[HN Gopher] JeanHeyd Meneide's response to "Why I left Rust"
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JeanHeyd Meneide's response to "Why I left Rust"
Author : mepian
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-05-28 16:43 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pony.social)
(TXT) w3m dump (pony.social)
| rvz wrote:
| The best way to describe this melodrama really is just another
| explosion in an ant hill in the desert.
|
| This is really just another day of the self-canabalization of
| Rust and its Foundation and the language so-called 'community'
| continues to have more ridiculous tantrums and melodrama over the
| tiniest of all things.
|
| Yet another first world issue of pointless pantomimes which can
| only be found in Rust.
| norir wrote:
| Nothing happening here is even remotely particular to rust.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| And? We're not talking about other languages.
| adamrezich wrote:
| these kinds of "social issues" that arise from communities like
| these are always a huge turn-off for me, and I know I'm not the
| only one. I don't know enough about this situation or the broader
| context in which it took place but everything about this post,
| including some of the original blog post author's own comments,
| and some of the comments here, reinforces my desire to have
| nothing to do with "the Rust community", or any other programming
| "community" like it.
|
| one gets the feeling that people participate in these
| "communities" for purely social posturing reasons, wholly
| unrelated to making things with computers, while still retaining
| the veneer of "being part of and participating in a programming
| language community", and that just doesn't sit right with me.
|
| one also gets the feeling that, when some fresh drama like this
| happens, each of these blog posts and responses and whatnot is
| not-so-secretly a form of opportunistic self-aggrandizing grift.
|
| when one of these "communities" attracts a critical mass of
| social-posturing drama like this, it's just too easy for an
| outsider like myself to say, "nah, I'm good, thanks"--and if the
| goal of the "community" is to make the best programming language
| possible, surely this must similarly dissuade others who would
| otherwise be down to spend countless hours actually working on
| the thing and making it good.
|
| there's good lessons to be learned here all around for anyone
| aspiring to create a _productive_ "community" around something
| like a new programming language--take heed!
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| Might be worth reading the response from the other side:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13tsmht/comment/jlxmc...
| [deleted]
| drxzcl wrote:
| The same person also posted essentially the same message under
| the linked post.
|
| FWIW it sounds genuine to me.
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| Can you link me to that please?
| mepian wrote:
| Probably this one:
| https://hachyderm.io/@sgrif/110447363438183593
| slimsag wrote:
| > somebody from inside the Rust Project, but not with the
| consensus of all leadership, tried to downgrade my talk
|
| > as evidenced by much of the public statements from existing,
| ex, and now-ex Rust Project members, the decision to unilaterally
| downgrade was not known to many of them until they read my post.
|
| > Downgrading the keynote was NEVER voted on like inviting me to
| do the keynote in the first place.
|
| If this is true, some mystical creature behind the scenes is
| pulling the strings somehow, and keeping in mind the whole Rust
| Foundation vs. Rust Project debacles of the past, and the fact
| that JT (who was the person proposing a new leadership model RFC
| for Rust...)... then I am kind of left with the question of when,
| not if, we will see a major community fork of Rust
|
| What a mess. I wish people could just focus on the tech and drop
| their egos and all the drama.
| hgdfhgfdhgdf wrote:
| [flagged]
| sho_hn wrote:
| This is far too breathless.
|
| From what I was able to read and understand, there was a
| concern that the keynote placement could be seen as approving
| of a particular technical direction. This concern itself
| isn't super crazy to me; this is why you will see many other
| event program committees avoid placing technical talks
| advocating for a particular project direction in keynote
| slots.
|
| Obviously the way that an individual (apparently) chose to go
| about addressing this concern was procedurally crappy, and
| overall a much better way here would have been to work with
| the talk author to make sure the talk or the event would
| frame things right after the keynote had already been
| decided, and given that there was no vote to change that
| decision.
|
| But that doesn't mean the work is killed, or that the entire
| leadership group is bad, or that the organization can't learn
| from this now very public mistake and adopt better policies.
| biorach wrote:
| Thanks for the clear-headed and undramatic summary.
|
| This whole discussion has been full of emotional over-
| reaction
| peteradio wrote:
| I think the problem is obviously that there is a sub-
| group that is making decisions that were supposed to be
| made in committee. If there is some sub-group operating
| this way for this instance then what does it mean at
| large for the language? Is the democratic process a
| complete sham etc
| dmurray wrote:
| It's still a good language and the most attractive one for
| many purposes. Most people don't choose Java or C++ because
| they are thrilled by the stewardship of Oracle or
| JTC1/SC22/WG21, but because it's the right tool for the job.
|
| Not saying Rust has outgrown its need for a community, but a
| lot of people would pick Rust over C++ even if they were
| guaranteed never to get another language update for it.
