16 ms·

Why I no longer contribute to Racket

441 points by velcrovan 5y ago

mark_l_watson 5y ago
I don't know either of the two people involved so I have no judgment of either person, but it is in any case a sad story. I went to the yearly Racket (virtual) get together about 6 weeks ago - it was great! No sign of anything but nice people sharing their projects.
- velcrovan 5y ago
  Yep, same! That event was organized by a community member (https://racketfest.com/ https://racketfest.com/). Matthias was not involved in that event… and Matthew Butterick was a sponsor. My experience with the community has been 100% positive. But I’ve also never had to deal with Felleisen. We’re worse off if good people who invest a lot more of their time and money in Racket are going to be subject to pointless abuse by the project’s founder.
chmaynard 5y ago
Sounds like the Racket project badly needs a Code of Conduct and a governing body to enforce it. Many FOSS projects have already done this, I believe.
- toolz 5y ago
  Are you aware of any studies that find a CoC to improve or change the behavior in a community? I'm probably overly skeptical, but a CoC to me always seems useless since it's not legally binding in any sense and no open source community can afford to formally judge accusations to begin with. I had a sudden urge to read up and see what all evidence exists, so I figured I'd ask you - no worries if nothing comes to mind.
  - krastanov 5y ago
    In many community forums I have seen this dynamics: New member says something rude but factual or just misrepresents what another member had said; Moderator says something along the lines of "please be more polite or restrict bikesheding/flamewars to the appropriate subforum"; The new member starts litigating how come the moderator can demand that if it is not in the "official rules". Codes of conduct deal with these self-absorbed members (they are not trolls necessarily). CoC probably help with many other things, but taking care of this low hanging fruit is already an incredible improvement. It is sad that we need to make rules like "do not be a jerk", but sometime ago I was disillusioned from the idea that such rules are self-evident. They mean very different things to different people, so defining them ends up being useful.
    - Arnavion 5y ago
      CoCs have a bad reputation because many of them are written without a clear set of rules, often intentionally so that the authors have leeway to adapt the vague rules for new behaviors they want to ban. This can be considered a good thing (don't need to amend the CoC for what is "obviously" bad behavior that the original didn't account for) or a bad thing ("it's not obviously bad behavior, you just made it up so you can ban me via the CoC because you disagree with me").
      - zxzax 5y ago
        If you think those rules are vague and unclear, it's even worse when there is no code of conduct and the project's entire policy is "we do whatever the moderators feel that day."
    - wearywanderer 5y ago
      So, "No."
    - toolz 5y ago
      The rules being defined would attempt to be useful, I'm sure. I'm curious if they actually are. So many things are done socially with good intentions that people just assume are working. Society is complicated though. As I understand it, well meaning, reasonable actions don't always have the intended outcomes. Now I'm certainly not claiming a CoC has unintended outcomes, but surely as often as I see them recommended (and at times even demanded), I would hope there exists decent evidence of their usefulness.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    I wasn’t able to find any papers or studies on your exact question. One[0] short overview paper outlines the roles CoCs play in open source. Perhaps some of the works that cite it[1] could be of use to you. 0: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander_Serebrenik/publication/315638638_Code_of_conduct_in_open_source_projects/links/58d7a5bd4585153378af4cf6/Code-of-conduct-in-open-source-projects.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander_Serebrenik/pu... 1: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6026298708957212914&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6026298708957212914...
    - toolz 5y ago
      I also haven't been able to find anything yet, thanks for the links, I guess the first study at least implies there isn't much (any?) research on the effectiveness yet.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    CoCs are just a form of explicit rule documentation. You can call these Bylaws or a Constitution, but they serve the purpose of making rules clear and clean.
    - blacktriangle 5y ago
      The problem is they are also most often adopted by highly informal organizations. In this environment CoCs are most often tools to for the project leaders to carry out personal vendettas rather than equal enforcement of the code.
      - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
        Sure, CoCs aren't panaceas (nothing is when humans organize), they're just tools to help increase transparency and get alignment. Much like a nation's constitution is useless if the de facto ruling structure doesn't actually listen to the rules in its own constitution; we shouldn't abandon codified rule of law because some polities refuse to respect their own codified rules. In this particular case I agree, a CoC would be too-little-too-late. But if there had been a CoC it would be easy grounds for dismissing Felleisen (assuming the allegations are true) with little (but still some, since power abusers die hard) fanfare. Now there will be a whole bunch of witch hunt politics and the community will suffer the more for it.
  - JoshTriplett 5y ago
    > no open source community can afford to formally judge accusations to begin with Some communities do have formal "moderation teams" with this responsibility. One major advantage of this is that such a moderation team doesn't have to be reserved for egregious cases; that team can also step in when things get somewhat heated and provide lighter feedback to keep things from escalating. > it's not legally binding It's not intended to be. The goal of a CoC is to state community norms and serve as a point of reference to reduce relitigation of those norms. It's also to help people feel that a community cares about those norms and will actually enforce them. (This stops holding true if a community has a CoC on paper but refuses to enforce it, which unfortunately does happen sometimes. But on balance, it's a useful signal.)
- sigstoat 5y ago
  FYI racketcon 2018 had a "Friendly Environment" policy: https://con.racket-lang.org/2018/ https://con.racket-lang.org/2018/ so did 2017. i can't find anything for 2019. didn't look for 2020. the project as a whole has https://racket-lang.org/friendly.html https://racket-lang.org/friendly.html > a governing body to enforce it. here's the project management team https://racket-lang.org/team.html#management https://racket-lang.org/team.html#management
- shakow 5y ago
  At this point, it's sad that people would need a CoC just to follow the most elementary of courtesies. Everyone can have a bad day and jump at the throat of someone for no reason at all; but basic politeness would require them to flatly apologize later on. I wonder if it's linked to the current social trend of "being the greater person" and "not escalating the argument", but it's regrettable in any case.
  - acdha 5y ago
    The problem is that “later on” often means “never” — and doesn't do anything to help with the damage before it happens. Abusive people are also commonly adept at finding ways to imply they did that without really doing so sincerely, as well as pushing boundaries so there's more chaff for them to hide behind (“<other person> joked about x, why is y worse?”). What a CoC does is give clear expectations for everyone in the community. It makes the discussion easier because it's a simple “Don't do this, rule #3” rather than having to lawyer about whether something is a problem after things have already become heated. This doesn't solve everything, of course, but setting a baseline cuts out a lot of tedious lower-level stuff and helps set a climate which discourages bad behaviour by removing the lower level stuff which can encourage it. That guy who infamously used a porn image in a conference slide probably didn't just wake up one morning and decide to do that but was in a subgroup where sexualized comments & humor was normalized.
    - shakow 5y ago
