many groups isn't even a direct action, it's a by
| product of some other action. Take functional
| programming, I love it, but holy fuck I should have known
| as soon as I saw the word "pure" there'd be fucking
| Nazis, xenophobes, and bigots.
|
| > Do not insert yourself into a group of people that you
| know you will not get along with. There is no right or
| wrong, but there is conflict and no conflict.
|
| Take my functional programming example: I have caused and
| will cause conflict. Because sometimes "not being an
| asshole" is actually being an asshole. Life's full of
| color like that, you know?
| di4na wrote:
| Something you may have missed here. What if the shared
| goal and belief of the group, was one that in practice is
| also exclusionary?
|
| In that sense, even if the tone stays civil in group, the
| problem is still there.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Any examples of how this happens in practice with
| software projects? Actually curious about this.
| di4na wrote:
| Have you remarked how few software projects, even big and
| visible, handle privacy well, especially if you consider
| things like stalking? And then what happens to the people
| that come talk about it in these groups?
|
| The people are pushed out because "their concerns are not
| something this project is about". Which is consensus and
| focused on getting results right?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _We were all cooperating to reach the same end -- and
| those with a different opinion of that "end" were
| excluded._
|
| If you mean those with a different opinion about the
| overall "end" of the project, this would make sense.
|
| If you mean those with different opinions about any part
| of it, like how the project should implement reflection
| for example, it makes absolutely no sense to exclude
| them.
|
| This would translate into an authoritative culture, where
| everything is predetermined, and no dialogue is allowed,
| except perhaps for trivial matters.
| lumb63 wrote:
| Excluding someone else from a group doesn't make someone
| an asshole. Every group has one or some thing(s) that
| separate them from the rest, otherwise they'd never have
| formed a group. Maybe it's a vision, or a goal, or a
| belief, but there's something that holds the group
| together. Contrary to what you're saying, it's integral
| to the cohesion of that group to exclude people who will
| not fit well.
|
| There are countless examples of this phenomenon
| throughout history. Take for instance, the formation of
| the USA, the Catholic Church (Great Schism, Protestant
| Revolution, etc.), the American Civil War, etc. On a
| smaller scale, I know I've worked with people who would
| be a good fit on one team, but don't match the culture of
| another. Or people who are very passionate about
| something, but wouldn't do well in a group focused on
| something else. Sometimes, even, people have the same
| ends and such different means that they cannot coexist in
| the same group. You can see this with sports teams;
| everyone wants to win games, and some players or coaches
| don't fit on certain teams because their idea of how to
| win doesn't align with others'.
|
| The reality is not everyone fits into every group. Trying
| to force that will yield a lot of resentment on both
| sides, in my experience. Much better to nip the problem
| in the bud.
| levihaku wrote:
| [flagged]
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| 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 claim it was in this post. Look up
| the MANY Rails conference sexual harassment issues and
| worse.
|
| We should not whitewash the past because the present
| isn't what we want.
| [deleted]
| patrick451 wrote:
| And now we have a CoC and people are still mistreated.
| smh.
| dmix wrote:
| You shouldn't need a giant, complex CoC to tell people
| engaging in sexual harassment and creepy behavior to
| leave. Which is usually the type of stuff people point to
| for why it's so important to spend thousands of hours
| debating the rules.
|
| If I've learned anything for Reddit mod culture it's that
| when you see super involved rules on the sidebar it's
| still ultimately just post-defacto justifications for
| whatever emotional mood the mods are in that day. The
| longer the rules = a good measure how aggressively the
| mods gatekeeps their community for things that go well
| beyond the scope of what the community was originally
| about.
|
| This is how things like Programming becoming lower
| priorities in such communities than personalities/views
| of the people running it.
| busterarm wrote:
| more like "and now we have a CoC, so when anyone is even
| slightly grievanced, multiple careers will get torched
| (and not even always the party you'd expect)"
|
| Instead of a tool to be used to solve problems local to
| an organization or an event, it's wielded as a bludgeon
| in always the most public way possible (either by the
| org/conference or target of the CoC itself) and time and
| again this has shown to be bad for everyone and an
| endless source of drama.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rgbgraph wrote:
| 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 everyone
| consistently and could easily notice when something was
| going on.
|
| Perhaps this is an unsolved issue about scaling human
| communities?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| [dead]
| asveikau wrote:
| 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.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| [flagged]
| calibas wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I'm not sure what SJW or "woke" means in this context. They
| cancelled a black man because they felt "discomfort" over
| him being the keynote speaker.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| But the fact that he was black is a non-factor here, and
| shouldn't even be mentioned.
| Y_Y wrote:
| TFA seems to think it was important. The Rust conference
| needs to have a black friend to prove it isn't racist.
| calibas wrote:
| Why? Am I to believe the Rust leadership is so
| enlightened they're incapable of racial discrimination?
|
| There's a reason people don't want to talk about racism,
| and it's not because it doesn't exist anymore...
| busterarm wrote:
| I mean...it's not like Rust leadership didn't have a
| prominent member who loudly advocated ideas like "kill
| all men", right?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| taosx wrote:
| 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 ?
| junon wrote:
| Right. I didn't realize it was _that_ sort of reflection, see
| my edit.
|
| I don't know if their approach is the right one. I think the
| visitor pattern is a bit limited in usefulness (where it fits
| nicely for serde, it'll fall flat for other more exotic use
| cases I think. But I've not thought about it for more than
| about 5 minutes and haven't considered any other possible
| alternatives - they have.)
|
| However, I agree with them in that the current song and dance
| with syn being the prevailing defacto crate most of our
| macros are built on is a bit absurd, especially since they
| refuse to open up proc_macro internals for use by the public.
| I can certainly see both sides' points but the net effect is
| that, right now, the macro business yields subpar error
| handling and feels very much hacked on rather than being a
| natural part of the language like most other things in Rust
| seem to.
| ahahahahah wrote:
| I think it would be totally reasonable for a core member to
| say something like, "I'm uncomfortable with a keynote about
| this compile time reflection from Person1. I think it could
| look like we're endorsing it more than we are prepared for."
| That's exactly how I might think and talk about some
| extensive complex proposal from some outsider for a problem
| that I have some ideas on how we might want to solve. All the
| people upset about the keynote changes describe it in such
| like exaggerated form, that to me it's hard to just believe
| that they are the reasonable ones here.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I don't get it at all. Why would this would be inappropriate
| to cover in a keynote. Whether or not it ends up in the
| language, it's interesting material. It seems like it may be
| a case of people taking themselves too seriously; "we can't
| have that topic in our precious keynote!". Nobody cares!
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| > They've also written an article about reflection in Rust - a
| purely technical thing that is already pretty widely disliked
| conceptually.
|
| Maybe that really is the problem. Too much reflection leads to
| clever, but hard to debug hacks. Look what happened with C++
| templates and, further back, LISP macros. That way lies code
| that's unusually hard to read and maintain. Rust probably
| shouldn't go that way.
|
| Do you want to have a keynote address on an idea of that type?
| It's more of a subject for a proposal talk.
| shash wrote:
| C++ templates are not reflection; either compile time or
| runtime. There is a form of reflection, but that's RTTI,
| which is a totally different ballgame.
| Animats wrote:
| True, but both come under the heading of adding a level of
| indirection at compile time. It's a tough language decision
| on how far to go in that direction. Go, pre-template, was
| minimalist on this. C++ probably went too far. Where to
| stop is a good question.
| lolinder wrote:
| The would-have-been speaker's blog post addresses this
| question specifically. He apparently pushed back many times
| on the idea of giving the keynote on his work and was assured
| that the Rust organization was aware of the topic and wanted
| him to go ahead [0]. Then they walked back on that.
|
| That's what I think most people find terrible about Rust
| leadership's handling of the situation. It's not that this
| specific keynote was super important, it's that the team let
| the speaker spend a few weeks preparing a keynote and then
| pulled the rug on him.
|
| [0] https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-
| rustconf-2023
| atoav wrote:
| I may misunderstand something here, but I'd assume the
| organizers of a conference are in charge of deciding which talk
| goes where. Why is there an expectation for this to be
| different here?