| freitasm wrote:
| Somente knows more about this. Just look at this reply
| https://hachyderm.io/@sgrif/110447363438183593
| belter wrote:
| Yes, please split. One group keeping it as done language that
| it is. Hopefully all others, trying to transform it a type of
| new C++ style _No feature left behind hyper-complex language_ -
| can take that train.
| zerr wrote:
| So do we have C-replacement vs C++-replacement camps?
| belter wrote:
| I think we have a camp of professional developers, who need
| to understand, work on, and refactor Rust based code
| daily...And a camp of academia programming language
| researchers, who would love to keep adding their favorite
| features to Rust. We already have a Rube Goldberg machine,
| it's C++
| EscapeFromNY wrote:
| > I am kind of left with the question of when, not if, we will
| see a major community fork of Rust
|
| It's already happened. https://crablang.org/
|
| At first I thought it was a joke, but now I'm not so sure
| omoikane wrote:
| Looks like crablang.org is relatively new (created on
| 2023-04-11), but predates the current drama. I wonder what
| happened in April?
| zamalek wrote:
| The trademark thing, it served as a wake-up call about the
| current structure of everything Rust.
| lostmsu wrote:
| What "trademark thing"?
| slimsag wrote:
| https://github.com/blyxyas/no-rust-policy-change
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| It's a joke. Nobody would fork an entire programming language
| and maintain it because they thought someone was wrong on The
| Internet.
| gpm wrote:
| You sure about that?
|
| https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27309412/what-is-the-
| dif...
| hxugufjfjf wrote:
| I stand corrected.
| apgwoz wrote:
| But, a few months later io.js merged back with node. So,
| "it worked," but was a giant mess.
| saghm wrote:
| It's also happened with operating systems:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonFly_BSD
|
| > Dillon started DragonFly in the belief that the
| techniques adopted for threading and symmetric
| multiprocessing in FreeBSD 5 would lead to poor
| performance and maintenance problems. He sought to
| correct these anticipated problems within the FreeBSD
| project. Due to conflicts with other FreeBSD developers
| over the implementation of his ideas, his ability to
| directly change the codebase was eventually revoked.
| JdeBP wrote:
| People have forked terminal emulators, desktop
| environments, and operating systems; so forking a
| programming language isn't that inconceivable. (-:
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| > forking a programming language isn't that
| inconceivable.
|
| Do SQL dialects in Databases count? mariadb
| svaha1728 wrote:
| Python 2. Don't make me print("") when I can print ""
| coldtea wrote:
| What if that "wrong person" had undue influence on the
| project?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If I remember it right, the word "fork" was created to
| describe the GCC thing.
| pm215 wrote:
| The wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For
| k_(software_development) has a link to a usenet post from
| 1995 that uses 'fork' to describe XEmacs; so that
| predates the gcc/egcs split by a couple of years.
| rst wrote:
| Projects have forked over leadership issues plenty of times
| before; there have been cases where both parts of the fork
| stuck around (NetBSD/FreeBSD), and at least a couple where
| the projects' former leadership effectively gave up and
| handed the reins to the fork (egcs, a gcc fork which became
| the official gcc in 1999, after the FSF belatedly realized
| that their official version was getting stagnant, and
| X.org, which displaced XFree86 without a rename after users
| of the latter all abandoned it).
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Also openoffice/libreoffice, bitcoin cash from bitcoin,
| etc.
| [deleted]
| jxf wrote:
| See also this other HN thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501
| CodeCompost wrote:
| > I don't know what to do. I'm pretty lost
|
| IMO record a keynote and put it out on the day of the conference.
| binarymax wrote:
| Their long term concern is that their work on rustc will be
| undermined by the same people who pulled these shenanigans.
| Which is a pretty bad situation, and might result in a fork.
| oaiey wrote:
| Nobody working on a language/framework of that size is easily
| / successfully forking. It is a dead end if the politics do
| not end.
|
| And the threat of a fork is politics again
| busterarm wrote:
| Forks do often end up having the effect of removing the
| person(s) who were roadblocking progress in the first
| place...as the compromise solution to the fork of the
| project.
| account-5 wrote:
| Can so eone ELI5 this for me? What's actually going on? Or gone
| on? What's the controversy?
| mellosouls wrote:
| Fred was invited to do a keynote speech. Joe was one of those
| who campaigned for him to be invited.
|
| Keynote speech was downgraded to normal speech at a late date,
| allegedly overriding a democratic decision.
|
| Fred flounces off dramatically in response to the downgrading
| and posts a long rambling blog about it and tweets.
|
| Joe resigns in support announcing it in a response to the
| tweet.
|
| Joe then posts his reasons with a long rambling blog alleging
| political shenanigans behind the downgrading.