      > What a CoC does is give clear expectations for everyone in the community. That's my whole point; that CoCs might be a necessary step for social changes that quite many people don't understand and/or master yet (e.g. custom pronouns) is understandable. But apologize after you hurt someone is something I (and, I assume, most people) was taught when I was 4 y.o. and should be widely applied. What will be next, a little panel reminding you to say "hello" and "goodbye" when you come in and leave, or "don't forget to say thank you" next to the cashier?
      - faitswulff 5y ago
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  This story at face value is so far beyond what is necessary for a code of conduct to address. From the author's description, nobody is defending Felleisen, the project has just decided that they are better off with him regardless of his assholeness than they are without him. Whether that is true or not is up for debate. This is not a CoC issue, this is an issue of enforcement, and in the absence of enforcement a CoC isn't worth the paper its written on.
  - comex 5y ago
    > the project has just decided that they are better off with him regardless of his assholeness than they are without him. A CoC is at least in theory a commitment to not make such a decision.
    - truffdog 5y ago
      Sure, but the core team already knows about this, and already knows that it's bad. If they had signed a pledge to not tolerate bad things back in 2019 when CoCs were cool I'm not sure how that would change anything. More ways for people to play at rules lawyering?
  - parenwielder 5y ago
    This is absolutely the key point, and the one that all the discussion here is missing. Nobody defends Matthias' behavior, they just suggest that you should tolerate or ignore it. The reason is clear when you realize that "the Racket community" is more-or-less analogous with "Matthias' academic descendants." The people who are working on Racket as a language owe immense professional debts to Matthias.
    - DonaldPShimoda 5y ago
      > "the Racket community" is more-or-less analogous with "Matthias' academic descendants." For people who don't know, the Racket project was started by Matthias Felleisen in the early '90s. The next people on the project were all his PhD students: - Matthew Flatt - Robby Findler - Shriram Krishnamurthi - Cormac Flanagan Later additions who are top contributors to github.com/racket/racket: - Sam Tobin-Hochstadt (Felleisen's student) - Jay McCarthy (Krishnamurthi's student) - Vincent St-Amour (Felleisen's student) - Ryan Culpepper (Felleisen's student) - Asumu Takikawa (Felleisen's student) - Eric Dobson (Krishnamurthi's undergraduate student) In the top 10 contributors listed on GitHub, only 2 are not academic descendants of Felleisen: - Eli Barzilay - Matthias Felleisen EDIT: I originally listed Eric Dobson as "not an academic descendant of Felleisen" because I hadn't been able to find information on a dissertation or the like, but a comment informed me that they were an undergraduate student of Krishnamurthi so I have updated the comment to reflect this.
- sqrt17 5y ago
  So, delegating both responsibility and power to people with an agenda (because those are the only ones to step up when they get formal power, in addition to or rather than just informal responsibility), rather than adopting practices of de-escalation that everyone is responsible for? Paring down non-constructive and non-called for should be the responsibility of everyone in the room and not a special distinct set of people. I'm all for training project members (i.e. people who are involved in organizing conferences or summer schools) in practical techniques for better organizing the community, and I think holding everybody responsible leads to better results than having activists with an agenda write the rules and just delegating authority to them.
- fungiblecog 5y ago
  I seems to be a modern idea that if you can just write down rules for everyone to follow everything will be ok. This guy knows his behaviour is unacceptable and no code of conduct will change that. What's needed is more people prepared to call out this kind of behaviour
- rurban 5y ago
  Absolutely wrong idea. This would create infighting and destroy the community. Just ignore the raging bull, when he talks nonsense. A CoC already destroyed many other communities.
- phyzome 5y ago
  A CoC should formalize what the leadership already believes, so it would be backwards and pointless here.
fredrikholm 5y ago
Wasn't there a similar post by another former contributor expressing the same thing last year?
- qart 5y ago
  I think this is the first time I'm seeing Felleisen mentioned in the main post. Some comments here mentioned him, but the main post kept his name out.
- jboynyc 5y ago
  You're probably thinking about this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wY7FBtr7_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wY7FBtr7_c Leandro submitted it to HN but it didn't get any traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25620711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25620711
macintux 5y ago
That’s quite disappointing. It’s unfortunate that bullies continue to thrive in society and many communities.
- alexfromapex 5y ago
  They will only thrive if their cohort agrees to do nothing or encourages them in response to the bullying
adenozine 5y ago
Is there any proof to this? Not that I'm in disbelief, but I guess I just wonder why nothing has been done if it's as intense and awful as the claims. Either way, it's repulsive to hear about bad behaviors like these in beautiful scheme communities. I hope everybody involved heals and flourishes. Edit: to be clear, obviously I believe the guy. It just seems crazy that such an amount of responsible, educated people would let this happen in any kind of professional or educational setting. If someone spoke that way to anybody at my work, they'd be absolutely brutalized and more than likely terminated that same day.
- gorjusborg 5y ago
  Because it can be difficult to approach cruel people about their cruelty, would be my guess.
  - alexfromapex 5y ago
    Kind of a weird instance of The Bystander Effect
    - Tomte 5y ago
      It's usually called "missing stair": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair
- faitswulff 5y ago
  What would the author have to gain from fabricating it?
  - plank_time 5y ago
    For the record, I believe the author. But asking what the author would gain from fabricating it is a terrible reason to believe something. Pathological liars exist and they prey on people with such low bars for belief.
leafmeal 5y ago
In case OP shows up, we believe you and support you! Speaking out like this is hard but it's the best way to help the community you love.
- hbn 5y ago
  > we believe you and support you! Not that I think he's lying, but... why? I don't know who any of these people are but I don't like the idea of hearing one person's account and automatically assuming it's true. At least not in the case of assertions that are potentially career-ruining.
  - velcrovan 5y ago
    > I don't know who any of these people are That's the key point right there. The target audience is the Racket community, who do know who these people are. No one is out to ruin Felleisen's career, he will be fine no matter what. But the Racket community has an interest in his effect on that community. We are much worse off without Butterick's involvement.
    - ImprobableTruth 5y ago
      >No one is out to ruin Felleisen's career, he will be fine no matter what I mean, why do you assume that? I don't know the Racket community, but if he is "the self-styled leader of the Racket project" being potentially forced to step down/ousted seems like it would very much impact him personally.
      - velcrovan 5y ago
        You're apparently walking into this with zero knowledge, so any of this would be assumption for you until you learned more. I am assuming nothing. I'm telling you the facts as I am aware of them. Feel free to do your own verification, for sure. Felleisen is very secure in an academic career and his status on the Rackt development team does not affect his position or his paycheck in the slightest. You can google him and look up his wikipedia entry.
kelvin0 5y ago
There can only be 1 Linus. Copy cats need not apply.
moocowtruck 5y ago
I been around Matthias a long time and don't really see it. Perhaps Matthew can identify some examples that prove he's not the fragile flower he says he isn't?
- yladiz 5y ago
  Perhaps you can use language that doesn’t belittle others to make your point?
  - a1369209993 5y ago