|
| If I was askwd to give a keynote somewhere and upon
| presentation of my topic the organization decides another talk
| is better suited I would trust them that they wouldn't do that
| lightly.
| manojlds wrote:
| Rust leadership have a lot to reflect on.
| Varqu wrote:
| Never understood the childish fighting between languages,
| libraries within a language or as here different viewpoints.
|
| I mean, it's good to discuss different viewpoints, but
| programming choices is a hill I would never want to die on.
| bybybyby wrote:
| [flagged]
| dahart wrote:
| Technical opinions aren't something we're born with, they're
| not intrinsic and uncontrollable properties of a person, and
| technical opinions haven't historically been subject to
| widespread discrimination or hate crimes or even social
| imbalance in terms of income, right? The protections we have
| for race and gender aren't there to avoid discomfort or to
| avoid conflict, they're there to avoid harmful discrimination
| and to reinforce the civil rights of all citizens.
|
| The argument that opinion should be equally protected, or
| that conversely race and gender should not be protected seems
| very surprising coming from a gay black trans person, which
| makes me assume I probably don't understand what you mean.
| I'm curious to hear why you say the sensitivity to race and
| gender is artificial and irrational, given the history of
| physical atrocities that have occurred.
|
| All that said, this particular case isn't about protected
| categories at all, is it? The issue was not the existence of
| a dissenting opinion, the issue was that it was handled
| unilaterally without consensus, against the stated mores and
| procedures of the organization. They had a codified process
| for "protecting" dissenting opinions, and someone ignored and
| broke that process. This isn't to be confused or conflated
| with US (or any other country's) labor law's notion of a
| "protected class", we're talking about two completely
| different kinds of protection.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| Everyone has an opinion. That's why we have committees,
| governments, etc, to have a voice. However, your or my
| opinion is no more valuable than anyone else's except to
| ourselves. I have definitely taken criticism of my code and
| architecture very hard, once I even got up after a meeting
| after my group voting against my architecture. I put a lot of
| blood, sweat, and tears into over about a month of late
| nights and plenty coffee. However, I accepted the decision
| (by team committee I guess you could say. I didn't cry that
| my feelings were hurt. I was actually vindicated about a year
| later when that project fell apart under the crush of being
| very brittle, whereas mine would not have. However, I didn't
| gloat, I helped replace their brittle infrastructure with the
| one I had stuffed away in a zip file and almost forgotten
| about. However, stuff like that is just work. I think that
| has to be kept separate from human rights like respect for
| your gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, etc .
| Those should never be negotiable and no one should be made to
| feel "less than" are a separate concern. No one should have
| to put up with that, but I don't think that's what this is
| about at all. We should all have a thin-skin and maniacal
| defense of those basic human rights. Not so much when it
| comes to a language architecture. Life isn't about "feeling
| comfortable" in all circumstances. So I don't think those
| situations are similar at all.
| bybybyby wrote:
| [dead]
| numlock86 wrote:
| [flagged]
| losvedir wrote:
| > And then they pushed them out of the conference behind
| leadership's back?
|
| Effectively, but worth noting for clarity that they only
| explicitly wanted to demote the talk from keynote. But as this
| was disrespectful, the speaker withdrew entirely.
| veidr wrote:
| This looks to me like a shitty situation, handled badly, _but_...
| having read this thread backwards, starting with the HN comments,
| then JeanHeyd Meneide 's own blog post about it, and finally the
| "Why I Left Rust" post being discussed here... I mean, shit
| happens? It's easy to fuck up when planning a big conference and
| sometimes you end up wasting the time of presenters, or (arguably
| worse) the audience, or (maybe the worst) sending the world the
| opposite of the message you intended, or some combination of
| those.
|
| Or sometimes, yes, you end up exposing your organization as the
| cabal of racist authoritarian illegitimate corporate-sellout
| puppetmasters that it actually is.
|
| But I mean... I don't see strong evidence of the latter, unless
| there is more to the backstory than I gleaned from the process
| above, which is:
|
| 1. No non-white person has ever given a keynote at RustConf
| (according to the linked "Why I Left Rust" post)
|
| 2. This one was going to be that.
|
| 3. But then the conference organizers canceled it, in a ham-
| fisted way.
|
| 4. But also, the topic was controversial, in the sense that at
| least some stakeholders may have felt "this kind of compile time
| reflection will definitely not be added to Rust in the
| foreseeable future"
|
| So... it is absolutely understandable that the Meneide was highly
| irritated by the way it was handled, and ended up declining to
| present at all.
|
| But did the Rust organization "disgrace" this expert in the
| field? Did Rust act as a "cruel, heartless entity"?
|
| I will concede the late rejection (of the talk as a "keynote")
| was "unprofessional", but... was it "vindictive"? That implies
| the organization wanted revenge for something... what?
|
| It's not clear to me after clicking and reading for almost an
| hour. But it seems to be consistent with the pattern of the
| various entities around Rust stepping on their own dicks. I'm
| reminded of the Rust Foundation taking out full-page newspaper
| ads like "IMPLEMENTING A CRYPTO PONZI SCHEME? DO IT FASTER IN
| RUST!" and then actual Rust core team people were like ":fuck-
| you-emoji: :barf-emoji:".
|
| I would be perhaps relieved that they are apparently making a
| significant effort at reforming their governance
| (https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3392) were it not for the
| fact that one of the authors of that PR is the author of the post
| we're discussing here, who just quit the Rust project entirely.
| :grimace-of-regret-emjoi:
| bruce343434 wrote:
| 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?
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Indeed, I would like for USians to stop exporting their
| structural brand of racism, which one would hope would have
| been left in the worst years of the 20th century.
|
| It's NOT acceptable to call people "Black" (note, pretty much
| equivalent to the n-word), nor even "person of color". We are
| NOT our skin color, it's particularly evil and racist to force
| people into groups based on things they cannot change about
| themselves (and they cannot change about their children),
| groups that have been used fairly recently to discriminate
| against them.
|
| I'll note that even USian anthropologists (roughly) agree with
| me :
|
| https://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?I...
| cristoperb wrote:
| > even USian anthropologists (roughly) agree with me
|
| But also note that the position of the AAA is not that racial
| inequality does not exist at all (and therefore should not be
| spoken of, as seems to be your position); their position is
| that it exists on social, rather than biological, grounds:
|
| > we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called
| "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological
| inheritance but products of historical and contemporary
| social, economic, educational, and political circumstances
| peyton wrote:
| I agree with you, though I don't know if it's really
| exporting to be writing about it on a personal blog or even
| an American news site like this one. Note the anthropologist
| take was adopted in 1998; things have changed a lot
| domestically since then.
| kortex wrote:
| Well, the Associated Press style guide squarely disagrees
| with you.
|
| Not having a label for something makes it really difficult to
| talk about issues around that subject. How am I supposed to
| advocate for a group of people who have it rough,
| _specifically_ for their skin color, if I can 't use the term
| for their skin color?
|
| https://blackvoicenews.com/2020/06/17/black-with-a-
| capital-b...
