6 ms·

I'm an average programmer, but I honestly don't get the goal of inclusiveness [edit: from the Rust 2017 Survey Results] > Diversity and inclusiveness continue

by swfsql 9y ago

I'm an average programmer, but I honestly don't get the goal of inclusiveness [edit: from the Rust 2017 Survey Results] > Diversity and inclusiveness continue to be vital goals for the Rust project at all levels. I mean.. lifetime checks won't stop working if you don't consider yourself heterosexual or anything o.O The two matters simply don't mix in my head

nemothekid 9y ago
It's less about goals of the technical project, and more about goals of the organization. Rust the language is written by people, The Rust Team, most of whom I'd imagine are volunteers. In order to guarantee the life of the project, its important for potential contributors to not only feel comfortable using the language and writing code, but also feel comfortable in discussing the future potential features and use cases for the language. It is important for projects, now, to state their goals upfront and be clear, especially when you could have 1000s of contributors from all over the world. This is something that's new for software projects, but as open source becomes larger and more diverse its becoming more necessary. The alternative has been a community based loosely around some invisible set of rules that alienates or drives away potential contributors or sparks some drama that ends up on the top of Reddit/HN/etc. Lifetime checks will stop working if the project gets abandoned over political issues.
- swfsql 9y ago
  I see, but this is still a political issue. Maybe a lot of minorities people just voted "no" in that survey question. Because.. why excluding people based on their skin color is discriminatory, but including people based on their skin color is not discriminatory?
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    You’ve described something that isn’t happening and won’t happen.
  - awestroke 9y ago
    Discrimination, noun: > the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex. Is it unjust to make sure people from a minority do not feel alienated?
    - jhasse 9y ago
      Yes, you should instead make sure everyone doesn't feel alienated, not only the people from a minority regarding their race, age or sex.
      - Rusky 9y ago
        That... does seem to be the goal.
        staticassertion 9y ago
        No no no, you see, by making minorities safer we must then be making the majority feel less safe! Safety is a zero sum game after all.
        zkomp 9y ago
        In this minefield, I really miss the irony tag here. I do, really do, belive this should just boil down to: - don't be a jerk - don't discriminate
        kbenson 9y ago
        It upsets me that the reason this joke plays so well is because we can see how this kind of thinking has become common in the world. Take your upvote, but know you've also made me sad. :/
        zbraniecki 9y ago
        exactly. I also gave them my sad upvote for a really spot on commentary on the diversity and inclusion issues. :(
  - andrewflnr 9y ago
    There is a difference between "including" and "not excluding" people based on color or whatever. It's (officially, anyway) about removing barriers, not roping people in. I'll grant in practice it's a blurry line. So, yeah, it's a political issue, but an open source project is necessarily a political entity by virtue of being made of people. You can't escape making political decisions, and since "inclusivity" mostly just means being nice to people, I can't complain much.
    - swfsql 9y ago
      I completely agree, and I'd like to add that if one is "not excluding", asking for color skin should be forbidden. Because knowing color skin cannot possibly help one to "not exclude". In other words, "not excluding" implies not asking for color skins.
      - andrewflnr 9y ago
        Eh, depending on the circumstances it might help you measure how well your anti-exclusion efforts are going. You'd definitely prefer it to be anonymous, and unlinked to any kind of entry process, including informal ones.
        swfsql 9y ago
        This is correct. I mistakenly assumed that if they wanted to know about it, then they wanted to change something according to it, which may not be the case. They have talks, documentation is awesome, examples may even run online, ide stuff is cool, In my opinion, it hard to be more welcoming than that, and special treatment based on any individual traits (except for "what OS you're using" and stuff) would not only be unneeded, but also should be repelled ([subjective] personal value).
chmln 9y ago
Its all just fluff. Might have something to do with Mozilla being left-leaning. Skin color has nothing to do with non-lexical lifetimes. They will say that they value diversity of thoughts that may come when you have people with various backgrounds, but it is much more primitive in practice, always boiling down to companies acquiring people with certain skin color or gender just for the sake of it. There are well-known but taboo reasons behind the lack of so-called diversity in tech and other highly intellectually demanding areas. And as long as uncomfortable truth cannot come out in the overly sensitive cultural climate of today, initiatives and policies in this direction will remain misguided.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  The only fluff I’m seeing here is your nonsense about about “taboo” or “uncomfortable truths”, which are usually a hallmark or someone with nudge-nudge-wink-wink dogwhistle objectionable opinion. Let’s make it simple - having a diverse and welcoming community makes a project more attractive to contributors, and means that it’s more likely to succeed in the long term.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    Could also be correlation: Projects succeeding in the long term attract diverse and welcoming communities.
  - chmln 9y ago
    > Let’s make it simple - having a diverse and welcoming community makes a project more attractive to contributors, and means that it’s more likely to succeed in the long term. Sure, I never argued against fostering a welcome environment for contributors. We need more of this especially in open source, where contributions can be sorely lacking. Instead I question the notion that Rust needs to have some sort or diversity to succeed. The assumption that it does implies that without diversity Rust will fail. However, Rust is not particularly diverse at the moment and it is certainly successful.
    - camplum 9y ago
jayroh 9y ago
If you're open to learning about why it _actually is_ important, there are some good resources out there to give you a little more context as to the reasons why. You could read this: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-diversity-right-thing-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-diversity-righ... Or maybe if you like listening instead: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/52-raising-the-bar https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/52-raising-the-bar So, while it's a nuanced and complicated topic, there are actual reasons why this benefits a project like Rust. Diversity amongst any organization is not only good for society, but objectively the output of the org itself.
- swfsql 9y ago
  What if it happens that you can only hire one person, and one "externally looks" homogeneous to the rest of the hired workers, but the other one "externally looks" like a minority member, but you think that the first one, based on your own judgment, will be more "out of the box" when having solutions for the company. So no matter what you think, the one from a minority is certainly preferable for hiring?
  - kbenson 9y ago
    > So no matter what you think, the one from a minority is certainly preferable for hiring? I think the idea is to include as best as possible what may be hard to assess factors such as difference of experience, culture and upbringing and using that, make a decision as the hirer who you think will benefit the company best, not to choose a person and then override who you think is best just because of one factor. All this really takes is valuing an outside perspective. An yes, sometimes just the skin color can be enough, if that skin color has affected how people see them or any unique problems it has come with. That does mean it is or must be enough though, just that it may be something worth including. As a simple example, I'll leave you this: How We Accidentally Made a Racist Videogame.[1] It should be easy to see how a slightly more diverse group of developers and/or QA testers could have avoided that problem. Similar things exist with dealing with other cultures or countries, or people with disabilities, or if you're really unlucky, just people of the other sex if you're unlucky enough to have that much of a homogeneous set of coworkers. 1: http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/01/12/how-we-accidentally-made-a-racist-videogame http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/01/12/how-we-accidentally-made-...
solidsnack9000 9y ago
There are many axes along which a community can be non-inclusive. I will always remember being made fun of in #gentoo for using Haskell. (Although I can not argue with the general guidance to install Gentoo.) Once you see that worthy men can be made to feel unwelcome, merely due to their choice of programming language, it makes one wonder if other worthy people do not feel unwelcome when they are treated dismissively in some other way, as by by referring to every one as “men” indifferently.

