4 ms·

I'm surprised and disappointed to learn that Mozilla didn't value Steve's work enough. The documentation, especially the book [1] which he authored, is the gold

I'm surprised and disappointed to learn that Mozilla didn't value Steve's work enough. The documentation, especially the book [1] which he authored, is the gold standard that every software project should aspire to. As someone who learned the language recently, it's possible that I might have abandoned it if the documentation and learning materials hadn't been so good. I also thought his work in evangelizing Rust on HN, Reddit and a million other places was hugely important, and a big part of why there's a lot of positive buzz around the language. Steve, I do hope you'll find the time to continue at least a part of this work, because I think it's vital for the success of Rust. [1] - https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

mylons 8y ago
i think the point he's making in that post is he does have the time, and more importantly the passion and will to do so. the compensation he was receiving for having to work at a large org wasn't fair, and that's why he's changing directions.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  Are there companies (outside of Mozilla) that would hire (or at least pay) someone like that to keep working on Rust and its documentation? These people are too important to not pay enough. I know it's perceived to be the price you pay if you work for a foundation like Mozilla (or open source software), but it's not fair. I've seen a guy who worked full time on open source have a Patreon, which had a few big sponsors that would pay / donate $5K or $10k / month - that's another good option IMO. Although I'd donate it directly to him, instead of having Patreon scoop off their share.
  - steveklabnik 8y ago
    There are a few companies who give some of their employees paid time to contribute to the parts of Rust that matter to them. As a team, we've been trying to figure out how to increase that number. We'll see!
  - Touche 8y ago
    There are a few, but by in large, no. You have to have a company where OSS is part of the business model to some degree. For most companies, the proposition for open source is that you get something of value for (almost) free. If you start paying someone to work on that thing the equation becomes more complicated. Now you are competing with 1) A different flavor of free (another project) and 2) Non-free but with an SLA that you can count on.
  - deskamess 8y ago
    One company that values documentation is Microsoft. There are technologies like Web Assembly/Blazor that could use an evangelist. Web Assembly within the framework of .NET Core+VS Code could be worth pushing.
    - meuk 8y ago
      Microsoft's documentation is really bad, in my opinion. So maybe Microsoft would be a good choice for Steve after all ;)
  - elorm 8y ago
    One of my favorite companies of all time, NoRedInk, hired Evan the creator of Elm full time just to work on ElmLang. I think it shouldn’t be too hard for any company relying on Rust in production to hire Steve or some of his team members.
steveklabnik 8y ago
Thanks! To be clear, the doc work was my job, but the evangelizing wasn't. I plan on continuing both, as much as time allows.
- mhd 8y ago
  I would miss the instant replies on most Rust topics from you. That and acemarke's similar quick response to any mention of Redux make the world seem like a more predictable place in these troubled times...
- madez 8y ago
  I want to thank you, and say sorry for any snark you received in the past from me, which was usually (exclusively?) for what Mozilla did and does. Once again, thank you for promoting Rust, which has so many benefits in so many areas, and being friendly and helpful wherever I encountered your presence.
- jules 8y ago
  Would it be possible to crowdfund that role? People on youtube apparently earn a living by making videos in which they film themselves watching other youtube videos, so it ought to be possible :)
  - steveklabnik 8y ago
    Maybe! I'm not sure I have the kind of skills needed to do such a thing.
    - jules 8y ago
      Maybe setting up a Patreon account and posting what you did each week is sufficient. That seems to work for the youtubers, and it's more audacious to ask money for watching youtube videos than writing docs and promoting Rust ;-)
      - raphlinus 8y ago
        I have done this, and just for reference, my Patreon currently brings in $203/month. I am very grateful to my supporters, but making this scale doesn't look easy.
lmm 8y ago
> I also thought his work in evangelizing Rust on HN, Reddit and a million other places was hugely important, and a big part of why there's a lot of positive buzz around the language. Yeah. As someone working in Scala I honestly think I'm in the right language technically, but I wish we had even half the community spirit that Rust does, and Klabnik is a huge part of that.
- YorkshireSeason 8y ago
  Agreed. BTW, have you looked Scala/Rust interop? Both languages are ML-style languages, so they are close in spirit.
  - haggy 8y ago
    Im a Scala guy that knows very little about rust so excuse the ignorance but what would the benefits be with regards to scala/rust interop?
    - YorkshireSeason 8y ago
      Do all the stuff that can be done in a high-level GCed language in Scala, and drop down to a low-level language where GC is in the way.
  - zokier 8y ago
    I don't really see much opportunity for interop beyond the dog-slow JNI and C-style interfaces. Sure, you probably can do that, but it would be fairly exceptional situation where it would make sense, especially as afaik Scala has pretty decent perf by itself
  - lmm 8y ago
    > BTW, have you looked Scala/Rust interop? It doesn't look easy (there's no Rust ABI that preserves safety properties) and I'm not convinced there would be any benefit. The main reasons you'd want to write Rust rather than Scala would be faster app startup (and even then, scala-native or scalajs are options) or some realtime requirement that you couldn't meet with even carefully tuned Scala due to GC pauses (not a case that I'm convinced actually exists in the real world). In either of those cases a mixed Scala/Rust project would have the same issues as a pure-Scala one. Most things that scripting languages use native libraries for already have native-to-JVM implementations (e.g. media formats) and I'd sooner use a Java library than worry about an interop-to-Rust boundary. If Rust becomes the de facto standard for video codecs then I can eventually see maybe making occasional use of some ffmpeg-equivalent via JNI, but any such library would probably expose a C-ABI interface and be used through that rather than supporting any higher-level interop. (I suspect Rust is constrained by what LLVM offers in terms of stable interfaces).
HellDunkel 8y ago
This is true. Books on programming are rarely done so well.
pygy_ 8y ago
Likewise... I've been watching him from the sidelines since the shoes/hacketyhack days (a Ruby-based, cross-platform GUI toolkit and a programming environment for beginners built on the latter. He was leading those community-maintained projects after _why vanished from the Web in 2009). He's been consistently excellent. Before Rust, he also had a REST-based stint, writing about things like HATEOS. A great loss for Rust, since he probably won't be able to dedicate as much time to it, and for Mozilla. Of all companies, I would have expected the Mozilla Corporation to dearly value the work he was doing...