    > language that doesn't belittle others Whether you agree with them or not, they are literally quoting TFA there. > Why? It's not because I'm a fragile flower. I've navigated plenty of difficult people - LA lawyers, SF venture capitalists, et al. Edit: > What I don't understand is why they are asking for examples... that are literally in TFA. Beats me, I'm just complaining about the spurious "belittling others" accusation. > If the author was a 'fragile flower', would that make this described behaviour then acceptable? Why are you asking me that and not moocowtruck? They're the one who implied it would.
    - velcrovan 5y ago
      What I don't understand is why they are asking for examples…that are literally in TFA.
      - moocowtruck 5y ago
        where? i see general statements
        mcherm 5y ago
        Try reading paragraphs 3-7. Whatever else you may feel about them, they are clearly quite specific about the behavior experienced.
    - 5y ago
_pmf_ 5y ago
About 80% of my university professors (CS and otherwise) were similar to this. I don't know what's wrong with this profession.
- DonaldPShimoda 5y ago
  FWIW, Matthias is known for being especially egregious in this respect even among other academics. But you absolutely have a point about there being a problem endemic throughout the profession.
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  I think it may be because of the teacher / student power dynamic. I expect you get used to treating everyone like they're much younger than you and that you can treat them disrespectfully without any major consequences.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    Big Fish / Small Pond rules may also apply. And as the professor ages their best research may be behind them, and the ones who can't take a bitter pill like that may start punching down on people below them.
  - mcculley 5y ago
    My limited experience with academia is that professors are thrust into a position of power with very little management training, experience, or support. Additionally, research professors may have no pedagogical skill and yet they are expected to both research and teach to some degree. This is a recipe for dysfunctional organizations and relationships.
- thebooktocome 5y ago
  I'm shocked that I was able to stay in academia long enough to finish my thesis. You're right, so many professors are just completely abusive, with absolutely no checks on the power they mismanage.
- feminintendo 5y ago
newaccount2021 5y ago
Whatever happened to just telling people to go f*k themselves?
wearywanderer 5y ago
War is a continuation of politics by other means. But diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. And now verbal bullying is a continuation of violence by other means. By the principle of explosion, I think we're on the precipice of everything being a continuation of everything by other means.
- useragent86 5y ago
  Well, drive-by downvoting, effectively censoring comments one doesn't like, is certainly a continuation of bullying by other means. Of course, cleverness is frowned upon 'round here.
sigstoat 5y ago
huh, felleisen didn't strike me as any pricklier than your average college professor when i met him. certainly wouldn't have been in the top 10 racket contributors i'd expect to drive anyone away.
- DonaldPShimoda 5y ago
  I think you must not have interacted with him much, or have not talked with people who know him more closely. I was explicitly advised to avoid applying for my PhD at Northeastern unless I had incredibly thick skin to withstand the way he berates his students. So I didn't apply — I'm not signing up for that.
- parenwielder 5y ago
  Matthias is virtually always the prickliest person in the room at academic programming languages conferences, by quite a bit.
  - bjoli 5y ago
    I remember seeing a talk about typed racket (by samth? Probably...) and he expresses a very personal view, something like "I think types are an important tool to enforce correctness of code" and someone in the audience said "I think you're full of shit!". Everybody sighed a short sigh and everything continued as usual.
- plorkyeran 5y ago
  I had pretty uniformly positive experiences with him as both a student and a TA for one of his classes, but the very important bit of context there is I was a student who did well enough in his class to be asked to TA. In retrospect I can remember him being pretty awful to some of the other students.
agumonkey 5y ago
good luck to matthew there's a lot to say about these situations - principles are not enough, investing in FOSS may bite you later if you feel hurt by the destination.. be sure to only stay where you're happy right now and don't assume an ideal won't be bad (not a judgement, just sharing a late realization) - 'show must go on' seems to be a deep reflex in humans.. should we teach stronger sense of respect ? what if matthew or anybody had stepped in vocally during that session and asked M.F. to tone it down or apologize right away ? (my 2cts: it should be a mandatory school lesson for most of us) - how can one form a side group to keep enjoying his time on whatever topic without having to deal with corrosive people ?
mattgreenrocks 5y ago
This is sad to read, as Felleisen has done some great research (I'm thinking of A-Normal Form). However, this doesn't excuse the conduct outlined here.
mkl95 5y ago
Felleisen is an academic, and his behaviour is very common in academia. It's trivial for college professors to get away with bullying people. In comparison, the software industry is relatively friendly and rewarding.
- deleted 5y ago
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- parenwielder 5y ago
  I can assure you that while it certainly is easy for faculty to get away with this behavior (Matthias himself being evidence of that fact), his behavior is well outside of the range of what could reasonably be considered normal, at least within computing academia in general.
  - aidenn0 5y ago
    I suppose it depends on your definition of "normal." Just reading a couple of anecdotes about Matthias pattern-matches well against more than one faculty member I've encountered; if, say, 5% of faculty openly act this way with near zero repercussions, is it really "abnormal?"
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      Agreed. One of the many (and there were many) reasons that left me to leave academia was the huge egos and bullying of the famous professors. Getting chewed out by a cantankerous member of your academic community was just a cost of being an academic when I was in academia.
- ska 5y ago
  I don’t think this is actually more common on academia than elsewhere, really - but I do think that once you have reached a certain level in academic career, there are few consequences for it. This makes it stand out.
  - 5y ago
buttholesurfer 5y ago
The author sounds whiney tbh. Why type all of that?
throw7 5y ago
"The only workable tactic was to distance yourself" No. You stand up for yourself and call out the dick. He attacks you and you haven't even presented yet. When you are right, don't let bullies bully.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > No. You stand up for yourself Do you feel this is an acceptable way to respond to someone who's telling you they feel bullied? Shouting 'no' at them and telling them what they should have done instead, when presumably they felt they couldn't do that because they felt intimidated?
- ImprobableTruth 5y ago
  Well, that might work when talking about a situation where power is about equal, but when it's someone higher up in the chain, it's going to be much much harder.
- andrewflnr 5y ago
  That's the ideal, but is often not workable, for instance if you're a kid who is not good at violence, or if the dick is surrounded by people who are already determined to tolerate his dickishness. They already know.
  - jasonschlatt 5y ago
    When I imagine this scenario, and imagine the two options of a) walking away, or b) giving the guy a terse piece of my mind and walking away, I feel like in the case of picking a) when b) wouldn't have hurt me I would feel spiritually diminished. Standing up to someone bullying you is the right thing to do, spiritually speaking. You also have to stop them from bullying you, of course, and the easiest way to accomplish that is often to walk away.
- deleted 5y ago
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- ljm 5y ago
  This is only going to end negatively if the bully has the tacit approval of all their peers. It's made clear by Matthew that the bully's behaviour was tolerated, so all likelihood is that he would be criticised for rocking the boat, potentially ostracised. At best he would get approval for it, but only in private with a "I will deny this if you say it out loud" disclaimer. Ultimately this would reflect worse on Racket's leadership team than it does on Matthias alone. They're all okay with it. If this was operated as an organisation then there would be some accountability. This is all innocent until proven guilty, of course, so it boils down to how the racket team responds, if they do.