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| I can't open the link, but what words should I use to
| describe people of different skin color when that is
| appropriate or necessary?
| jmull wrote:
| > It's NOT acceptable to call people "Black" (note, pretty
| much equivalent to the n-word)
|
| That's a rather extreme claim. I'd be careful about holding
| strong views on things you don't understand very well,
| especially on such a charged topic.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| Saying someone is black or someone identifying as black is
| not the same as the n-word, this is hilariously out of touch
| klyrs wrote:
| 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?
| dathinab wrote:
| 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
| jeroenhd wrote:
| This stood out to me as well. Granted, the person people felt
| "uncomfortable" about only later tweeted out that the 0% black
| representation was an outlier, but I haven't heard much reason
| why this is relevant yet.
|
| On the other hand, there's more going on than what's being told
| publicly. Perhaps racism does play a role in this. The use of
| the word "uncomfortable" without clear explanation suggests
| this is more than just "we don't want another reflection flame
| war".
|
| It's possible that this person was just hoping to use the
| keynote speaker as a token of inclusiveness, but I have to
| wonder if there isn't more going on if racism is brought up
| after incredible vague notions of people feeling
| "uncomfortable" being given as a reason why they keynote
| speaker got demoted to a normal speaker either.
|
| I'm hoping the remaining leadership owns up to their mistake,
| put out a detailed reason why the purely technical topic of
| reflection is making them so uncomfortable, and lay out proper
| measures to prevent this from happening again, with the
| necessary correctional measures applied to the leadership
| member who went behind the others' backs on changing the
| invitation. They'd also need to come up with a clear and honest
| apology, of course.
|
| If they can't give a decent objective reason why they're so
| "uncomfortable", or don't get real professional real fast,
| there's much more drama to be had the coming weeks.
| overgard wrote:
| I think it's just SJW mudslinging. Imply someone's a racist and
| they spend so much time defending themselves against the
| accusation that people just start to assume they're racist.
| Activist cultures have the nastiest in-fighting.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Have you ever been the victim of losing a position because you
| weren't white? Have you even been turned down for a loan
| because you weren't white or straight or were "different".
| That's why it's a big deal. It isn't everything, but it is a
| factor all over in America. I seriously don't believe anyone
| who says it isn't also an issue in other places as well. I
| lived in Europe for a year in various parts and heard racist
| talk just as surely as I have as an American, so don't tell me
| that it's not an issue in other countries, I know it is. Racism
| is just a subset of ethnic discrimination. It was a little more
| subtle in most cases, but it was there.
| hgs3 wrote:
| Life is unfair and some people will use anything they can,
| whether it be race or whatever, to get ahead. I did the same
| thing when I was younger: I wrote a book at age 15 and marketed
| it as being written by a teenager to get sales. In this case, I
| played into my age rather than race, but the idea is the same.
| Oddskar wrote:
| How petty are you as a person if you disregard your peers and
| screw someone over just because you're "uncomfortable" with a
| technical article?
|
| Can we just stop with this intolerance of differing opinions?
| It's OK to disagree with someone. We don't need to all share the
| same opinions. Why the fuck would you have a conference if not to
| inject some healthy discourse in your community?
| cookieperson wrote:
| Also you are allowed to call that out AT THE CONFERENCE. In my
| field conference talks always have a Q and A. Sometimes people
| get completely shredded (in a tactful professional way) during
| a Q and A. If it's something you disagree with ask questions.
| This is someone willing to put their reputation on the line to
| say something, they've been vetted, voted on, made
| arrangements, etc. If they are wrong well that's what peer
| review is for, and working as a team is for.
| thiht wrote:
| Also how can someone be << uncomfortable >> about a technical
| article? You can disagree, you can dislike it, you can even
| think it's stupid, but uncomfortable? Wtf
| vasachi wrote:
| Once on a conference one guy gave a talk about how he
| overrode python's module loading to load them from a mongodb
| instance. The reason was, if I remember correclty, because
| "it was easier for the juniors".
|
| It made me veeeeeeeeery uncomfortable. Still a very good
| talk.
| lamontcg wrote:
| How come we can't have a technical discussion about reflection in
| a language without it degenerating into this kind of a shitshow?
|
| And all the people who immediately started accusing rust of being
| "woke" are equally at fault here--don't think for a moment that
| I'm on your side. This whole thread is a disaster.
|
| How did we get here in the first place that people seem to have
| religious beliefs over a language feature and want to scream at
| other people that they're heretics (and see the wailing and
| moaning in the Go community over generics for another example).
|
| All of you, grow the goddamn fuck up, please.
| [deleted]
| levihaku wrote:
| Rust community which is full of butthurt pissbabies that will cry
| about anything and everything is a total joke but I'm glad it
| exists. This nonsense could be happening in CPPcons right now but
| luckily we got a whole containment organization for them in
| entirely different language that makes sure that they're as far
| away from me as possible. Thank you for that.
| jasmer wrote:
| "Rust acted as a cruel, heartless entity that did not care about
| JeanHeyd and treated him as disposable. "
|
| "But it was just a downgrade. I shake my head at people that say
| things like this. Clearly, they are not used to treating people -
| let alone experts in the field - with respect. "
|
| It was actually just a downgrade - and using terms like 'cruel'
| lacks proportionality.
|
| It's a bit petty, especially for these kinds of public grievances
| over very personal, pedantic kinds of things.
|
| Obviously what Rust did was 'not good' - these things happen all
| the time - and they need perspective and context.
|
| All this huff and puff from people who take themselves a bit too
| seriously, maybe to the point of arrogance - we're professionals
| not artists, and that means 'making sausage as best we can'. It's
| all sausage, nothing is perfect, toes get stepped on - roll with
| it - that is the sign of maturity and confidence. If there is a
| systemic issue take that up.
|
| Paradoxically it's these kinds of public slap fights over that
| make me wary of being engaged with a community, it's too much
| Kardashian.
| malkosta wrote:
| When is the Taylor swift concert?
| beezlewax wrote:
| Rust is a programming language.. emotionally charged articles
| like this one and the behaviour of the Rust leadership lately are
| both ridiculous.
|
| Programmers want good stable languages that are a joy to work
| with. Everthing else but this can take a hike.
| chillbill wrote:
| I haven't seen anyone bring this up, so I will.
|
| I read through the original blog post from JeanHeyd[1] and in no
| way do they mention anything related to being a person of color,
| why then does JT associate it with that? I have no idea about the
| inner workings of the rust leadership team and who they are even,
| but from the timeline described and from the original post,
| there's nothing the could be related to that. JeanHeyd is a
| technical expert and not a token, I feel like introducing the
| issue of being "a person of color" (as if white is not a color,
| but whatever) is strange IMO and also needs to be called out. I
| respect and enjoy JT's work and learned a lot from them, but this
| is also something that should not be just mentioned casually. If
| JeanHeyd was invited or their talk demoted because of the color
| of their skin then there's totally different conversation to be
| had (and a totally different kind of accountability).
|
| This behavior is disrespectful _regardless_ of the skin color of
| the expert! It doesn't change it one bit.
|
| Just because they're not white shouldn't afford them any special
| treatment, and I say that as a non-white person. Merit is what
| counts, treating experts with affordance to their biology is
| patronizing at the very least.
|
| My two cents.
|
| 1: https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| FWIW, JeanHeyd did mention the issue themselves as well after a
| while[1].
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/__phantomderp/status/1662511693136637952
| foldr wrote:
| Only to say
|
| > I haven't even considered this angle until this [other]
| person's tweet.
| arijun wrote:
| I agree with your statement as a whole but have a small nitpick
| (on your small nitpick)
|
| > as if white is not a color
|
| But 'person of color' doesn't include white people in the same
| way that 'anti-semitic' doesn't include racism against Arabs.
| Yes, Arabs are also of Semitic descent, and yes white is a
| color, the meanings are not one-to-one mapped from their
| components. To deny that is to deny large portions of the
| English language.
| malodyets wrote:
| Agreed - see Etymological Fallacy.
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy>
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > 'person of color' doesn't include white people
|
| In most contexts, it doesn't include Asian people either.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Yup. The actual meaning of a composite symbol cannot in
| general be guessed from its constituent elements.
|
| This is pernicious in languages where the writing system has
| even a little of such character, and leads to stuff like e.g.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_word_for_%22crisis%22
|
| It's OK to use this sort of playing with words in your stand-
| up routine, (e.g. Tylor Tomlinson's "Lot of my friends are
| settling down. Some are just settling, period, end of
| sentence") in a song, a book title, that sort of thing, but
| we shouldn't pretend we've got a serious argument here, we've
| got a coincidence maybe, at best.
| ssokolow wrote:
| Not to mention the fact that construction can be messy for
| other reasons. I present a bit from George Carlin's routine
| on airline announcements:
|
| "Here's one they just made up: Near miss. When two planes
| almost collide, they call it a near miss. It's a near hit!