mylons 8y ago

i think the point he's making in that post is he does have the time, and more importantly the passion and will to do so. the compensation he was receiving for having to work at a large org wasn't fair, and that's why he's changing directions.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Are there companies (outside of Mozilla) that would hire (or at least pay) someone like that to keep working on Rust and its documentation? These people are too important to not pay enough. I know it's perceived to be the price you pay if you work for a foundation like Mozilla (or open source software), but it's not fair. I've seen a guy who worked full time on open source have a Patreon, which had a few big sponsors that would pay / donate $5K or $10k / month - that's another good option IMO. Although I'd donate it directly to him, instead of having Patreon scoop off their share.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  There are a few companies who give some of their employees paid time to contribute to the parts of Rust that matter to them. As a team, we've been trying to figure out how to increase that number. We'll see!
- Touche 8y ago
  There are a few, but by in large, no. You have to have a company where OSS is part of the business model to some degree. For most companies, the proposition for open source is that you get something of value for (almost) free. If you start paying someone to work on that thing the equation becomes more complicated. Now you are competing with 1) A different flavor of free (another project) and 2) Non-free but with an SLA that you can count on.
- deskamess 8y ago
  One company that values documentation is Microsoft. There are technologies like Web Assembly/Blazor that could use an evangelist. Web Assembly within the framework of .NET Core+VS Code could be worth pushing.
  - meuk 8y ago
    Microsoft's documentation is really bad, in my opinion. So maybe Microsoft would be a good choice for Steve after all ;)
- elorm 8y ago
  One of my favorite companies of all time, NoRedInk, hired Evan the creator of Elm full time just to work on ElmLang. I think it shouldn’t be too hard for any company relying on Rust in production to hire Steve or some of his team members.