desine 5y ago
Beautiful Racket was one of the sites that helped me learn the language/toolset, along with HTDP, by Felleisen. This is troubling, but the lack of detail and context is also troubling. I would wager most of us in the CS community have experienced personalities that deliver harsh criticism. The types of people that often don't realize how vicious their tone comes across. I also have no doubt that I on occasion have been more abrasive than I intended to. There's many in this community that are "on the spectrum", but there's an even broader spectrum that exists in programmers of people that are too in their own heads, or just not properly socially adjusted, with no medical definition. I don't wish to make excuses for bad behavior, but there's also the potential cultural differences of Felleisen being German, and the stress involved with trying to organize a convention. Even after being degraded by Felleisen, Butterick received a high rating for his teaching by Felleisen? This sounds like a stereotypically "cold" German personality and and a soft kind American personality just generating friction. I've seen it other times within my teams (without the specifically German cultural aspect); instances where one abrasive person doesn't realize how much they've affected one softer, kinder person. And instances where a sensitive person (not even overly-so) feels personally slighted by what was just a bad mood or an bad moment. I'm disappointed to hear that a great Racket contributor feels wronged and slighted, especially to the point of reducing his passion for contributing to the project. But the linked post doesn't give me enough to go to my pitchfork closet either. I guess it's something to keep an eye on for other signs
- jgwil2 5y ago
  > Even after being degraded by Felleisen, Butterick received a high rating for his teaching by Felleisen? I believe you've misunderstood a sentence from the article. The author meant he received higher ratings than all other teachers, including Felleisen, from students, not that Felleisen himself rated the author's teaching highly.
  - desine 5y ago
    Ah, you're right, thank you. That does change the context a bit.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
CoastalCoder 5y ago
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- threatofrain 5y ago
  And what is the moral wisdom in contemplating this scenario if you've already rejected the means as unworthy?
  - CoastalCoder 5y ago
    > And what is the moral wisdom in contemplating this scenario if you've already rejected the means as unworthy? A fair question. I guess there are several answers: (1) I was concerned that just because I mentioned being curious how that approach would play out, some readers would assume that I was advocating violence, and respond accordingly. I wanted to be very clear that that's not the case, because that would end all discussion. (2) I was mostly just wondering aloud how that would play out, because I'd like to understand human behavior better. I.e., I was doing a thought experiment, and realized that I didn't have any good guess for what the actual aftermath would be. So I was hoping to get other people's thoughts on the matter. EDIT: It seems I chose the wrong forum for the question, or made some other error. I'll delete the post, as it seems to not be contributing to meaningful discussion.
- jgwil2 5y ago
  I mean, have you ever punched somebody in the face? I'll admit the thought occurred to me as well but in practice, I think most people have a strong aversion to violence, not to mention the potential criminal liability.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    Not to mention the fact that you might also end up getting beaten up by the person you assaulted, which would make you even worse off.
  - mikelevins 5y ago
    I've punched many people in the face many times, and been punched in the face and in other body parts many times, too. Hard-contact martial arts was once one of my favorite hobbies, and I owned a martial arts studio for some years. Like other commenters, I do not generally advocate punching someone in the face for saying something rude or cruel, especially if you're well-adapted to fights and they aren't. It's probably unethical and definitely likely to cause you legal grief. I will say this, though: in twenty years or more of a hobby that involved punching people in the face, kicking them hard enough to knock outlines of their bodies into the drywall, and choking them to the edge of unconsciousness, I never saw the kind of thoughtless cruelty and bullying that is described here. Mostly I saw a lot of mutual courtesy and respect, with exceptions on rare occasions. I will say that people who like to punch down seem to lose their enthusiasm when they discover unexpectedly that they're actually punching up. Perhaps it will amuse you, as it did me, to hear about a fellow I know who is large and strong and skilled who dropped by to visit in person someone who had been bullying and abusing him online. No violence ensued, but the bully experienced an epiphany about the value of courtesy and discretion.
Sr_developer 5y ago
Just 2 comments. Life has taught me that no matter how noble, pure, well-intended or just a cause is you will find exactly the same interpersonal dynamics that you will find in most organizations, including many despicable ones. Our extremely thin varnish of civilization is not strong enough to stop millions of years of evolution fine-tuning us to be hierarchical tribal apes living in small groups.Remember that every time you join a movement, you will have to deal with the same bullshit than in everywhere else. The second one, quoting the author: ". I’ve navigated plenty of difficult people—LA lawyers, SF venture capitalists, et al." I would say that the author must have experienced a very narrow window of human types if those are the examples he came up with. I just found it funny, no need to make a drama about it.
- scabarott 5y ago
  If you've dealt with VC's or lawyers before you'll understand this example. Of course many probably worse examples from Academia or restaurants or military or whatever but if you're a software entrepreneur these are very good examples.
  - Sr_developer 5y ago
    I guess I agree, with the caveat that this applies to white middle-class Americans.Otherwise those VC/lawyers are not even on the top half of "dificult people" you can face on earth.
dleslie 5y ago
As an aside: I'd _really like_ to purchase Beautiful Racket in dead-tree form. I much prefer having a book open on my work bench to follow along to, than a website. Monitors are tiring to look at for long periods.
dtornabene 5y ago
Seeing a lot of "no evidence" and such from comments and just putting it out there that I had heard of behavior like this over ten years ago living in Boston and meeting former students of Felleisen. I've been a lisp person for many years and worked right down the street from NEU. I use racket, and use tools that are built on Racket fwiw.
Gimpei 5y ago
My first job out of college was at a magazine. The two editors there were in their 70s and notorious for being bullies (although for what it's worth, one of them mellowed out after their editorial assistant committed suicide). There wasn't a day when I wasn't yelled at repeatedly, and the taint seeped down, with everybody lower down the rung yelling at anybody below them. It was easily the most toxic environment that I've ever experienced, and I've worked in academia! People were breaking down in tears all the time. Ex editorial assistants would send in letters written in crayon from insane asylums. The funny thing was that instead of resenting their tormenters, most people adopted a very protective stance towards these editors, as if they were children. Sadly, the impression that I got was that a lot of other publications had similar problems--smart but extremely neurotic bosses who regularly demeaned their employees. This was in 2000, around the time when "The Devil Wears Prada" came out. The one upside was that it permanently scared me out of publishing, which turned out to be an excellent career choice.
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  > for what it's worth, one of them mellowed out after their editorial assistant committed suicide Maybe it's just me, but I don't think "used to be super-toxic but once they tormented someone into suicide they got better" is worth shit.
  - serf 5y ago
