25 ms·

I have a suggestion for HN admins. There could be a thread about Rust superiority pinned to the top of HN where the Rust "brigade" could promote their chosen to

by nec4b 6y ago

I have a suggestion for HN admins. There could be a thread about Rust superiority pinned to the top of HN where the Rust "brigade" could promote their chosen tool supremacy all day long and in return leave threads about other languages alone. Otherwise almost any thread about C, C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript,... is getting quickly derailed from Rust aficionados.

oblio 6y ago
> C, C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript 3 of those are not like the rest. Rust evangelists rarely go (or at least do it less) after C#, Java or even Javascript threads. 10 points if you guess why. The overaching commonality of Rust evangelism is to target C/C++. And they're probably right :-)
- nec4b 6y ago
  Find me a Go, D lang or Zig thread from this year untouched from Rust "evangelism".
  - coder543 6y ago
    Not only did you change the list of languages under discussion just now, you also included Go, which oblio specifically did not say would avoid discussions of Rust. You’re moving the goalposts, and complaints about discussions of Rust tend to be far more annoying than the actual discussions. How dare people want to discuss related languages they enjoy? I mean, right? Most language discussions will have people join in and discuss other languages. I’ve spent quite a few words in this very thread discussing Go’s package manager! Should I apologize to someone? No... I think language discussions normally involve discussions of languages.
  - oblio 6y ago
    Go is frequently attacked by Rust evangelists because they feel, and they seem right, that Go is a programming language evolutionary dead end. It's a very practical language, so very popular, but based on programming language theory from 40 years ago, with a very low adoption of concepts from the last 2-3 decades. The risk being that in 20 years we'll wake up to the Go fad and realize that many people had been writing mountains of already legacy code from day 1, 20 years before. And those mountains of legacy code will have to be maintained because nobody's going to throw away so much working code. Both D and Zig are direct competitors for Rust so I don't understand the fuss. This tango goes both ways, it's just that there are fewer D or Zig evangelists out there, overall. But they do visit Rust threads, too ;-) And that's not bad, cross pollination is good. Insularity is bad.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  Because many Rust fanpeople came from those high-level languages, but haven't really spent any time coding in C or C++?
  - oblio 6y ago
    No, because the other ones are higher level languages, with memory management, which completely removes many attack angles. So Rust can't use its main strength against them, safety. Instead it can only offer extra performance, and even that depends on the use case (C# and Java can be quite speedy these days, especially with good tuning).
rapsey 6y ago
There is barely any Rust discussed here except for the package managers discussion?
- nec4b 6y ago
  Press "Ctrl+F" and type Rust.
  - rapsey 6y ago
    5 mentions and generally in passing. The rest are this sub discussion.
    - nec4b 6y ago
      106 my browser says.
- hu3 6y ago
  Not just that. A quick Cmd+F brings up this which as you might have guessed derailed into mostly tangents with little added value: "Oh, wow. The language was complex already and this makes me avoid C++ unless it's constrained to a narrow subset (something like Google C++ Style Guide). No wonder languages like Go and Rust gain so much traction."
  - rapsey 6y ago
    Yeah but that is a point about C++ complexity with Rust getting a passing mention. All programming language discussions bring up the same points over and over again. Rust threads also always have the ignorant question "Why is the language constantly changing?".
    - hu3 6y ago
      That's orthogonal. As our root comment says, the point is that it happens more often with Rust evangelism.
radicalbyte 6y ago
You understand it, they have lots of time on their hands waiting for their code to compile :big_grin:
johnnycerberus 6y ago
To be fair, I don't mind people talking about Rust. What I dislike the most are those that don't bring anything to the table, they will just repeat the same complaints over and over again and remind you how bad of a choice C++ is. While in reality, smart people can achieve a lot with it. But yes, C++ is not for everyone and it is denfinitely not easy.
dang 6y ago
Unfortunately your comment is doing the very thing you're complaining about. Worse, because of the contrarian dynamic (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20objecti%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), it got upvoted to the top of the thread, choking out all good discussion. This isn't the way to make HN better! I'm going to mark it off topic now, which will downweight it. In the meantime, please review the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. They ask you to contact us at hn@ycombinator.com if you want to raise a question like this. They also ask you not to be snarky. The core value of this site is intellectual curiosity, and divisive meta comments are not in that spirit. If other people are posting tediously and offtopically, the solution is definitely not to post tedious and offtopic comments with an oppositional vector. I know it's tempting, but it makes the threads worse. The solution is to post more comments in the spirit of curiosity, or (failing that) not to post.
- nec4b 6y ago
  >Worse, because of the contrarian dynamic (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), it got upvoted to the top of the thread, choking out all good discussion. You don't it has something to do with people being fed up with almost every other programming language thread getting spammed by low quality "meta" post about a certain language superiority which are irrelevant to the discussion?
  - dang 6y ago
    You guys don't have to convince me—I'm aware of the problem. The question is what's the solution. Creating a mirror image of the problem and upvoting that to the top of the thread is obviously not the solution.
    - nec4b 6y ago
      Sure. But you have just proven with my post that you can push such content to the bottom of the thread. Why don't you simply do the same with those comments? If its to much work for you personally, maybe add something like a flag button but call it irrelevant button and posts that get too many irrelevant flags get pushed down to the bottom.

