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Why I Left Rust

• quantumwoke 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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.
• b1234 3y ago
  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.
• FunkinFonuts 3y ago
  [dead]
• KingLancelot 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • VerminOctopus1 3y ago
    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.
• s9w 3y ago
  [dead]
• Twirrim 3y ago
  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.
• locusofself 3y ago
  What's up with all the petty drama in the Rust community.. is it uniquely problematic?
  • bitwize 3y ago
    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.
    • lionkor 3y ago
      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.
• wirrbel 3y ago
  I would have expected such a resignation after two weeks time to see whether the organization would improve their decision making process
  • jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
    Perhaps the person has already seen enough to decide this was the last straw.
    • wirrbel 3y ago
      valid
  • swiftcoder 3y ago
    You are maybe missing the context that the organisation is already many months deep into attempting to improve their decision making process
• mtzet 3y ago
  > 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 3y ago
    I believe, this is it: https://soasis.org/posts/a-mirror-for-rust-a-plan-for-generic-compile-time-introspection-in-rust/ https://soasis.org/posts/a-mirror-for-rust-a-plan-for-generi...
    • mtzet 3y ago
      Thanks!
  • Grum9 3y ago
    posted a day or so ago and was flagged, I think it was this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36091242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36091242
• arp242 3y ago
  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.
  • TobyTheDog123 3y ago
    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.
    • arp242 3y ago
      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 https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
• jenadine 3y ago
  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.
  • CaliforniaKarl 3y ago
    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.
  • vikramkr 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      It is always professional to remove yourself from unprofessional situations.
  • _joel 3y ago
    How long was the talk you originally wrote, perhaps they thought there wasn't enough content for a full one (playing advocate)?
  • depr 3y ago
    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 3y ago
    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.
• znpy 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    Yeah, and merely over some random technical article, not controversial politics or anything.
    • jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
      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.
  • kitd 3y ago
    Well, not removed, just downgraded. But yes, it does smell a bit drama-queen.
    • znpy 3y ago
      I’d say drama queens on both sides
  • brabel 3y ago
    > 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?
• pyrelight 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    [deleted]
• Havoc 3y ago
  With this and the trademark drama it sure looks like leadership could do with a change of guards
  • meindnoch 3y ago
    This! Preferably at least 50% women.
  • maniflames 3y ago
    They’re working on it. RFC: https://github.com/rust-lang/rfc-leadership-council https://github.com/rust-lang/rfc-leadership-council
• sgt 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • Yajirobe 3y ago
    Perhaps there are barriers preventing it from working organically, and some external impetus is beneficial to speed up the non-white representation?
    • drekipus 3y ago
      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.
  • rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 3y ago
    >Let's keep this nonsense out of tech guys That ship has sailed loooong time ago.
  • eynsham 3y ago
    > 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 3y ago
      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.
• neonsunset 3y ago
  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.
  • jasmer 3y ago
    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.
  • pas 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      > 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 3y ago
        but how do we know who was it?
      • ssokolow 3y ago
        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.
• ummonk 3y ago
  For more context, post from the previously invited keynote speaker about what happened: https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023 https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
  • capableweb 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
      Not yet, though to be fair, it is Memorial Day weekend and this emerged on Friday evening.
    • exadeci 3y ago
      His blog is call The pasture and has a bunch of sheep looking characters, could it be that people got uncomfortable about his furry implications maybe?
• JdeBP 3y ago
  There's more discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36090512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36090512 .
• distcs 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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
• 0zemp2c 3y ago
  crablang was started as sort-of satire...if Rust folks aren't careful it might just take off
  • perihelions 3y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35592005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35592005 ("CrabLang (crablang.org)", 77 comments)
  • idiomaticrust 3y ago
    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.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• Yasuraka 3y ago
  >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
• meindnoch 3y ago
  Rust could be a nice language if it wasn't for its insufferable "community".
  • troad 3y ago
    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
  • cookieperson 3y ago
    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.
• zamalek 3y ago
  Is this the same group who conjured up that _top-notch_ trademark policy? If so, how would the community go about removing them?
  • cookieperson 3y ago
    What is the deal with trademarks and rust? See a lot of people talking about it...
    • zamalek 3y ago
      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 3y ago
        Weird thanks for filling me in. Uh yea I had no idea... Ferris is the little crab right?
  • kibwen 3y ago
    > 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 https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
• junon 3y ago
  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 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?
  • losvedir 3y ago
    > 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.
  • indy 3y ago
    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."
• chillbill 3y ago
  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 https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
  • mananaysiempre 3y ago
    FWIW, JeanHeyd did mention the issue themselves as well after a while[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/__phantomderp/status/1662511693136637952 https://twitter.com/__phantomderp/status/1662511693136637952
    • foldr 3y ago
      Only to say > I haven't even considered this angle until this [other] person's tweet.
  • arijun 3y ago
    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.
• aww_dang 3y ago
  How does this kind of organizational drama affect me as an end user of the Rust programming language?
  • capableweb 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
    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
  • acomjean 3y ago
    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.