    so then no real reason for the terrible person to improve? Now that they've goaded someone into a suicide they're unforgivable, regardless of their remorse/regret/introspective consideration? i'd rather live in a society that gives bad people a motivation to improve, rather than one that condemns all people who commit bad actions as tainted forever by their previous regretted action. a terrible person who has improved through introspection and societal nudging into a decent human being is society's trophy for a job well done. It's exactly the desired outcome; to continue to condemn the apologetic and rehabilitated individual is useful for nothing except for petty vengeance between the victim's social network and the perpetrating individual - it serves little to no societal good.
- Cub3 5y ago
eigenhombre 5y ago
I've followed Racket and the OP's work from a distance for some time. This post rang bells for me, based on similar interactions with a few bad apples over about twenty years in the field of physics. I applaud the poster for the clear and measured language of his post, for his bravery in calling out this kind of behavior, and for taking steps needed to remove himself from the situation. I hope the Racket community takes steps to eliminate the problem at the root.
neilv 5y ago
I'm very sorry to hear that Matthew Butterick had some bad experiences. He's been a brilliant and energetic contributor to the Racket community. Clearly, something went wrong. For what it's worth (looking at some of the comments from people not very familiar), my own experiences with Matthias Felleisen have been positive. (I started contributing to what was then called PLT Scheme around 2000, have had lunch with him twice, and a few times over the years have had some mutually-candid conversations with him, about concerns affecting the project/community.) While I might describe Matthias as a freethinker and straight-talker, everything I'm aware of that he's said or done in the two decades I've been around seems to come from altruistic intentions. I know Matthias cares about the community. (He was very welcoming when I started, and we've discussed it over the years.) I think he'll want to personally investigate and consider what happened that resulted in alienating Matthew B., and try to correct any problems that he can. This isn't just about Matthew B., but also about constantly seeing how we can be the best community for everyone. That's not a solved problem, and I suggest it's best approached as an ongoing process of humility, honesty, and support -- everyone feeling safe to raise concerns/problems, and everyone feeling safe to examine how we can improve.
- velcrovan 5y ago
  > I think he'll want to personally investigate and consider what happened that resulted in alienating Matthew B., and try to correct any problems that he can. Given MB's level of investment in Racket and its community, you'd expect that it would have been addressed in January, when he told the Racket team he was out. Whatever you think about Felleisen it seems pretty likely that he was aware before now and had already made up his mind not to address it.
  - neilv 5y ago
    If it clarifies anything, I suspect that, when he says "core team", he means something like the inner-circle of a few university researchers. > In January 2020, I told two members of Racket’s core team t [...] They were always witnessed by others on the Racket core team.* The inner-circle set is similar to that of Matthias and his grad students who started Racket (PLT Scheme). Though the inner-circle is actively involved with the community, there's always been a definite separation. So, the community would be oblivious to some things in the inner circle, and vice versa. (BTW, that organizational dynamic might be evolving, including learning from Rust's evolution. Aaron Turon's talk at RacketCon, about Rust governance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1t4zGJYUuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1t4zGJYUuY )
gkya 5y ago
So I went over and looked around this Felleisen person's personal website, and... how do I put this, he is one unpleasant insufferable dude. Enter the rabbit hole: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/ http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/ > → personal site > Warning You are about to leave campus and visit a web site > with centrist views that may offend readers used to safe spaces. I followed the link, and felt too much cringe to be able detect offense per se. Personally I am avoiding Racket so long as this man is anywhere near it. Luckily I didn't invest any significant time in it before. I feel deeply sorry for his grad students and underlings, despite knowing none. It must've been an ordeal for each and every one of them.
- parenwielder 5y ago
  The link to the personal site was a byproduct of what he described as a "social experiment" in which he published the James Damore memo on his office door, and was offended that students reported him to the dean for acting to create a hostile work environment, rather than engage with him directly about the scientific merits of Damore's memo. He describes this himself here: https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html
  - afavour 5y ago
    Seems like a strange course of action. What if someone just wants to come and see you and not debate the scientific merits of Damore's memo? The man is a computer science professor, after all. I don't know about "hostile work environment" but it seems needlessly antagonistic to me.
    - parenwielder 5y ago
      needlessly antagonistic is a fair characterization of his approach to the world at large
      - brudgers 5y ago
        It is not needless. It is self serving. It expresses his privilege and power in the explicit environment where they matter most. It amplifies them.
rebelshrug 5y ago
Several years ago, I worked on some open source projects that involved Racket. The community and Matthew Felleisen in particular were very helpful, and it sticks with me that the project founder took time to teach me idiomatic/correct ways to write Racket code and tests. Not condoning Matthew Felleisen's behavior towards Matthew Butterick - people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect - but there does seem to be a side to M.F that enjoys teaching and evangelizing Racket.
- DonaldPShimoda 5y ago
  Felleisen's entire goal with the Racket project has been teaching-focused from the beginning. I don't think anybody in the community doubts that he cares about teaching and evangelizing Racket. The problem is that he has a very... how to put it. Matthias seems to believe that you must fight and struggle your way through academia and prove your worth to earn respect at even the most basic level. He is known for verbally abusing his students regularly. As I wrote elsewhere, I was explicitly discouraged from applying to Northeastern if I didn't feel I could withstand certain kinds of regular verbal abuse at his hands. That's unacceptable behavior, regardless of the "true intent" underlying it.
sgt 5y ago
That's terrible - I wonder if it's just a lack of empathy from Matthias site. That's no excuse to behave like that in public and especially ridiculing you in front of a group. Maybe nobody tells him about his personality flaw. Or at least in a way that he comprehends it. Interestingly, from a review on ratemyprofessors.com: >I hated his guts while in his class, but in retrospect he's almost certainly the best teacher I've ever had. As somebody said above, this guy is absolutely brilliant. He will kick your butt, but it's all for your own good in the end. He seems to really care about teaching, and it shows. I've had a professor like that and it takes a while to realize that those people are needed. For lazy students it may be a proper wake up call to the real world.
- nomrom 5y ago
  >I've had a professor like that and it takes a while to realize that those people are needed. For lazy students it may be a proper wake up call to the real world. I'm sure we can aspire to better approaches that are not bullying.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    Maybe? But the ironic thing is - if the prof let the lazy student be lazy and silently condemn them to mediocrity, nobody would raise a peep and everyone would be fine. It's only when the prof cares about to go take a personal risk to try to get through to the student (which they would only care to do because they care about the student) can someone complain. So I think your comment is mainly unhelpful. The people you're responding to are making the bold point that the unpopular approach WORKED, HELPED and possibly CHANGED THEIR LIFE. Which is probably not in line with the traditional definition of bullying which is bothering someone out of malice, which sounds like is NOT what is happening.
    - nomrom 5y ago