|
| More discussion ongoing on various media.
|
| Names may have been changed here.
|
| Basically though, alleged politics and possible ego issues on
| either or both sides - with probably poor comms in the best
| case - centred here on a conference speaker.
|
| Bear in mind that this is also in the context of Rust which has
| a history of these sorts of shenanigans.
| potsandpans wrote:
| I find your summary to be unnecessarily dismissive.
| JdeBP wrote:
| It doesn't help that it gets who did what wrong, too. (-:
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Keynote speech was downgraded to normal speech at a late
| date, allegedly overriding a democratic decision. Fred
| flounces off dramatically in response to the downgrading_
|
| Yeah, because "overriding a democratic decision" behind the
| scenes to backstab someone is a small thing in a project...
|
| (Nor was it Fred)
| pdpi wrote:
| JeanHeyd Meneide was invited to give a keynote at RustConf. He
| was not planning on giving a talk at all (can't recall whether
| he was planning on going to the conference in the first place),
| and he says he was plenty clear about what he would be talking
| about, that it's super experimental and somewhat controversial
| (from a technical standpoint), and and that he didn't want him
| giving a keynote about it to seem like tacit endorsement of his
| ideas. The RustConf organisers assured him it would be fine.
|
| Fast forward and the conf organisers advise him that his
| keynote has been "demoted" to a regular talk. He says this is
| unprofessional and a lack of respect, cancels his talks, and
| posts about it. One of the people in the core team (I think?)
| quit in protest because of how this all happened behind the
| scenes. This particular post is JeanHeyd's comments on JT's
| explaining why he quit.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Fast forward and the conf organisers advise him that his
| keynote has been "demoted" to a regular talk. He says this is
| unprofessional and a lack of respect, cancels his talks, and
| posts about it._
|
| You missed the part where this demoting happened behind the
| scenes, was not voted for by the team, the suggestion to
| downvote didn't even reach the team, because some shady
| person did it on their own, and it was communicated to
| JeanHeyd himself at the last minute (so that he could check
| with the team and bring it to their awareness either).
|
| So, kind of missing the whole point, and painting a bad
| picture of JeanHeyd to boot...
| pdpi wrote:
| I might've been a bit overzealous in keeping my own opinion
| out of it. I didn't meant to paint a bad picture of
| JeanHeyd. In fact, I specifically tried to highlight how he
| tried to avoid drama.
|
| Ultimately, I don't even think the shady behind the scenes
| stuff is the part we should focus on.They invited him to
| give the keynote, he advised them that it might be a
| problem, they specifically told him it was fine, and then
| dropped the keynote for precisely the reasons he said it
| might be a problem. That _is_ extremely disrespectful and
| unprofessional by any reasonable standard.
| peteradio wrote:
| I think the behind the scenes stuff is what makes this
| relevant at all. How is an organization bound by some
| particular set of decision making rules able to get
| totally circumvented in this case?
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >because some shady person did it on their own
|
| Who?
| jcranmer wrote:
| This has not been publicly revealed yet, I believe. The
| person at RustConf who made the decision to downgrade the
| talk has admitted their role (see https://www.reddit.com/
| r/rust/comments/13tsmht/comment/jlxmc...).
| lucasyvas wrote:
| Hey, if it happened in a shady way, name the person and throw
| them under the bus and get it over with.
|
| A ton of the people raising issues are being way too vague about
| it. Throw. Them. Under. The. God. Damn. Bus. Already.
|
| I assure you it is simple to do and it will come to a head
| sooner, instead of dragging out the teen drama in perpetuity.
| [deleted]
| Conscat wrote:
| Time to switch to Crablang!
| [deleted]
| Buttons840 wrote:
| If you're committed to this work, but cannot get it into Rust,
| look to TypeScript as an example. Build a Rust-like language that
| compiles to Rust in a predictable way and add your features
| there.
| smabie wrote:
| Why does anyone actually care about this? So much drama about a
| guys talk getting downgraded? The language being used in this
| whole controversy suggests something actually meaningful
| happened, when in reality it's just completely banal.
| arek_nawo wrote:
| It might be overblown but still - the guy was invited first-
| hand to have a keynote and then told that's not happening a
| short while later. Whatever the reasoning was, the whole thing
| was very poorly handled. It should have been either throughly
| discussed before the invite - flip-flopping is the worst-case
| scenario.
| ufmace wrote:
| All the breathless language about how terrible this supposedly
| is really turns me off. It seems like every person involved in
| this debacle is being ridiculously childish
| cyber_kinetist wrote:
| Because of this, one of the major proposals for a better
| compile-time reflection system in Rust is not going to get
| developed any further.
|
| A languages thrives when enough talented people are developing
| it further. We are seeing some of that talent going away
| because of these kinds of drama.