| A COLLISION is a near miss. _explosion sound_ Look, they
| nearly missed! YES, BUT NOT QUITE! "
| vector_spaces wrote:
| They actually speak to this somewhat (rting + acknowledging
| someone else's commentary on the issue mentioning the same) on
| Twitter. If you view their tweet history and linked tweet,
| you'll see that they speak a bit to the sorry state of
| representation at these conferences in general
|
| https://twitter.com/__phantomderp/status/1662511693136637952
|
| I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, to be clear, but
| in my mind, leaving the burden of pointing out inequity to
| victims of it isn't great either. I guess a less problematic
| approach would be reaching out to that person directly to see
| if they feel like that's what happened, and how they'd like
| others to respond if so
| ericyd wrote:
| > "a person of color" (as if white is not a color, but
| whatever)
|
| You might want to look into the historical basis for this term
| before you make snarky comments about it. It comes across as
| dismissive. My understanding is the term "person of color"
| evolved from "colored" (which originally just meant black (in
| America at least)) and now encompasses non-white people.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| "Colored" is now considered offensive by most, so why isn't
| "person of color" also viewed the same way? Both terms
| describe the same opressive system of nonsense racial
| hierarchy, after all.
| kortex wrote:
| It's complex but the reductionist explanation is that it is
| in part due to the euphemism treadmill, and in part
| etymological origin. "Colored" comes from the era of
| segregation, while "people of color" comes after.
|
| But don't get too comfortable, as "people of color" will
| probably phase out soon as well. My money is first on
| "BIPOC" (as an initialism, usually sounding out the
| letters), giving way to "bipoc" (as an acronym, lower case,
| pronounced /bai-pok/). But I'm too white to make that call,
| just a guess based on linguistics patterns.
|
| Even "BIPOC" is not without controversy. But afaik, no one
| has proffered an adequate word to describe "folks that have
| too much melanin to be considered white".
|
| https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/08/colored-person-
| vers...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/918418825/is-it-time-to-
| say-r...
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > But afaik, no one has proffered an adequate word to
| describe "folks that have too much melanin to be
| considered white".
|
| Such a word is not necessary or desirable, because the
| categorization system it supports is not meaningful or
| useful.
| kortex wrote:
| Of _course_ it 's necessary and desirable. The
| "categorization system" in question already exists,
| whether it ought to or not. Bipoc have a more difficult
| socioeconomic situation, because of their skin color.
| Should "LGBTQ+" as a category not exist, because they are
| people just like straight people?
|
| It is useful and meaningful to talk about the plight and
| state of, and advocate for, "Group XYZ that has been
| marginalized and experienced systemic violence throughout
| history, specifically because they are XYZ"
| jjgreen wrote:
| This strange dichotomy caught-out Benedict Cumberbatch some
| years back
| https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/jan/26/benedict-
| cum...
| ericyd wrote:
| I don't have a great answer to this other than "language
| evolves". Your comment could also be extended to other
| terms that have gone out of favor, such as "Negro" being
| replaced by "African American" and more recently "Black".
| I'm not a linguist nor a historian so I can't comment
| extensively on the "why" of this evolution.
| nemo44x wrote:
| "Person of color" can be found in legal documents going back
| to the early 1800's. There's no "evolution" here. It's all
| for political purposes. "Colored people" became "black
| "became "African Americans" became "Black" (capital B).
| "People of color" is more broad and used to form a
| progressive coalition against "whiteness", or rather the
| Western European tradition. In fact you could argue PoC
| doesn't include Blacks as BIPOC is the fresh term to convince
| non-white people and so-called "white allies" to organize
| together so as to obtain power against the white oppressors.
|
| Yes, when you examine the history here it appears neurotic,
| paranoid, and divisive. But I'm sure a few people have been
| able to acquire a slice of power from exploiting it.
|
| The rest of us will just continue to politely smile and nod
| and then roll our eyes and smirk as we turn away.
| ajross wrote:
| Can we not? That point you're picking on was _one sentence in
| the post_ ( "As my buddy Aman pointed out, the context that
| this would have also been the first keynote by a person of
| color at RustConf should not be lost here.")
|
| Trying to expand it into a giant anti-anti-anti-woke frame is a
| little distasteful. Even if you're one of the people who thinks
| any discussion of race is racist, can't you just accept that
| some people view lack of diversity as a problem worth noting
| and leave it at that? It's evidence, right? Certainly "Rust has
| never had a non-white speaker" seems like a problem, even if
| it's not. It's not wrong to note it in passing in the context
| of another argument.
| parabyl wrote:
| I think moreso than specifically meaning JeanHeyd was target as
| such due to race, the implication was rather that since
| JeanHeyd had previously raised that the lack of diveristy in
| speakers at the conf. was an issue, some members voting on this
| may have held onto that.
|
| But, it's ironic (and sad) that the same person who raised the
| issue of diversity in speakers - who would have been the first
| PoC doing a keynote - was treated like rubbish and essentially
| pushed out to the point they no longer feel comfortable being
| part of it at all. It's also interesting to note that while the
| issues the voting body had with their talk was solely to do
| with the content of the talk, it begs the question of if any
| other participant would be treated the same way in dealing with
| that issue arising. In my experience it's not uncommon for that
| sort of irony to play out, but that's purely anecdotal.
|
| Also, of course white is a colour but I've always seen PoC as a
| slightly more language-open alternative to the previously
| commonly used "non-white" which feels notably like language
| from an era long past.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| PoC feeling like language from an era long past when
| vector_spaces wrote:
| There are a few reasons that people prefer the term nonwhite
| over POC in certain contexts, and I think most people using
| it are using it intentionally because of them. The main issue
| is that the latter term is homogenizing:
|
| > Political scientist Angelo Falcon argues that the use of
| broad terms like "person of color" is offensive because it
| aggregates diverse communities and projects "a false unity"
| that "obscure[s] the needs of Latinos and Asians".[39][40]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_color
|
| Another criticism I've heard is that the terminology for POC
| originated among black activists during the civil rights
| movement in the US who were reclaiming the term "colored"
| used in the Jim Crow/segregation era, and so it's only really
| appropriate for black people to use.
|
| The former term (nonwhite) is iffy too, but sometimes it's a
| better descriptor
|
| To be clear, I haven't heard many people voicing the second
| criticism -- I think most people using "nonwhite" subscribe
| to the former point of view
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| > The main issue is that the latter term is homogenizing:
|
| By that logic, white would be homgenizing as well, or?
| Someone from Prague has little in common with a person from
| Massachusetts or St. Petersburg.
| chrsig wrote:
| I'd look towards stratified sampling to think more
| formally around the issue.
|
| POC is homogonizing because it's reducing the space from
| N strata to 2: white and non-white, blending n-1 strata.
|
| Per wikipedia:
|
| > Stratification is the process of dividing members of
| the population into homogeneous subgroups before
| sampling. The strata should define a partition of the
| population. That is, it should be collectively exhaustive
| and mutually exclusive: every element in the population
| must be assigned to one and only one stratum. Then simple
| random sampling is applied within each stratum
|
| Using this definition, white and non-white are mutually
| exclusive, while location of origin forms a different
| axis for comparison.
|
| In more social sciences, you might look to
| intersectionality for an explanation.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratified_sampling
|
| [1] https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-
| publications/resour...
| clcaev wrote:
| Moreover, who is white or non-white is political:
| currently a certain blood quantum is necessary for being
| American Indian; yet, in recent history under the one
| drop rule, for African Americans it was the inverse. The
| difference is material, as former was entitled to a say
| in land on a reservation, while the latter did not.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| I fail to see how non white doesn't also reduce the
| strata to 2, however. Where is the third stratum?
| bckr wrote:
| Yes! You get it. The difference is that "white" is
| constructed as an in-group identifier, that has been
| adapted as needed to include previously non-white groups
| such as Jews and Italians.
| kaashif wrote:
| I'm pretty sure "person of colour" means literally the same
| thing as "non white" in the US, I find it hard to care
| about such minor differences in phrasing.
| bckr wrote:
| It's annoying but important for those of us grappling
| with the long term effects of slavery and segregation and
| continued anti-blackness.
| xigoi wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| mcherm wrote:
| I really don't think that is what is going on here. So far,
| all I have heard anyone say is "Behavior occurred which
| should have been unacceptable regardless of who it happened
| to. By the way, the optics are particularly bad because of
| race issues."