• jokoon 3y ago
  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.
  • DerekL 3y ago
    Do you mean “Ada”, the programming language? It's not an acronym.
  • Ygg2 3y ago
    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.
  • jeroenhd 3y ago
    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.
• zelphirkalt 3y ago
  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.
• 0xbadc0de5 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    But why not both? Malicious and stupid, the best of two worlds.
• orangetuba 3y ago
  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.
  • flumpcakes 3y ago
    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...
  • agumonkey 3y ago
    Is it a case of people repeatedly talking about grand principles that you never felt were actually naturally followed ?
  • revelio 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
    The Rust™ 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.
• julienfr112 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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.
• Oddskar 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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.
• rvz 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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.
• mgaunard 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
      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 3y ago
    > 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.
• oytis 3y ago
  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?
  • mhd 3y ago
    Ruby's Matz counts as a BFDL, does he? Because there was plenty of drama in that area...
    • oytis 3y ago
      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 3y ago
        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=4801226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4487963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4487963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28712821 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 3y ago
      Not for a long time. I think the drama queens might have moved on to another language.
  • BlueTemplar 3y ago
    Didn't Linux (used to ?) have regular drama because of Linus, erm, outbursts ?
    • oytis 3y ago
      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.
• mberning 3y ago
  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.
  • hongsy 3y ago
    what does "internecine" mean?
    • grzm 3y ago
      > 1 : of, relating to, or involving conflict within a group https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/internecine https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/internecine
• ojosilva 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36091242
• revskill 3y ago
  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 ?
• FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  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".
  • sidlls 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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".
      • revelio 3y ago
        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 3y ago
          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.
          • noisy_boy 3y ago
• edem 3y ago
  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?
  • troutpanda 3y ago
    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.
• bruce343434 3y ago
  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?
  • rTX5CMRXIfFG 3y ago
    I mean, sometimes it’s not one’s race—sometimes it’s sexuality, gender, religion, disability, or some other variable that I missed. And people in America think along those variables because they have a history of disenfranchising and discriminating people along those axes.
    • shrimp_emoji 3y ago
      Unironically, Americans think like this because they're more progressive than Europeans (some, anyway; some are way less). Europe has a history of disenfranchisement too, and to the extent they don't see it much it's because they have more homogeneous societies (until recently, with refugees). The melting pot of the new world was always life on higher difficulty: you don't get to be racist while pretending you're not because you're never tested on it as a society. You don't get to outlaw slavery, posturing like you're doing it because you're just that virtuous when in reality it's because it's easy to do when your economy doesn't rely on slavery so it's an easy way to look good. In this crucible, minds are traumatized into reverse-racism and performative bullshit.
  • jeroenhd 3y ago
    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.
• chrishare 3y ago
  Can we acknowledge that we, software professionals, crave drama just like soap opera junkies?
• thiht 3y ago
  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.
• WesSouza 3y ago
  [flagged]
• totallyunknown 3y ago
  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."
• unixhero 3y ago
  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.
  • VerminOctopus1 3y ago
    No it didn’t, what are you talking about? It was a strictly technical keynote
    • unixhero 3y ago
      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."
• pie_flavor 3y ago
  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 naïve to me.
  • Waterluvian 3y ago
    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.
  • matklad 3y ago
    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 https://hackmd.io/mwCWfJpIT024vBYvKeHCtw?view gives an informed perspective on the second question.
  • tssva 3y ago
    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.
  • viraptor 3y ago
    > 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.
• bsenftner 3y ago
  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.
• veidr 3y ago
  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 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:
• jasmer 3y ago
  "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.
• bybybyby 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • DonHopkins 3y ago
    [flagged]
• BaculumMeumEst 3y ago
  time to hard fork and create Virtuous Crablang
  • fndex 3y ago
    https://github.com/crablang/crab https://github.com/crablang/crab
• vpastore 3y ago
  [flagged]
• aogaili 3y ago
  Rust is not a humnan, you are dealing with humans, and humans are flawed, accept it and protect what you care about.
• anta40 3y ago
  I think the title is "click bait-ish" because it implies the person stopped writing in Rust :D
  • troutpanda 3y ago
    No, he's a known compilers guy and it was known he worked on Rust.
• neilv 3y ago
  Rust is supposed to help keep the programmer from shooting themself in the foot, but lately the Rust community/leadership keeps shooting itself.
• wyldfire 3y ago
  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.
• Roark66 3y ago
  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.
  • depr 3y ago
    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 3y ago
• 29athrowaway 3y ago
  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.
• nbittich 3y ago
  After the Kardashians, the world needs a new reality show: the rustaceans. Somewhere btw Dallas and the youth and the restless.
• Blackstrat 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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.
• stcroixx 3y ago
  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.
• vpastore 3y ago
  [flagged]
• pdimitar 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    [flagged]
    • pdimitar 3y ago
      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?)
• malkosta 3y ago
  When is the Taylor swift concert?