by nec4b 6y ago

oblio 6y ago

> C, C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript 3 of those are not like the rest. Rust evangelists rarely go (or at least do it less) after C#, Java or even Javascript threads. 10 points if you guess why. The overaching commonality of Rust evangelism is to target C/C++. And they're probably right :-)

nec4b 6y ago
Find me a Go, D lang or Zig thread from this year untouched from Rust "evangelism".
- coder543 6y ago
  Not only did you change the list of languages under discussion just now, you also included Go, which oblio specifically did not say would avoid discussions of Rust. You’re moving the goalposts, and complaints about discussions of Rust tend to be far more annoying than the actual discussions. How dare people want to discuss related languages they enjoy? I mean, right? Most language discussions will have people join in and discuss other languages. I’ve spent quite a few words in this very thread discussing Go’s package manager! Should I apologize to someone? No... I think language discussions normally involve discussions of languages.
- oblio 6y ago
  Go is frequently attacked by Rust evangelists because they feel, and they seem right, that Go is a programming language evolutionary dead end. It's a very practical language, so very popular, but based on programming language theory from 40 years ago, with a very low adoption of concepts from the last 2-3 decades. The risk being that in 20 years we'll wake up to the Go fad and realize that many people had been writing mountains of already legacy code from day 1, 20 years before. And those mountains of legacy code will have to be maintained because nobody's going to throw away so much working code. Both D and Zig are direct competitors for Rust so I don't understand the fuss. This tango goes both ways, it's just that there are fewer D or Zig evangelists out there, overall. But they do visit Rust threads, too ;-) And that's not bad, cross pollination is good. Insularity is bad.
whimsicalism 6y ago
Because many Rust fanpeople came from those high-level languages, but haven't really spent any time coding in C or C++?
- oblio 6y ago
  No, because the other ones are higher level languages, with memory management, which completely removes many attack angles. So Rust can't use its main strength against them, safety. Instead it can only offer extra performance, and even that depends on the use case (C# and Java can be quite speedy these days, especially with good tuning).

rapsey 6y ago

There is barely any Rust discussed here except for the package managers discussion?

nec4b 6y ago
Press "Ctrl+F" and type Rust.
- rapsey 6y ago
  5 mentions and generally in passing. The rest are this sub discussion.
  - nec4b 6y ago
    106 my browser says.
hu3 6y ago
Not just that. A quick Cmd+F brings up this which as you might have guessed derailed into mostly tangents with little added value: "Oh, wow. The language was complex already and this makes me avoid C++ unless it's constrained to a narrow subset (something like Google C++ Style Guide). No wonder languages like Go and Rust gain so much traction."
- rapsey 6y ago
  Yeah but that is a point about C++ complexity with Rust getting a passing mention. All programming language discussions bring up the same points over and over again. Rust threads also always have the ignorant question "Why is the language constantly changing?".
  - hu3 6y ago
    That's orthogonal. As our root comment says, the point is that it happens more often with Rust evangelism.

radicalbyte 6y ago

You understand it, they have lots of time on their hands waiting for their code to compile :big_grin:

johnnycerberus 6y ago

To be fair, I don't mind people talking about Rust. What I dislike the most are those that don't bring anything to the table, they will just repeat the same complaints over and over again and remind you how bad of a choice C++ is. While in reality, smart people can achieve a lot with it. But yes, C++ is not for everyone and it is denfinitely not easy.

dang 6y ago

Unfortunately your comment is doing the very thing you're complaining about. Worse, because of the contrarian dynamic (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22contrarian%20dynamic%22%20objecti%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), it got upvoted to the top of the thread, choking out all good discussion. This isn't the way to make HN better! I'm going to mark it off topic now, which will downweight it. In the meantime, please review the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. They ask you to contact us at hn@ycombinator.com if you want to raise a question like this. They also ask you not to be snarky. The core value of this site is intellectual curiosity, and divisive meta comments are not in that spirit. If other people are posting tediously and offtopically, the solution is definitely not to post tedious and offtopic comments with an oppositional vector. I know it's tempting, but it makes the threads worse. The solution is to post more comments in the spirit of curiosity, or (failing that) not to post.

nec4b 6y ago
>Worse, because of the contrarian dynamic (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), it got upvoted to the top of the thread, choking out all good discussion. You don't it has something to do with people being fed up with almost every other programming language thread getting spammed by low quality "meta" post about a certain language superiority which are irrelevant to the discussion?
- dang 6y ago
  You guys don't have to convince me—I'm aware of the problem. The question is what's the solution. Creating a mirror image of the problem and upvoting that to the top of the thread is obviously not the solution.
  - nec4b 6y ago
    Sure. But you have just proven with my post that you can push such content to the bottom of the thread. Why don't you simply do the same with those comments? If its to much work for you personally, maybe add something like a flag button but call it irrelevant button and posts that get too many irrelevant flags get pushed down to the bottom.