      It worked, but at what cost? How many brilliant people quit because they were bullied? It's shortsighted, and morally wrong.
zarkov99 5y ago
Good lord. Why not hash things out with Mathias forceably and directly right then and there? Why this victim pantomime? Mathew is a grown men, surely he can find more direct ways to stand up for himself instead of obliquely trying to cancel the guy to whom we owe racket.
- nnf 5y ago
  You might be surprised to learn some people aren’t comfortable “hashing it out forcibly and directly right then and there.” I would venture to guess most of the people here would not do that, especially when caught completely off guard and in a group of their peers who aren’t sticking up for them.
  - zarkov99 5y ago
    Perhaps we all could recognize courage is a virtue and strive to demonstrate it? Much of the sickness in our culture would instantly be cured if we valued and demonstrated genuine bravery instead of replacing it with victimhood signaling.
muyuu 5y ago
I think it's a bit dangerous to pass judgment without having first-hand account of the facts. Having said that, a lot of people are in the wrong here if this account is accurate. If volunteers are invited to teach, then everybody needs to be onboard and agree beforehand, and no considerations regarding previously known qualifications can be raised after this process is over. Boundaries need to be clearly set so these situations cannot arise. OTOH taking unwarranted criticism is also not a good thing. If you see something like this you need to tell the big honcho to STFU, esp. when it's volunteer work anyway. Perhaps not in everybody's character to do this but once one has had some experience of this sort (I have) and given it some thought, it should come naturally.
- gilrain 5y ago
  > Perhaps not in everybody's character to do this but once one has had some experience of this sort (I have) and given it some thought, it should come naturally. And if your abuser is influential in your field, it will come naturally to _them_ to hinder or destroy your career. Your advice assumes the abused is in a position secure enough to call out their abuser. In real life, abusers specifically choose targets who cannot easily resist.
  - muyuu 5y ago
    leaving aside your completely fictional assumptions vs this case, bullies actually thrive on fear and silence - if you make their aggression visible to all, they cower
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Arjuna144 5y ago
This matches the experience I had during my university studies. I saw that professors are often highly "educated" but lack very basic emotional intelligence. This is really sad to see, as it shows how our education system lacks when we can only teach people to do rational thinking to solve rational problems in the outside world but do not provide them means to conduct themselves and others in a graceful manner. This is so poor, made me really sad. When I saw this more in more in my professors I became more and more despised when I saw the blind awe that my fellow students had towards these professors when I saw them more and more like pitiful "rational intelligence" heaps that have never learned methods to become peaceful, joyful and loving on the inside... Not saying that all professors are like that though, I also had two professors whom I greatly appreciated for their philanthropy!
- kovacs_x 5y ago
  being emotionally smart, being good at teaching and being smart at <something> are three different skills. Academia is just a place where it shows highly.
stickyricky 5y ago
> No facts were disputed. The incidents were numerous, happening over a period of years. They were always witnessed by others on the Racket core team. For that reason, there’s no need to enumerate the details now. This is the software world's equivalent of vaguebooking. Please provide quotes or precise anecdotes which can be confirmed or denied by witnesses and Felleisen.
blindmute 5y ago
I believe this sort of thing is what happens when children are not taught to stand up for themselves: based on the post, the author never had a conversation with his attacker, asked for an apology, or did anything other than meekly tuck his tail. Then years later he posts this. Being a bully is not good, but neither is being a needless victim.
- yawaramin 5y ago
  You know what's really not good? Victim blaming. We know, beyond a doubt, that when people are victimized out of nowhere, they often are too shaken by the experience to defend themselves properly. Expecting everyone to have the defense mechanisms of a Special Forces soldier is not helpful.
  - blindmute 5y ago
    What you call victim blaming here, I call expecting a certain amount of accountability for oneself. And yes, I do expect everyone to have, or to cultivate, the ability to handle themselves in social situations. I believe this expectation to be infinitely more helpful for society at large than the sympathy on tap commonly seen instead. Perhaps he was shaken in the moment, but the author apparently had at least a full year to handle this. Were this post written after he failed to diffuse the situation, after standing up for himself, and the bully just kept being an asshole, then a post like this would be warranted to warn the community at large. As it stands, the tone reads much more childishly to me than it could have.
doneata 5y ago
I see that Matthias has responded and issued an apology on his website: https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Apology.html https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Apology.html
- dabernathy89 5y ago
  Although weirdly he only apologized for the single incident Matthew described in detail, even though Matthew explained that it was just one example from years of bad behavior.
- robocat 5y ago
  HN discussion about response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27544797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27544797 although very low quality comments so far. https://lobste.rs/s/6rnyn9/why_i_no_longer_contribute_racket https://lobste.rs/s/6rnyn9/why_i_no_longer_contribute_racket has some good quality discussion on this topic.
OrangeG 5y ago
There are two types of comments here: 1. Bullying is bad (which I completely agree) 2. I saw Matthias a mile away and he was rude. But it seems like only a few of you met him. Yet, you feel free to come and talk about him based on what you hear. If you talked to Matthias for more than 10 minutes, you'd know that he spends 5 times more on his lectures compared to your "cool professors" every single year. You'd know that he goes out of his way to help any academic who asked for his help. You'd know that all he talks about is "the community" and how he can make things better for everyone. I'm in sciences for a little over 10 years and my experience is that people like Matthias are extremely rare. I can't speak to his science because it's really not my field, but he most certainly gets out of his way to help junior people (like myself). Especially those who wouldn't be heard otherwise (like myself, an international woman in sciences). He listened to me complain about my work environment so many times, encouraged me to continue. He helped me to make important career and personal decisions. On multiple occasions. I think my PhD experience would be drastically different without his help and I know that I'm not the only one! Now, Matthias can be opinionated and intense. I argued with him about science, politics and many other topics, but he never makes it about you! You can discuss literally anything with him and he never passes judgement. He's actually really open to criticism (as evident from his apology). I'm not belittling MB's experience. I just thought that I'm one of the many people Matthias helped and he has an extremely compassionate side that people should know before they label him as "bully"! Edited to fix a couple typos.
taylodl 5y ago
This reads to me as a textbook case for how not to handle conflict. It doesn't appear as though the author ever discussed this issue with the Racket core team or informed this Matthias Felleisen person, whom I don't know, how their outburst had been received. The author never explicitly states they had done this other than stating the facts are not in dispute and these events were witnessed by members of the Racket core team, who are going to be reluctant to resolve the conflict on the author's behalf without solicitation (that's human nature - conflict avoidance). If that wasn't done and instead the issue was taken public then it's likely to be perceived as an ambush. Now you're in a state where both parties are aggrieved and so effecting a reconciliation at this point is nigh impossible.