by swfsql 9y ago

nemothekid 9y ago

It's less about goals of the technical project, and more about goals of the organization. Rust the language is written by people, The Rust Team, most of whom I'd imagine are volunteers. In order to guarantee the life of the project, its important for potential contributors to not only feel comfortable using the language and writing code, but also feel comfortable in discussing the future potential features and use cases for the language. It is important for projects, now, to state their goals upfront and be clear, especially when you could have 1000s of contributors from all over the world. This is something that's new for software projects, but as open source becomes larger and more diverse its becoming more necessary. The alternative has been a community based loosely around some invisible set of rules that alienates or drives away potential contributors or sparks some drama that ends up on the top of Reddit/HN/etc. Lifetime checks will stop working if the project gets abandoned over political issues.

swfsql 9y ago
I see, but this is still a political issue. Maybe a lot of minorities people just voted "no" in that survey question. Because.. why excluding people based on their skin color is discriminatory, but including people based on their skin color is not discriminatory?
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  You’ve described something that isn’t happening and won’t happen.
- awestroke 9y ago
  Discrimination, noun: > the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex. Is it unjust to make sure people from a minority do not feel alienated?
  - jhasse 9y ago
    Yes, you should instead make sure everyone doesn't feel alienated, not only the people from a minority regarding their race, age or sex.
    - Rusky 9y ago
      That... does seem to be the goal.
      - staticassertion 9y ago
        No no no, you see, by making minorities safer we must then be making the majority feel less safe! Safety is a zero sum game after all.
        zkomp 9y ago
        In this minefield, I really miss the irony tag here. I do, really do, belive this should just boil down to: - don't be a jerk - don't discriminate
        kbenson 9y ago
        It upsets me that the reason this joke plays so well is because we can see how this kind of thinking has become common in the world. Take your upvote, but know you've also made me sad. :/
        zbraniecki 9y ago
        exactly. I also gave them my sad upvote for a really spot on commentary on the diversity and inclusion issues. :(
- andrewflnr 9y ago
  There is a difference between "including" and "not excluding" people based on color or whatever. It's (officially, anyway) about removing barriers, not roping people in. I'll grant in practice it's a blurry line. So, yeah, it's a political issue, but an open source project is necessarily a political entity by virtue of being made of people. You can't escape making political decisions, and since "inclusivity" mostly just means being nice to people, I can't complain much.
  - swfsql 9y ago
    I completely agree, and I'd like to add that if one is "not excluding", asking for color skin should be forbidden. Because knowing color skin cannot possibly help one to "not exclude". In other words, "not excluding" implies not asking for color skins.
    - andrewflnr 9y ago
      Eh, depending on the circumstances it might help you measure how well your anti-exclusion efforts are going. You'd definitely prefer it to be anonymous, and unlinked to any kind of entry process, including informal ones.
      - swfsql 9y ago
        This is correct. I mistakenly assumed that if they wanted to know about it, then they wanted to change something according to it, which may not be the case. They have talks, documentation is awesome, examples may even run online, ide stuff is cool, In my opinion, it hard to be more welcoming than that, and special treatment based on any individual traits (except for "what OS you're using" and stuff) would not only be unneeded, but also should be repelled ([subjective] personal value).