| ThunderSizzle wrote:
| Either it's a race issue or it's not. If it is, provide
| evidence of racism.
|
| Insinuating racism makes me believe your nothing more than
| a racist and miscreant yourself (you not being you you
| obviously)
| drxzcl wrote:
| This is a puerile take.
|
| If you ignore the optics of the situation you are going
| to step in it big time, even if your intentions are
| completely honorable. You need to be aware of the optics
| of your behavior, because that's all outside observers
| see. Your intentions are not something other people have
| access to.
|
| You going on the offensive like this on this particular
| point makes you look (see, optics again) either
| incredibly naive or covering for some pretty bad
| behaviour.
| jasmer wrote:
| My gosh no, this toxic - it is not up to people to have
| contextualise or defend their behaviour given others'
| sensitivities.
|
| It is fundamentally bigoted to assume racism, and
| fundamentally up to people to provide at least some
| evidence or context if they suspect there is.
|
| The commentor is not going on the offensive, rather the
| defensive, as someone else brought the issue up.
|
| "makes you look (see, optics again) either incredibly
| naive or covering for some pretty bad behaviour."
|
| You have arbitrarily (and repulsively) accused a
| commenter of 'covering for some crime' - typical of the
| social justice fanaticism that otherwise empathic people
| have come to loathe - you may want to contemplate why you
| might say such a thing.
|
| This isn't an issue of race, it's not particularly part
| of the dialogue, it's an issue of perceived slight and
| professional victimhood. Not everything is hyper
| intersectional.
| drxzcl wrote:
| That's a lot of words you just put in my mouth.
|
| I'm not going to bother responding to every point you
| just hallucinated, but I do want to point out that I
| don't think a crime has been committed.
| jasmer wrote:
| You very literally accused someone of 'covering something
| bad up' because of a random post.
| [deleted]
| drxzcl wrote:
| That's not what I said.
| jasmer wrote:
| "makes you look (see, optics again) either incredibly
| naive or covering for some pretty bad behaviour."
|
| It is point blank what you said, it's plainly ridiculous
| that you would deny what is right there as though we're
| misinterpreting it, this is repulsive gaslighting.
| drxzcl wrote:
| The post is about optics. Read again what I wrote.
| fsociety wrote:
| Not at all what they said.
| bybybyby wrote:
| [flagged]
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| "White" is rather emphatically not like other ethnic or racial
| labels. Throughout the history of the US, who counts as "white"
| has been redefined many times to suit the political goals of
| the people at the time. In the era of the founding fathers, the
| Irish, Spaniards, Italians, all considered not white. Then
| during various times, often driving by waves of immigration of
| some other ethnicity people were freaking out about, drive a
| process to include them in whiteness as allies against the new
| threat.
|
| There's a great deal to read on this topic if you're genuinely
| interested. Otherwise I just want to warn you that the way you
| phrase this comes across as rather ignorant and stepping on the
| border of racism.
| mafribe wrote:
| > _Throughout the history of the US_
|
| Is the US the world's only country?
|
| Throughout the history of the _world_ , who counts as _XYZ_
| has been redefined many times to suit the political goals of
| the people at the time.
|
| I recall when we stopped being Yugoslavian, and started
| shooting at each other, as Serbs or Croats. The Russian guy
| sitting next me married a Ukrainian woman a decade ago.
| Recently Russians and Ukrainians started shooting at each
| other. There's a great deal to read on this topic if you're
| genuinely interested.
|
| _"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and
| that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is
| no new thing under the sun."_
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Of course not, but the context is a conference in the US.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| And you got it wrong. The Irish were not considered non-
| white. The ethnic divisions were (and are) most
| definitely not just White vs PoC. It used to be extremely
| important whether a person was a Catholic or a
| Protestant, for example, all other kinds of Christianity
| being conveniently ignored.
|
| I liked JeanHeyd's blog because he is a good writer (but
| a bit on the chatty side). I also love what he does for
| the C standardization process. His skin colour is
| completely irrelevant.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| > The Irish were not considered non-white.
|
| They absolutely were and you can find writing by Ben
| Franklin in their own words saying so explicitly.
| kzrdude wrote:
| I'm not from anywhere close to the US cultural sphere.
|
| This aspect is one of the reasons I'm very uncomfortable with
| all the classification of people into races. There's always a
| hierarchy implied, even inside the white category, a ranking
| of more or less white, questionably or unquestionably white
| etc. It's not the world I want, I don't want to internalize
| these (unspoken) classifications of people.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| It's not the world I want either but denying this is what
| exists in reality in some false appeal to "can't we just
| ignore race" is equivalent to saying to people who are
| currently discriminated against "suffer in silence."
|
| You do what you want but I'm not going to do that.
| JyB wrote:
| Not sure what that has to do with how, in today's US society,
| the 'White' vs 'PoC' labels and paradigm is used by an
| extremely divisive and toxic 'Us vs Them' mentality. Even
| when completely off-topic. Which the parent was making an
| obvious allusion to. The fact that you even dared to threaten
| him with gross insinuations says a lot about you, or more
| broadly about the US in general.
| diydsp wrote:
| ...Calling a PoC ignorant, lecturing them and imploring them
| to read about racism... whew...
|
| Them having been on the other side of the saddle, I'd bet
| they're familiar. How about simply listening to what they
| have to say without instruction, seeing their perspective and
| taking it in?
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I assumed nothing about the person and am simply relating
| history.
| qwery wrote:
| It was a small part of the post and I think it was explained
| fairly. It's part of the context, and they don't think it
| should be ignored. JeanHeyd doesn't have to have mentioned it
| (or even thought about it) for it to be considered relevant by
| someone else.
|
| The behaviour is disrespectful regardless of colour, yes. But
| someone's skin colour does influence other people's behaviour.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I'm generally not a fan of the way people go about D&I, but the
| fact JeanHeyd has brought up the problem before makes it more
| pertinent.
|
| Whoever on the Rust team made the decision to reach out and
| downgrade JeanHeyd's talk seems extremely incompetent.
|
| Optics matter a lot here and a large portion of leadership
| roles is optics. It's careless to not take context into
| account, like the recent history of poor Rust-related optics
| (E.g. trademark thing) and JeanHeyd (The person they _invited_
| ) talking about lack of black representation.
| bybybyby wrote:
| [flagged]
| ninepoints wrote:
| Considering Elon an "effective leader" is certainly a take.
| kortilla wrote:
| Considering him not is pretty dumb given the success of
| two independent companies under his leadership (spacex
| and tesla). Under his leadership both companies went from
| nothing to successful.
|
| You can claim that all of the success is due to the other
| execs at those companies, but they are still _his_
| choices following _his leadership_. He has the power to
| fire any of them so they are clearly doing what he wants.
| preordained wrote:
| The media hates him, and I can understand how that can be
| hard to separate out from one's view of reality; but, I
| think whether Elon has success despite actually being
| terrible as some might think, or is actually really good
| at what he does, he's been very successful on the whole
| if you can be the slightest bit objective. So, given
| that, you would have to claim to know, really know, that
| it's all despite him to say he's ineffective, which is a
| pretty silly thing to propose unqualified.
| ninepoints wrote:
| Correlation != causation. It's clear that his success is
| in spite of himself, not because of it. I don't know
| anyone in my professional circle that would work under
| him, what with having a reputation for impulse firing
| people that disagree with you and other clear signs of
| egomania.
| kortilla wrote:
| Is your suggestion that both Tesla and SpaceX ignored his
| leadership all of these years and went their own
| direction to success?
| bybybyby wrote:
| So then what other then Elon's leadership has caused his
| companies to effectively exist and achieve all their
| goals?
|
| If leadership isn't the causal factor then what is the
| causal factor?
