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if you show up in freenode #clojure to ask for help with them they will actively laugh at you Oh dear. That is a bad sign. It has always seemed to me that buil

by gruseom 16y ago

if you show up in freenode #clojure to ask for help with them they will actively laugh at you Oh dear. That is a bad sign. It has always seemed to me that building a healthier community from the ground up was the biggest thing a successful new Lisp would have to offer. The behavior you describe is all too reminiscent. No one should ever be "actively laughed at" for asking an honest question, and Clojure experts (if they know what's good for them) ought to take an aggressive stance against that kind of behavior. These communities are delicate things. They can become diseased. It makes me mad to see anyone get "actively laughed at", let alone by bullies who assuage the beast of their own insecurity by doing the intellectual equivalent of beating up children. Edit: oh, and: they're being laughed at for asking about macros? This is a Lisp, right?

swannodette 16y ago
The best way to deal with trolls is to simply not feed them. My experience on Clojure IRC the past 3 years is that its orders of magnitude less condescending than the Python, Ruby, or Node.js IRC channels.
- gruseom 16y ago
  Oh good. That's exactly what I was hoping someone who knows would say. Edit: I'm not talking about trolls, though, but about respected members of a community acting this way. If bullying is confined to trolls, along with all the other bad things trolls do, that's a healthy sign.
- KirinDave 16y ago
  I won't name names, but you'd know the names I could name. It is true that, so long as you stay away from a few key third rails, the #clojure channel is generally a great place. One need only to go to #scala on a bad day to see what a few bad actors can do to make a place feel oppressive. There's no value in such arguments tho. It's an undeniable truth that the Clojure community (and its libraries) are far less macro-friendly and macro-centric than other lisps. Even PLT Scheme seems more comfortable with defmacro usage.
  - puredanger 16y ago
    There's a joke here about Scala and actors, I'm just sure of it.

by gruseom 16y ago

swannodette 16y ago

The best way to deal with trolls is to simply not feed them. My experience on Clojure IRC the past 3 years is that its orders of magnitude less condescending than the Python, Ruby, or Node.js IRC channels.

gruseom 16y ago
Oh good. That's exactly what I was hoping someone who knows would say. Edit: I'm not talking about trolls, though, but about respected members of a community acting this way. If bullying is confined to trolls, along with all the other bad things trolls do, that's a healthy sign.
KirinDave 16y ago
I won't name names, but you'd know the names I could name. It is true that, so long as you stay away from a few key third rails, the #clojure channel is generally a great place. One need only to go to #scala on a bad day to see what a few bad actors can do to make a place feel oppressive. There's no value in such arguments tho. It's an undeniable truth that the Clojure community (and its libraries) are far less macro-friendly and macro-centric than other lisps. Even PLT Scheme seems more comfortable with defmacro usage.
- puredanger 16y ago
  There's a joke here about Scala and actors, I'm just sure of it.