chmln 9y ago

Its all just fluff. Might have something to do with Mozilla being left-leaning. Skin color has nothing to do with non-lexical lifetimes. They will say that they value diversity of thoughts that may come when you have people with various backgrounds, but it is much more primitive in practice, always boiling down to companies acquiring people with certain skin color or gender just for the sake of it. There are well-known but taboo reasons behind the lack of so-called diversity in tech and other highly intellectually demanding areas. And as long as uncomfortable truth cannot come out in the overly sensitive cultural climate of today, initiatives and policies in this direction will remain misguided.

matthewmacleod 9y ago
The only fluff I’m seeing here is your nonsense about about “taboo” or “uncomfortable truths”, which are usually a hallmark or someone with nudge-nudge-wink-wink dogwhistle objectionable opinion. Let’s make it simple - having a diverse and welcoming community makes a project more attractive to contributors, and means that it’s more likely to succeed in the long term.
- jhasse 9y ago
  Could also be correlation: Projects succeeding in the long term attract diverse and welcoming communities.
- chmln 9y ago
  > Let’s make it simple - having a diverse and welcoming community makes a project more attractive to contributors, and means that it’s more likely to succeed in the long term. Sure, I never argued against fostering a welcome environment for contributors. We need more of this especially in open source, where contributions can be sorely lacking. Instead I question the notion that Rust needs to have some sort or diversity to succeed. The assumption that it does implies that without diversity Rust will fail. However, Rust is not particularly diverse at the moment and it is certainly successful.
  - camplum 9y ago

jayroh 9y ago

If you're open to learning about why it _actually is_ important, there are some good resources out there to give you a little more context as to the reasons why. You could read this: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-diversity-right-thing-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-diversity-righ... Or maybe if you like listening instead: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/52-raising-the-bar https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/52-raising-the-bar So, while it's a nuanced and complicated topic, there are actual reasons why this benefits a project like Rust. Diversity amongst any organization is not only good for society, but objectively the output of the org itself.

swfsql 9y ago
What if it happens that you can only hire one person, and one "externally looks" homogeneous to the rest of the hired workers, but the other one "externally looks" like a minority member, but you think that the first one, based on your own judgment, will be more "out of the box" when having solutions for the company. So no matter what you think, the one from a minority is certainly preferable for hiring?
- kbenson 9y ago
  > So no matter what you think, the one from a minority is certainly preferable for hiring? I think the idea is to include as best as possible what may be hard to assess factors such as difference of experience, culture and upbringing and using that, make a decision as the hirer who you think will benefit the company best, not to choose a person and then override who you think is best just because of one factor. All this really takes is valuing an outside perspective. An yes, sometimes just the skin color can be enough, if that skin color has affected how people see them or any unique problems it has come with. That does mean it is or must be enough though, just that it may be something worth including. As a simple example, I'll leave you this: How We Accidentally Made a Racist Videogame.[1] It should be easy to see how a slightly more diverse group of developers and/or QA testers could have avoided that problem. Similar things exist with dealing with other cultures or countries, or people with disabilities, or if you're really unlucky, just people of the other sex if you're unlucky enough to have that much of a homogeneous set of coworkers. 1: http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/01/12/how-we-accidentally-made-a-racist-videogame http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/01/12/how-we-accidentally-made-...

solidsnack9000 9y ago

There are many axes along which a community can be non-inclusive. I will always remember being made fun of in #gentoo for using Haskell. (Although I can not argue with the general guidance to install Gentoo.) Once you see that worthy men can be made to feel unwelcome, merely due to their choice of programming language, it makes one wonder if other worthy people do not feel unwelcome when they are treated dismissively in some other way, as by by referring to every one as “men” indifferently.