  • turtleyacht 3y ago
    There's one going on right now! (Until August 9.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eras_Tour https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eras_Tour
• frankfrank13 3y ago
  Bro wtf is happening at rust. How does a programming language have this much drama WEEKLY
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• bob1029 3y ago
  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.
  • jjtheblunt 3y ago
    What's a LARP?
    • sampo 3y ago
      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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game
      • jjtheblunt 3y ago
        thanks
    • capableweb 3y ago
      https://lmgt.org/?q=LARP https://lmgt.org/?q=LARP
      • jjtheblunt 3y ago
        cool site! thanks.
    • ssokolow 3y ago
• Lanz 3y ago
  I love how everything has to be spun into something about race by the left. You win today's award for the Wokest Bloke.
  • carterisonline 3y ago
    I wouldn't say they made it about race. The main point of this post still the situation with JeanHeyd. However, a post like this is probably the best place to lay out some of the other issues concerning Rust's team, and representation is a very real issue! Of the people with bachelors+ degrees in computer science in the US, only 6% are black; under half of the population percentage of black Americans (https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-workforce-with-at-least-a-bachelor-s-degree https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf23315/report/stem-workforce-wi..., Figure 6-3) I don't think discussion like this hurts anyone. I wish diversity was the default and we wouldn't need to discuss these issues, but we don't live in that world.
• WhereIsTheTruth 3y ago
  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
• da39a3ee 3y ago
  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?
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• tomaaron 3y ago
  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 https://youtu.be/enLUX1TtNyE Better Go :)
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• forty 3y ago
  If they don't have bigger problems than that, I'd say it seems to be a pretty nice community...
  • fndex 3y ago
    Oh, boy... they do have bigger problems than that.
• erdeibit 3y ago
  Exactly the kind of things that prevent me to approach Rust. Part of their community is very unwelcoming.
• bscphil 3y ago
  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.
• fnordpiglet 3y ago
  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.
• lr1970 3y ago
  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.
• cashsterling 3y ago
  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.
  • Astie 3y ago
    [flagged]
• chclt 3y ago
  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?!
• greesil 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    They quit because they didn't get a keynote slot. They were still invited to give a talk.
    • dimgl 3y ago
      This is such a non-issue to me I'm surprised it's even at the top of Hacker News.
• epistasis 3y ago
  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.
• RenThraysk 3y ago
  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.
• KerrAvon 3y ago
  [flagged]
• tjwherw2342 3y ago
  [flagged]
• slackfan 3y ago
  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.
• sxhunga 3y ago
  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.
• aigoochamna 3y ago
  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.
• lamontcg 3y ago
  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.
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• coldtea 3y ago
  >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.
• ianzakalwe 3y ago
  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.
• artyom 3y ago
  Jeez, I miss the days of strong open source leadership. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2lhwb_OckQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2lhwb_OckQ
• levihaku 3y ago
  [flagged]
• ok123456 3y ago
  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.
• deleted 3y ago
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• june_twenty 3y ago
  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.
• syngrog66 3y ago
  [flagged]
• babbledabbler 3y ago
  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.
• Capricorn2481 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    "Woke" is not caring about people. "Woke" is tricking others into thinking you care about people.
    • Capricorn2481 3y ago
      My point was not that Woke is inherently good, but that you're shitting on other people while whining that they shit on you back. These anti-woke people really are the biggest whiners in the room while pretending otherwise. If you're so triggered by black mermaids, how is anybody gonna take you fucking seriously. We act like Tech is insulating leftwingers from the world, but it really does the same for the whole political spectrum. If you stare at a computer all day and don't take care of yourself, you're gonna overreact to everything in the world.
• deleted 3y ago
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• overgard 3y ago
  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.
• beezlewax 3y ago
  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.
• qwertox 3y ago
  [flagged]
• QuiEgo 3y ago
  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?
  • johnisgood 3y ago
    People keep saying it has nothing to do with the language, but it pretty much has a lot of things to do with its development and its ecosystem. There are forks already out there because of the Rust committee.
• meatjuice 3y ago
  It doesn’t mean that Rust itself is a bad programming language.
• wly_cdgr 3y ago
  Yeah, thanks, but I'm gonna go ahead and stick with the language made by the earnest working class guy. You know, the one that everyone loves to complain about, but that everything is built with.
• encody 3y ago
  Everyone involved seems... petty and immature at worst, overly sensitive at best. Conference organizers sucked at communication, both internally and with the speaker. But the speaker doesn't take the affront in stride, instead choosing to make a stink on Twitter, complain, swear about a ruined weekend, and call people racist. Not the kind of professionalism I would expect from a prospective keynote speaker.
• kazinator 3y ago
  > A person in Rust ... reached directly to RustConf leadership and asked to change the invitation Programmers are control freaks. If you don't let yourself to reach into things and flip bits in the machine's memory, that's going to boil over somewhere.
• say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
  > It was JeanHeyd who called Rust out for having no Black representation among Rust conference speakers. JeanHeyd race-shamed their way right onto the main stage for a global tech conference? I can't imagine why anyone would take offense to that agenda. Yes, must be related to a blog post about compile-time reflection.
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