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| Good engineers and funding ?
| worik wrote:
| > The media hates him [Musk], and I can understand how
| that can be hard to separate out from one's view of
| reality;
|
| The media reports on him.
|
| Makes him look bad.
|
| Not the media's fault.
|
| It is how a genius can also be a fool
| bybybyby wrote:
| [dead]
| unusualmonkey wrote:
| > You can be an effective leader with bad optics. See Elon
| musk.
|
| I'd argue part of what made Musk's companies so successful
| _was_ the optics - he was seen as a visionary, building the
| future - ergo customers and engineers alike wanted to
| associate with him.
|
| Since the decline in his optics over the last few years,
| has he been an effective leader? Twitter does not seem to
| support that notion.
| bybybyby wrote:
| [dead]
| lost_tourist wrote:
| I think Musk is good at choose great lieutenants who
| believe in his vision. As a person he has turned into an
| awful individual. Lots of awful individuals have been great
| at business and running corps. I don't actually think he's
| all that talented as a day-to-day CEO
| bybybyby wrote:
| [dead]
| QuiEgo wrote:
| As someone picking between C and Rust for a new codebase, this is
| going on my list of "cons" for Rust. I'm supposed to build a
| product above all else. Will the drama get in the way of Rust
| surviving down the road?
| nbittich wrote:
| After the Kardashians, the world needs a new reality show: the
| rustaceans. Somewhere btw Dallas and the youth and the restless.
| rvz wrote:
| The so-called "Rust community" (As if that existed) and
| especially the Rust Foundation is going down _blazingly_ fast,
| with all these pointless melodrama and tea time tantrums.
|
| This whole post really is a first world problem and the issue at
| had is as great as the great explosion of the ant hill in the
| back garden, which almost no-one cares about.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| The thing is, Rust is being marketed as end-all, be-all of
| memory safety and overall programming, Microsoft, Linux kernel,
| and other giants are picking it up and it's a badge of honor.
|
| And then we have all that serious business clash with the
| leadership behaving as if they are power-intoxicated
| menchildren. Gosh.
|
| I almost wish some IBM or Microsoft bought their guts and made
| it all corporate proper, as much as I hate all things
| corporate.
| qwertox wrote:
| [flagged]
| KingLancelot wrote:
| The woke mob is cannabalizing themselves.
|
| JeanHeyd is fantastic.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| Who is "woke" in this context? Is it everyone involved? Do you
| just deem everyone involved with Rust "woke"? This is the most
| intellectually lazy shit, please find new words.
| bybybyby wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| DonHopkins wrote:
| [flagged]
| bscphil wrote:
| The worst thing about this shitshow of a thread is that those of
| us accusing the Rust leadership of being woke and those of us
| accusing the blog post author of being woke don't seem to have
| gotten each other's memos.
|
| If we can just all get on the same page about this, we'll be able
| to figure out who it's appropriate for us to hate, as levelheaded
| software engineers who never let emotions cloud our judgments.
| mgaunard wrote:
| All of the "social" aspects of programming are full of drama.
|
| There isn't a conference where I don't hear about a LGBTQ person
| not being offended by so and so.
|
| Then you have the politics of who gets to set out the true vision
| or be a chair at this or that committee.
|
| If you're serious about programming, you just stay away from both
| of these. Being a language expert is pretty irrelevant anyway,
| it's just some ego-boosting in case you can't be successful at
| your business domain.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| I'm beginning to wonder whether conferences themselves are
| worth it in general. There's so much content on YouTube that if
| your objective is learning new things, hitting that up or
| reading a book may be simpler (and much less expensive).
| mgaunard wrote:
| Also the content is usually either derivative or quite basic.
| Most speakers are just professional evangelists so they just
| speak without actual practical experience. They also just
| tour the world doing the same talk over and over again.
|
| I tried to use it myself as an opportunity to advertise my
| company, myself or the problem domain I work in, and found
| that it's most efficient to go to recorded ones only and only
| attend for the smallest duration you need to.
| overgard wrote:
| I used to love going to the Game Developers Conference (and I
| probably still would if not for costs), but I have found that
| I can get just as much out of youtube outside of networking.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| > All of the "social" aspects of programming are full of drama.
|
| Really? Which golang conference canceled an already invited
| keynote speaker because someone was feeling "uncomfortable"?
|
| How many Python, C, C++, C# related conferences did so?
|
| Genuinely curious, just to establish a baseline.
| mgaunard wrote:
| I know for a fact there has been 4 or 5 occurrences at C++
| conferences within the past two years.
| fsociety wrote:
| The original event this post was referring to, was someone
| dropping out of a conference because they were asked to give a
| keynote talk and then pulled from it last moment. They decided
| to opt out of the lack of professionalism and not go. Nothing
| to do with LGBTQ. Internet nerd drama has existed since the
| dawn of Usenet and IRC.
| oytis wrote:
| As someone who doesn't follow very closely, the amount of drama
| around Rust seems to be something unseen among open source
| projects before.
|
| Is it that BDFL-based governance just works better, or do people
| have higher expectations from Rust community than from, say,
| Linux one?
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Didn't Linux (used to ?) have regular drama because of Linus,
| erm, outbursts ?
| oytis wrote:
| Well, it existed for quite a long time before drama started,
| it was just one or two episodes, and was relatively short-
| lived. I haven't heard anything about Linux in that regard
| for quite a while, but Rust is in the news regularly. Linux
| kernel also has a much larger community.
| mhd wrote:
| Ruby's Matz counts as a BFDL, does he? Because there was plenty
| of drama in that area...
| oytis wrote:
| Like what? It might I am not that interested in the language
| or HN is not that interested in the language, but I can't
| remember anything.
| mhd wrote:
| There even used to be a rubydramas.com site, if I remember
| correctly (parked domain right now).
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4801226
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4487963
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28712821
|
| It's been a while since the last big drama, but then again,
| it's also been a while since Ruby was that popular.
| jemmyw wrote:
| Not for a long time. I think the drama queens might have
| moved on to another language.
| ajross wrote:
| > the amount of drama around Rust seems to be something unseen
| among open source projects before.
|
| Bless your heart. The modern world is tame and blissful in
| comparison to the world of the 90's. Then, most projects could
| be individually maintained and so treated their drama with
| public forks of source code and shrieking on mailing lists. We
| who lived through that remember the ejection of Theo from
| NetBSD and the resulting fork of OpenBSD, the XFree86/Xorg
| fork, the gcc/egcs fork, emacs/xemacs, the list goes on and on.
|
| Today, most major maintainers are employed by name brand
| corporations to do their work, which highly constrains the
| amount of drama to "stuff that doesn't embarrass your boss". So
| board-level end-arounds like the linked article is all we get.
| It used to be much more personal.
| june_twenty wrote:
| Let's take a step back for a moment. All of these people involved
| are working on the language that would/might be one of the big
| languages in the future. It doesn't fill me with hope.
| aww_dang wrote:
| How does this kind of organizational drama affect me as an end
| user of the Rust programming language?
| acomjean wrote:
| It hurts the language. People who could help improve and
| advocate for the language think twice before getting involved.
| People want to feel good about their language of choice, see
| this use something else.
| capableweb wrote:
| The conference used to offer different viewpoints, even if
| those viewpoints weren't the "official" ones by the Rust
| organization. It seems like they're changing this so only
| endorsed viewpoints will be represented in the conference,
| possibly leading to a stagnation of innovative ideas.
|
| Time will tell what will happen, but when opposing viewpoints
| starts being hidden away, things tend to get relatively boring
| quickly.
| serial_dev wrote:
| On the other hand, as a conference attendee, I expect that
| the keynote talks reflect which direction Rust is going.
|
| If they know that the person's point of view is totally
| different than the most likely outcome, having this speaker
| as keynote speaker is not a good choice.
|
| (With all that aside, they should have thought about it
| _before_ inviting this person, and not _after_ )
| conradludgate wrote:
| It doesn't and shouldn't. The people in the Rust project will
| come and go, but the language will continue to be developed.
| Many contributers are not project members
| epistasis wrote:
| For completely unrelated reasons, I got into Rust this week again
| for the first time in years. I had to write a small bit of code
| that went really fast, but have sworn off C. It was really really
| fun, and I want to write more rust! (Though I don't get to write
| much code these days)
|
| I'm actually really glad to see this sort of stuff be aired in
| the community, and I hope it strengthens the Rust community and
| makes the language stronger. I really hope that Rust gets greater
| adoption. The syntax with lifetimes is a bit painful, but
| everything else is really amazing for making super fast code when
| needed.