steveklabnik 8y ago

Thanks! To be clear, the doc work was my job, but the evangelizing wasn't. I plan on continuing both, as much as time allows.

mhd 8y ago
I would miss the instant replies on most Rust topics from you. That and acemarke's similar quick response to any mention of Redux make the world seem like a more predictable place in these troubled times...
madez 8y ago
I want to thank you, and say sorry for any snark you received in the past from me, which was usually (exclusively?) for what Mozilla did and does. Once again, thank you for promoting Rust, which has so many benefits in so many areas, and being friendly and helpful wherever I encountered your presence.
jules 8y ago
Would it be possible to crowdfund that role? People on youtube apparently earn a living by making videos in which they film themselves watching other youtube videos, so it ought to be possible :)
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Maybe! I'm not sure I have the kind of skills needed to do such a thing.
  - jules 8y ago
    Maybe setting up a Patreon account and posting what you did each week is sufficient. That seems to work for the youtubers, and it's more audacious to ask money for watching youtube videos than writing docs and promoting Rust ;-)
    - raphlinus 8y ago
      I have done this, and just for reference, my Patreon currently brings in $203/month. I am very grateful to my supporters, but making this scale doesn't look easy.

lmm 8y ago

> I also thought his work in evangelizing Rust on HN, Reddit and a million other places was hugely important, and a big part of why there's a lot of positive buzz around the language. Yeah. As someone working in Scala I honestly think I'm in the right language technically, but I wish we had even half the community spirit that Rust does, and Klabnik is a huge part of that.

YorkshireSeason 8y ago
Agreed. BTW, have you looked Scala/Rust interop? Both languages are ML-style languages, so they are close in spirit.
- haggy 8y ago
  Im a Scala guy that knows very little about rust so excuse the ignorance but what would the benefits be with regards to scala/rust interop?
  - YorkshireSeason 8y ago
    Do all the stuff that can be done in a high-level GCed language in Scala, and drop down to a low-level language where GC is in the way.
- zokier 8y ago
  I don't really see much opportunity for interop beyond the dog-slow JNI and C-style interfaces. Sure, you probably can do that, but it would be fairly exceptional situation where it would make sense, especially as afaik Scala has pretty decent perf by itself
- lmm 8y ago
  > BTW, have you looked Scala/Rust interop? It doesn't look easy (there's no Rust ABI that preserves safety properties) and I'm not convinced there would be any benefit. The main reasons you'd want to write Rust rather than Scala would be faster app startup (and even then, scala-native or scalajs are options) or some realtime requirement that you couldn't meet with even carefully tuned Scala due to GC pauses (not a case that I'm convinced actually exists in the real world). In either of those cases a mixed Scala/Rust project would have the same issues as a pure-Scala one. Most things that scripting languages use native libraries for already have native-to-JVM implementations (e.g. media formats) and I'd sooner use a Java library than worry about an interop-to-Rust boundary. If Rust becomes the de facto standard for video codecs then I can eventually see maybe making occasional use of some ffmpeg-equivalent via JNI, but any such library would probably expose a C-ABI interface and be used through that rather than supporting any higher-level interop. (I suspect Rust is constrained by what LLVM offers in terms of stable interfaces).

HellDunkel 8y ago

This is true. Books on programming are rarely done so well.

pygy_ 8y ago

Likewise... I've been watching him from the sidelines since the shoes/hacketyhack days (a Ruby-based, cross-platform GUI toolkit and a programming environment for beginners built on the latter. He was leading those community-maintained projects after _why vanished from the Web in 2009). He's been consistently excellent. Before Rust, he also had a REST-based stint, writing about things like HATEOS. A great loss for Rust, since he probably won't be able to dedicate as much time to it, and for Mozilla. Of all companies, I would have expected the Mozilla Corporation to dearly value the work he was doing...