441 points by velcrovan 5y ago

I don't know either of the two people involved so I have no judgment of either person, but it is in any case a sad story. I went to the yearly Racket (virtual) get together about 6 weeks ago - it was great! No sign of anything but nice people sharing their projects.

velcrovan 5y ago
Yep, same! That event was organized by a community member (https://racketfest.com/ https://racketfest.com/). Matthias was not involved in that event… and Matthew Butterick was a sponsor. My experience with the community has been 100% positive. But I’ve also never had to deal with Felleisen. We’re worse off if good people who invest a lot more of their time and money in Racket are going to be subject to pointless abuse by the project’s founder.

chmaynard 5y ago

Sounds like the Racket project badly needs a Code of Conduct and a governing body to enforce it. Many FOSS projects have already done this, I believe.

toolz 5y ago
Are you aware of any studies that find a CoC to improve or change the behavior in a community? I'm probably overly skeptical, but a CoC to me always seems useless since it's not legally binding in any sense and no open source community can afford to formally judge accusations to begin with. I had a sudden urge to read up and see what all evidence exists, so I figured I'd ask you - no worries if nothing comes to mind.
- krastanov 5y ago
  In many community forums I have seen this dynamics: New member says something rude but factual or just misrepresents what another member had said; Moderator says something along the lines of "please be more polite or restrict bikesheding/flamewars to the appropriate subforum"; The new member starts litigating how come the moderator can demand that if it is not in the "official rules". Codes of conduct deal with these self-absorbed members (they are not trolls necessarily). CoC probably help with many other things, but taking care of this low hanging fruit is already an incredible improvement. It is sad that we need to make rules like "do not be a jerk", but sometime ago I was disillusioned from the idea that such rules are self-evident. They mean very different things to different people, so defining them ends up being useful.
  - Arnavion 5y ago
    CoCs have a bad reputation because many of them are written without a clear set of rules, often intentionally so that the authors have leeway to adapt the vague rules for new behaviors they want to ban. This can be considered a good thing (don't need to amend the CoC for what is "obviously" bad behavior that the original didn't account for) or a bad thing ("it's not obviously bad behavior, you just made it up so you can ban me via the CoC because you disagree with me").
    - zxzax 5y ago
      If you think those rules are vague and unclear, it's even worse when there is no code of conduct and the project's entire policy is "we do whatever the moderators feel that day."
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    So, "No."
  - toolz 5y ago
    The rules being defined would attempt to be useful, I'm sure. I'm curious if they actually are. So many things are done socially with good intentions that people just assume are working. Society is complicated though. As I understand it, well meaning, reasonable actions don't always have the intended outcomes. Now I'm certainly not claiming a CoC has unintended outcomes, but surely as often as I see them recommended (and at times even demanded), I would hope there exists decent evidence of their usefulness.
- jagger27 5y ago
  I wasn’t able to find any papers or studies on your exact question. One[0] short overview paper outlines the roles CoCs play in open source. Perhaps some of the works that cite it[1] could be of use to you. 0: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander_Serebrenik/publication/315638638_Code_of_conduct_in_open_source_projects/links/58d7a5bd4585153378af4cf6/Code-of-conduct-in-open-source-projects.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexander_Serebrenik/pu... 1: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6026298708957212914&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=6026298708957212914...
  - toolz 5y ago
    I also haven't been able to find anything yet, thanks for the links, I guess the first study at least implies there isn't much (any?) research on the effectiveness yet.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  CoCs are just a form of explicit rule documentation. You can call these Bylaws or a Constitution, but they serve the purpose of making rules clear and clean.
  - blacktriangle 5y ago
    The problem is they are also most often adopted by highly informal organizations. In this environment CoCs are most often tools to for the project leaders to carry out personal vendettas rather than equal enforcement of the code.
    - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
      Sure, CoCs aren't panaceas (nothing is when humans organize), they're just tools to help increase transparency and get alignment. Much like a nation's constitution is useless if the de facto ruling structure doesn't actually listen to the rules in its own constitution; we shouldn't abandon codified rule of law because some polities refuse to respect their own codified rules. In this particular case I agree, a CoC would be too-little-too-late. But if there had been a CoC it would be easy grounds for dismissing Felleisen (assuming the allegations are true) with little (but still some, since power abusers die hard) fanfare. Now there will be a whole bunch of witch hunt politics and the community will suffer the more for it.
- JoshTriplett 5y ago
  > no open source community can afford to formally judge accusations to begin with Some communities do have formal "moderation teams" with this responsibility. One major advantage of this is that such a moderation team doesn't have to be reserved for egregious cases; that team can also step in when things get somewhat heated and provide lighter feedback to keep things from escalating. > it's not legally binding It's not intended to be. The goal of a CoC is to state community norms and serve as a point of reference to reduce relitigation of those norms. It's also to help people feel that a community cares about those norms and will actually enforce them. (This stops holding true if a community has a CoC on paper but refuses to enforce it, which unfortunately does happen sometimes. But on balance, it's a useful signal.)
sigstoat 5y ago
FYI racketcon 2018 had a "Friendly Environment" policy: https://con.racket-lang.org/2018/ https://con.racket-lang.org/2018/ so did 2017. i can't find anything for 2019. didn't look for 2020. the project as a whole has https://racket-lang.org/friendly.html https://racket-lang.org/friendly.html > a governing body to enforce it. here's the project management team https://racket-lang.org/team.html#management https://racket-lang.org/team.html#management
shakow 5y ago
At this point, it's sad that people would need a CoC just to follow the most elementary of courtesies. Everyone can have a bad day and jump at the throat of someone for no reason at all; but basic politeness would require them to flatly apologize later on. I wonder if it's linked to the current social trend of "being the greater person" and "not escalating the argument", but it's regrettable in any case.
- acdha 5y ago
  The problem is that “later on” often means “never” — and doesn't do anything to help with the damage before it happens. Abusive people are also commonly adept at finding ways to imply they did that without really doing so sincerely, as well as pushing boundaries so there's more chaff for them to hide behind (“<other person> joked about x, why is y worse?”). What a CoC does is give clear expectations for everyone in the community. It makes the discussion easier because it's a simple “Don't do this, rule #3” rather than having to lawyer about whether something is a problem after things have already become heated. This doesn't solve everything, of course, but setting a baseline cuts out a lot of tedious lower-level stuff and helps set a climate which discourages bad behaviour by removing the lower level stuff which can encourage it. That guy who infamously used a porn image in a conference slide probably didn't just wake up one morning and decide to do that but was in a subgroup where sexualized comments & humor was normalized.
  - shakow 5y ago
    > What a CoC does is give clear expectations for everyone in the community. That's my whole point; that CoCs might be a necessary step for social changes that quite many people don't understand and/or master yet (e.g. custom pronouns) is understandable. But apologize after you hurt someone is something I (and, I assume, most people) was taught when I was 4 y.o. and should be widely applied. What will be next, a little panel reminding you to say "hello" and "goodbye" when you come in and leave, or "don't forget to say thank you" next to the cashier?
    - faitswulff 5y ago
blacktriangle 5y ago
This story at face value is so far beyond what is necessary for a code of conduct to address. From the author's description, nobody is defending Felleisen, the project has just decided that they are better off with him regardless of his assholeness than they are without him. Whether that is true or not is up for debate. This is not a CoC issue, this is an issue of enforcement, and in the absence of enforcement a CoC isn't worth the paper its written on.
- comex 5y ago
  > the project has just decided that they are better off with him regardless of his assholeness than they are without him. A CoC is at least in theory a commitment to not make such a decision.
  - truffdog 5y ago
    Sure, but the core team already knows about this, and already knows that it's bad. If they had signed a pledge to not tolerate bad things back in 2019 when CoCs were cool I'm not sure how that would change anything. More ways for people to play at rules lawyering?
- parenwielder 5y ago
  This is absolutely the key point, and the one that all the discussion here is missing. Nobody defends Matthias' behavior, they just suggest that you should tolerate or ignore it. The reason is clear when you realize that "the Racket community" is more-or-less analogous with "Matthias' academic descendants." The people who are working on Racket as a language owe immense professional debts to Matthias.
  - DonaldPShimoda 5y ago
    > "the Racket community" is more-or-less analogous with "Matthias' academic descendants." For people who don't know, the Racket project was started by Matthias Felleisen in the early '90s. The next people on the project were all his PhD students: - Matthew Flatt - Robby Findler - Shriram Krishnamurthi - Cormac Flanagan Later additions who are top contributors to github.com/racket/racket: - Sam Tobin-Hochstadt (Felleisen's student) - Jay McCarthy (Krishnamurthi's student) - Vincent St-Amour (Felleisen's student) - Ryan Culpepper (Felleisen's student) - Asumu Takikawa (Felleisen's student) - Eric Dobson (Krishnamurthi's undergraduate student) In the top 10 contributors listed on GitHub, only 2 are not academic descendants of Felleisen: - Eli Barzilay - Matthias Felleisen EDIT: I originally listed Eric Dobson as "not an academic descendant of Felleisen" because I hadn't been able to find information on a dissertation or the like, but a comment informed me that they were an undergraduate student of Krishnamurthi so I have updated the comment to reflect this.
sqrt17 5y ago
So, delegating both responsibility and power to people with an agenda (because those are the only ones to step up when they get formal power, in addition to or rather than just informal responsibility), rather than adopting practices of de-escalation that everyone is responsible for? Paring down non-constructive and non-called for should be the responsibility of everyone in the room and not a special distinct set of people. I'm all for training project members (i.e. people who are involved in organizing conferences or summer schools) in practical techniques for better organizing the community, and I think holding everybody responsible leads to better results than having activists with an agenda write the rules and just delegating authority to them.
fungiblecog 5y ago
I seems to be a modern idea that if you can just write down rules for everyone to follow everything will be ok. This guy knows his behaviour is unacceptable and no code of conduct will change that. What's needed is more people prepared to call out this kind of behaviour
rurban 5y ago
Absolutely wrong idea. This would create infighting and destroy the community. Just ignore the raging bull, when he talks nonsense. A CoC already destroyed many other communities.
phyzome 5y ago
A CoC should formalize what the leadership already believes, so it would be backwards and pointless here.