| chrishare wrote:
| Can we acknowledge that we, software professionals, crave drama
| just like soap opera junkies?
| overgard wrote:
| I haven't started using Rust, but I feel quite concerned about
| getting invested in it if the leadership acts like this. The
| people responsible need to step down or make amends.
| b1234 wrote:
| We are the C. Resistance is futile. Your technological and
| paradigmatic distinctiveness will be added to our own. The syntax
| will be clunky. It will be full of dangerous and ugly ways to
| misuse it. You will be adapted to single pass compile. Lower your
| shields.
| sgt wrote:
| [flagged]
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| >Let's keep this nonsense out of tech guys
|
| That ship has sailed loooong time ago.
| eynsham wrote:
| > 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,
| I can't tell whether you'd regard that as 'organic' and
| unobjectionable, or inorganic and objectionable; I'd regard it
| as the former.
|
| Does that mean that I've succumbed to the 'woke mindvirus'?
| Perhaps, but even if I have, I'm not convinced that such terms
| are conducive to curing me of it.
| yarg wrote:
| 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.
| Yajirobe wrote:
| Perhaps there are barriers preventing it from working
| organically, and some external impetus is beneficial to speed
| up the non-white representation?
| drekipus wrote:
| There's nothing inherently more of a barrier to non-white
| speakers than other (white speakers) - tech is hard and
| people find it interesting.
|
| That's it, that's the basis to almost all popular talks in
| tech.
| agluszak wrote:
| > woke mindvirus
|
| I really don't think that's an appropriate language for a
| discussion on HN
| sgt wrote:
| Perhaps not. That said, I was heavily upvoted.
| staminade wrote:
| "Let's keep this nonsense out of tech"
|
| You're literally the one bringing it in, with phrases like
| "woke mindvirus". Such phrases aren't intended to foster
| serious or rational discussion, they're trollish epithets
| intended to anger and divide.
| jokoon wrote:
| 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.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| As someone coming from Java, that's untrue. C looks like
| language written by the ancient ones.
|
| Especial the combos of * and []. And it's full of tiny gotchas
| what is width of type char? What is UB? Why is it segfaulting
| and so on?
|
| Sure to C trained eye it looks normal, but to a Rust trained
| eye Rust looks normal.
| DerekL wrote:
| Do you mean "Ada", the programming language? It's not an
| acronym.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| C is a terrible language for beginners. It's full of footguns
| and restricted in different ways because the compiler had to
| once fit in a kilobyte of RAM or whatever. C programmers who
| defend how easy it is to mess up programs written in the
| language often go with "well if you knew how to program C well
| you wouldn't run into this problem, so get good" from what I
| can tell.
|
| C++ does better in some ways, and much worse in others (i.e.
| the incredibly verbose language, the Turing complete templates,
| the documented standards that take years to be implemented by
| any real compiler). Both languages are excellent for their
| problem space, but terrible for beginners.
|
| Rust isn't verifiable code, the language is far from formally
| verified. Just one level down into the standard library you'll
| find tons of unsafe{} blocks and other performance related
| trickery that invalidates the idea of pure verification. It
| does verify more things, like ownership, that other languages
| like C++ ask you to do yourself (i.e. remember to use move()
| because the compiler won't tell you if you don't) but that's
| just a drop in the bucket of program verification. It also
| produces better programs, in my opinion; the logs of programs
| written in other native languages quickly end up full of failed
| assert()a and memory corruption related crashes still happen to
| me on a weekly basis. Rust programs have their flaws (for
| example, being completely unable to deal with memory exhaustion
| from a language perspective) but I see a lot fewer Rust crashes
| and bugged our programs than any other language in that space.
|
| I also reject the notion that Rust is hard to read than C. It's
| more verbose, for sure, but that same complexity is still
| present in all of those "simple" C programs. You can just use
| mut for every variable and reassign it, you don't need to do
| all those functional operations or shadowing that you see in
| many Rust code bases. You can't ignore Result or Option types
| like you can in C, but in C fork() can still fail regardless of
| whether you're forced to deal with it or not, integers are
| still cast regardless of explicit casting, and all of the
| hidden assumptions about structs, pointers, and lifetimes are
| still present, regardless of whether you write them down or
| not. C lacks the ability to express complexity you're supposed
| to know, but that makes it more difficult to read correctly,
| not easier. The biggest issue with Rust readability is the
| alternate syntax inside macros, but there are plenty of
| preprocessor statements that do very much the same thing.
| Microsoft had developed some very extensive frameworks that are
| completely strung together by preprocessor macros exactly
| because the language was too limited to do what they wanted
| (but they couldn't afford to invent a better language, yet).
|
| I don't think Python is C like at all. It's a scripting
| language without static typing so it can't really get too
| complex in the first place. Syntax wise, I'd group is closer to
| PowerShell than to C. Where it can, it does insert complexity
| (lambda functions, list/dict comprehensions, object oriented
| design) but it's relatively simple because you don't deal with
| memory allocation, pointers, or concurrency yourself.
|
| You may be interested in Zig. It seems to be to C what Rust is
| to C++. The language isn't completely finished yet, but it's
| getting there. It features many modern language features in a
| language that is very C-like, with a potential solution for the
| allocation problem built into the language standard.
| [deleted]
| neonsunset wrote:
| 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.
| cookieperson wrote:
| I haven't seen grifters in the community. But there definitely
| are narcissists and other ucky personality types. This is true
| of ALL communities... As soon as a niche group offers a
| position of power/importance the turds will line up to battle
| over it.
|
| Best advice I have is, avoid the whole situation and have fun.
| If you really want this kind of stuff to be part of your
| career, this is what that kind of career path is... lots of
| politics, drama, defending a title, etc.
|
| Conferences can be good for meeting people, and I guess self
| promotion. But it's just like anything else, there's going to
| be people who will do anything to meddle regardless of merit.
| There's going to be "cool kids" and "losers". If you seek
| equanimity, you won't find it in a hierarchical power
| structure.
|
| Blogs are way better than talks anyways.
| pas wrote:
| ideology (culture!) is important.
|
| your second point seems trivial, after all let's assume that
| most of us live and act accordingly (manipulation is bad, and
| if there's something uncomfortable about a presentation, then
| it should be directly addressed, etc)
|
| but your first seems very interesting. can you please elaborate
| on who these grifters are, and how to identify them?
| shakow wrote:
| > how to identify them?
|
| They abuse their influence to demote a keynote selected by
| the agreed-upon keynote selection scheme, because it makes
| them "uncomfortable".
| pas wrote:
| but how do we know who was it?
| ssokolow wrote:
| According to the discussion in /r/rust/, one person falsely
| claimed that they were speaking on behalf of Rust team
| consensus and the RustConf representative they talked to
| got burned by taking their word for it rather than asking
| for confirmation.
|
| I'm still trying to find confirmation of which message it
| was though. If it was the initial invite that was "issued
| without authorization", then the revocation would make more
| sense.
| orangetuba wrote:
| I couldn't agree more. This is pure manipulation.
| depr wrote:
| Indeed it should not be surprising that the community
| (leadership) who from the outside seems among the most
| concerned with codes of conduct, inclusion and so on, is
| actually not so virtuous at all.
|
| I am all for many of the stated goals of "woke" or whatever you
| want to call them, but it is really reminiscent of the
| politician who wants to ban porn but has his entire computer
| filled with it.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| What if there are people who need laws, rules, processes to
| keep something at bay because they are actually suffering
| from addiction to the very thing they need to regulate.
|
| If they believe that thing is wrong and they see how hard it
| is to resist, they of all people may jump on a bandwagon.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Yes, the "impose my beliefs on everyone" crowd.
| mpalmer wrote:
| Except people who involve themselves in dev communities
| aren't babies, and this parental impulse of protecting
| people from ideas YOU think are bad is completely toxic and
| self defeating.
|
| Being afraid of disagreement is a cancer in our discourse.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I agree. I was suggesting something even worse: they have
| internal disagreement and guilt and are regulating others
| based on that. Any discourse makes them feel worse about
| it, so they regulate that too.