| [deleted]
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I don't think this issue should matter to everyone. But it
| matters to some in the broader community.
| cbgha wrote:
| [flagged]
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Why does anyone actually care about this?_
|
| Because it sets the tone of discussion and contribution, the
| amount of respect contributors get, and the kind of behind the
| scene games played.
|
| > _So much drama about a guys talk getting downgraded?_
|
| Yes, because it sets the tone of discussion and contribution,
| the amount of respect contributors get, and the kind of behind
| the scene games played.
|
| Perhaps it needs to happen to some personally before they can
| see it as the insult and unfair back-stabbing that it is.
| blackhaz wrote:
| [flagged]
| dralley wrote:
| Please don't try to flip this around on JeanHeyd, they've
| done nothing wrong here.
| greydius wrote:
| Mediocrity thrives on drama.
| [deleted]
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The fact that the effect was minor (a talk getting downgraded)
| is not an excuse for the magnitude of the procedural problem.
| If a publicly voted decision by the Rust leadership committee
| can be undone by a single member, than that seriously calls
| into question that the committee has any real power.
| sho_hn wrote:
| This is a volunteer-driven open source community that operates
| in the relative open, and occasionally you will see how the
| sausage is made, or some dirty laundry. It's getting attention
| because that community is producing something popular with a
| lot of stakeholders, who are not active in the organization but
| worried about its health and stability.
|
| It's also not completely banal. Designing durable non-profits,
| governance structures, decision-making processes, policies,
| etc. is quite complex. You can to some extend evaluate your
| success by how much public drama you get to avoid. :-) That
| makes it a case study of interest.
|
| (I've helped run one of the major FOSS orgs for about a decade
| or so.)
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| The problem is now it seems like all I hear about on HN in
| terms of Rust is drama. It's unfortunate as I really like the
| language.
| FranksTV wrote:
| In a way it's just a sign of its success. There isn't a lot
| of news about most programming languages because no one
| cares.
| dralley wrote:
| It bears keeping in mind that plenty of other organizations
| have the same drama, but more hidden from public view. Rust
| is in the awkward spot of being primarily community driven
| unlike Go or Java, and also having that community operate
| mostly in public channels unlike C++. That is ultimately for
| the best, but it exposes a lot more "mess" to the public.
| Conscat wrote:
| C++ language evolution is developed _mostly_ in public. We
| don 't get to see WG21 meetings, but we see most of the
| emails (https://lists.isocpp.org/std-proposals/), almost
| all of the TS proposal papers (everything except for very
| early drafts), and notable meetings still have multiple
| recaps from various participants in addition the the
| Meeting Minutes publicly outlining what these discussions
| are about, and we see (afaik) all of the formal votes that
| the committee members take (although the votes are
| anonymized). Plus a considerable amount of the conversation
| happens on GitHub, and many paper authors ask for feedback
| on Reddit and chat clients.
|
| Also, the standards work is only a portion of C++ language
| evolution. Clang RFCs are public and anyone can provide
| feedback, the GCC mailing list is public, and both of their
| issue trackers (which include feature requests) are public.
| nickelpro wrote:
| We're not talking about mishandling sponsorship funds or
| unilateral decisions made on technical architecture, we're
| talking about time slots at a technical conference.
|
| There's nothing here but some beef between PhD and a yet-
| unknown member of rust leadership. This is high school stuff,
| the wider community should not elevate this or read these tea
| leaves.
| mort96 wrote:
| It's not "some beef between ThePhD and a yet-unknown member
| of Rust leadership", that makes it sound like it goes both
| way. It's a yet-unknown member of Rust leadership who
| apparently has a problem with ThePhD, but doesn't want to
| explain what that problem is, doesn't even want to make
| their identity known to ThePhD, and silently circumvents
| the normal decision-making process of the Rust Project to
| block ThePhD's work from making progress.
|
| That... is a problem.
| Kinrany wrote:
| That's a mischaracterization. The issue is that the yet-
| unknown member of rust leadership violated the norms, and
| neither of the two teams involved were able to do anything
| about it. The problem is not the beef but the way it was
| handled by the system as a whole.
| ofcourseyoudo wrote:
| I imagine for a volunteer FOSS project events that drive talent
| away from and negative feeling towards the project matter.
| [deleted]
| javajosh wrote:
| Fascinating, but ultimately could be healthy for the org.
| Everyone makes mistakes. What's not okay is to make a mistake and
| not admit it or correct it. Whoever among the Rust leadership
| misrepresented themselves to RustConf as representing consensus
| will hopefully admit their mistake and make amends. That would be
| healthy and good for the org. Anything that makes that harder,
| like demonizing or expelling those responsible, should be
| resisted. This is how organizations _should_ work.
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