| vasco wrote:
| Everyone has similar character flaws, but insecurities and
| cognitive dissonance make some need to virtue signal because
| they fear the crowd will think they are intolerant and their
| brain can't deal with the fact they might have some lizard
| brain thoughts from time to time. To deal with this they go
| to the extent of branding themselves "good person walking
| here", uh, sorry: "allies".
| epistasis wrote:
| I really love Rust, and I'm very encouraged to see this
| "ideological posturing" happening in public.
|
| There is a wide wide world out there, and just as having an
| easy to use crate system is important, so is having a large
| community. You don't get to a large community by being
| exclusive, but by being inclusive.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Who was being exclusive, exactly? And how?
| epistasis wrote:
| Don't think of it as an active act of creating exclusion,
| but of a state that just happened. Doesn't matter how, it
| could be completely natural, unintentional, and just how
| growth happened.
|
| It is also almost certainly the case that nobody is being
| actively excluded (well except maybe from a keynote). But
| appearances matter, and why have a poor appearance that
| could come from a bad place when a better one is possible?
| pdimitar wrote:
| OK, but what can be done then to avoid this "poor
| appearance" exactly? The black speaker pulled out. It's
| their decision to make. What can be done?
| epistasis wrote:
| Continue on with the conference, learn from the current
| situation, and try again in the future.
|
| That's why I'm encouraged that this conversation is
| happening, because it's the path to the better future.
|
| The only really wrong response to this would be to shut
| down, close one's mind, and decide that the problem is
| the controversy itself, rather than the greater social
| situation of which this conference is just one small
| part. It's a programming language, it's not meant to
| solve social problems, after all. But governance and
| social structures are inherent to programming languages,
| and they should try to fit into the larger social
| structure of society (around the world) and if they want
| to be widely adopted, learn to appeal to wider and wider
| audiences.
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _It 's a programming language, it's not meant to solve
| social problems, after all._
|
| But that's exactly what I'm saying as well. Not sure
| there's something to learn, that's what's confusing me
| here. Black people didn't attempt to speak at a Rust
| conference.
|
| Well... OK? What's there to learn from that? As far as
| I'm aware, the Rust community is one of the most
| diversify-friendly ones out there already.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| But wouldn't the best way to appeal to a wider audience
| be to avoid the controversy and focus on the technical?
| We know how off-putting the drama can be, e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36104163
| redeeman wrote:
| 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
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| This is an absurd post, these tirades against the boogeyman
| of "woke culture" are so tiresome. Engage with the content of
| the blog post instead of deferring to this tribal bullshit.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| That _is_ the content of the post. It's not like people are
| arguing about grammar or the webpage style. People are
| talking about the words the author used and the ideas the
| author communicated.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| Just completely pulling your agenda out of your ass on HN,
| huh?
| jasmer wrote:
| I think the framing of 'uncomfortable' is just a poor choice of
| words among a bunch of people it would seem have difficulty
| with these things. My gosh this is all out of proportion.
| bob1029 wrote:
| All of this drama / culture war or whatever you want to call it
| is a big part of what turned me off to Rust in the first place.
|
| I come from .NET background and am open to the idea of a
| realistic C/C++ replacement. My experience with .NET and its
| "community" has left me with a really comfortable feeling with
| regard to my ability to do business, just "get shit done", etc.
| To be clear, there isn't really a community. I think that's why
| you don't hear a whole lot of drama come out of it. It's more of
| a LARP where we pretend we have some kind of say and sometimes
| Microsoft's leadership agrees and it looks like we participated
| openly. Most on HN hate this, but when you are trying to build a
| stable B2B product and signing 5+ year contracts, it's a goddamn
| paradise to not have concerns about what angry corners of social
| media might be up in arms about today.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Well, Microsoft itself is using Rust now, in the Windows kernel
| no less. If they reverse that decision, then we have cause for
| concern. Otherwise, I'm sure this will all blow over.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| What's a LARP?
| sampo wrote:
| In this context, it's a figure of speech, meaning a game of
| pretending.
|
| Literally, it means
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| thanks
| ssokolow wrote:
| Live Action Role Play.
|
| Basically taking the transformation that made sports into
| sports computer games and running it in reverse on computer
| RPGs so you get people in costume in the park throwing
| colored balls at each other to "cast spells".
|
| Not really my thing, but a great way to get more fresh air
| and exercise if you're into RPGs.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| thank you. i'll stick to hiking with our dog!
| capableweb wrote:
| https://lmgt.org/?q=LARP
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| cool site! thanks.
| ruph123 wrote:
| I mean the .NET community/org is no stranger to drama and
| controversal moves by some team members which gets discussed
| over several weeks on HN, blocks, Twitter and elsewhere. For
| example, I vividly remember this:
|
| https://exceptionnotfound.net/the-catch-block-80-the-dotnet-...
| ummonk wrote:
| For more context, post from the previously invited keynote
| speaker about what happened: https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-
| speaking-at-rustconf-2023
| capableweb wrote:
| So now there are two stories from the one of the sides, is
| there any stories from the other sides? Namely, from the people
| who felt so "uncomfortable" about a technical topic that they
| had to uninvite a keynote speaker?
|
| As things stand, this whole things smells very weird, so weird
| I almost cannot believe what happened, so would be most
| interesting to hear what the other side has to say.
| revelio wrote:
| Reading between the lines, they were uncomfortable about the
| implication that keynote speech = product direction, for a
| talk that they didn't want to be perceived as a product
| direction. Seems like something that can be fixed with a
| disclaimer slide or maybe better decision making up front.
| kibwen wrote:
| Not yet, though to be fair, it is Memorial Day weekend and
| this emerged on Friday evening.
| ok123456 wrote:
| If Linus suffered this sort of dictatorship of the code of
| conduct, where would the Linux kernel be today?
|
| My guess is that it wouldn't have conquered every arena of
| computing outside of desktop computing like it has.
| Blackstrat wrote:
| The world has become a sad and pathetic place. If you're
| "uncomfortable", whatever that means, don't watch, whether we're
| talking about a speech, a TV program, etc. Don't try to ruin it
| for everyone else. You're just not that important. Life is filled
| with discomfort. You can't cancel them all. And as you get older,
| the discomforts keep coming. That's the real world. And when you
| retire and the doctors tell you that you have cancer or heart
| disease, that too will be uncomfortable. And guess what, you
| don't get to cancel that, because life really doesn't care if
| you're uncomfortable. Grow up world.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| The world has always been a sad and pathetic place, it just
| shifts over time on what people consider that to be. It's also
| a joyous and wondrous place if you let it be. Humans have been
| caught in the same for loop since we became conscious and
| capable of higher order thinking. The amount of enlightenment
| has been waxing and waning over time but with an upward trend
| line since that point in time.
| JdeBP wrote:
| There's more discussion at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36090512 .
| thiht wrote:
| I swear there's more (public) drama in the Rust community than in
| every other language's combined. This is really not engaging, it
| feels like the core team (what actually matters with a
| programming language) could implode at any time because someone
| sneezed wrong.
| quantumwoke wrote:
| It seems like one scandal after another for Rust recently.
|
| Why can't we just focus on code and the brilliant work from
| JeanHeyd rather than politics? The Servo post was a reminder of
| how it used to be.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| It's not really about big picture societal politics, it's about
| internal politics, and no organisation can escape those,
| because that's what an organisation _is_.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| coldtea wrote:
| > _A couple team members had strong opinions /discomfort against
| JeanHeyd being selected as a keynote speaker, as best as I
| understand it, because of the content of JeanHeyd's blog post on
| reflection in Rust_
|
| Any project with such people in it would succeed despite of them,
| not because of them. It's sad to see a project burdened by egos
| and bureaucracy.
| [deleted]
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| The irony of people in this thread bemoaning humanity, how we
| can't all just get along, while simultaneously blasting "woke"
| politics is palpable
| bobsmooth wrote:
| "Woke" is not caring about people. "Woke" is tricking others
| into thinking you care about people.
| RenThraysk wrote:
| So someone has a belief that some feature may have benefit the
| language, and people are stating they are uncomfortable? I
| suspect (as complete outsider) there has to be more going on here
| and the "uncomfortable" people are not being sincere & honest.
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