fredrikholm 5y ago

Wasn't there a similar post by another former contributor expressing the same thing last year?

qart 5y ago
I think this is the first time I'm seeing Felleisen mentioned in the main post. Some comments here mentioned him, but the main post kept his name out.
jboynyc 5y ago
You're probably thinking about this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wY7FBtr7_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wY7FBtr7_c Leandro submitted it to HN but it didn't get any traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25620711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25620711

macintux 5y ago

That’s quite disappointing. It’s unfortunate that bullies continue to thrive in society and many communities.

alexfromapex 5y ago
They will only thrive if their cohort agrees to do nothing or encourages them in response to the bullying

adenozine 5y ago

Is there any proof to this? Not that I'm in disbelief, but I guess I just wonder why nothing has been done if it's as intense and awful as the claims. Either way, it's repulsive to hear about bad behaviors like these in beautiful scheme communities. I hope everybody involved heals and flourishes. Edit: to be clear, obviously I believe the guy. It just seems crazy that such an amount of responsible, educated people would let this happen in any kind of professional or educational setting. If someone spoke that way to anybody at my work, they'd be absolutely brutalized and more than likely terminated that same day.

gorjusborg 5y ago
Because it can be difficult to approach cruel people about their cruelty, would be my guess.
- alexfromapex 5y ago
  Kind of a weird instance of The Bystander Effect
  - Tomte 5y ago
    It's usually called "missing stair": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair
faitswulff 5y ago
What would the author have to gain from fabricating it?
- plank_time 5y ago
  For the record, I believe the author. But asking what the author would gain from fabricating it is a terrible reason to believe something. Pathological liars exist and they prey on people with such low bars for belief.

leafmeal 5y ago

In case OP shows up, we believe you and support you! Speaking out like this is hard but it's the best way to help the community you love.

hbn 5y ago
> we believe you and support you! Not that I think he's lying, but... why? I don't know who any of these people are but I don't like the idea of hearing one person's account and automatically assuming it's true. At least not in the case of assertions that are potentially career-ruining.
- velcrovan 5y ago
  > I don't know who any of these people are That's the key point right there. The target audience is the Racket community, who do know who these people are. No one is out to ruin Felleisen's career, he will be fine no matter what. But the Racket community has an interest in his effect on that community. We are much worse off without Butterick's involvement.
  - ImprobableTruth 5y ago
    >No one is out to ruin Felleisen's career, he will be fine no matter what I mean, why do you assume that? I don't know the Racket community, but if he is "the self-styled leader of the Racket project" being potentially forced to step down/ousted seems like it would very much impact him personally.
    - velcrovan 5y ago
      You're apparently walking into this with zero knowledge, so any of this would be assumption for you until you learned more. I am assuming nothing. I'm telling you the facts as I am aware of them. Feel free to do your own verification, for sure. Felleisen is very secure in an academic career and his status on the Rackt development team does not affect his position or his paycheck in the slightest. You can google him and look up his wikipedia entry.

kelvin0 5y ago

There can only be 1 Linus. Copy cats need not apply.

moocowtruck 5y ago

I been around Matthias a long time and don't really see it. Perhaps Matthew can identify some examples that prove he's not the fragile flower he says he isn't?

yladiz 5y ago
Perhaps you can use language that doesn’t belittle others to make your point?
- a1369209993 5y ago
  > language that doesn't belittle others Whether you agree with them or not, they are literally quoting TFA there. > Why? It's not because I'm a fragile flower. I've navigated plenty of difficult people - LA lawyers, SF venture capitalists, et al. Edit: > What I don't understand is why they are asking for examples... that are literally in TFA. Beats me, I'm just complaining about the spurious "belittling others" accusation. > If the author was a 'fragile flower', would that make this described behaviour then acceptable? Why are you asking me that and not moocowtruck? They're the one who implied it would.
  - velcrovan 5y ago
    What I don't understand is why they are asking for examples…that are literally in TFA.
    - moocowtruck 5y ago
      where? i see general statements
      - mcherm 5y ago
        Try reading paragraphs 3-7. Whatever else you may feel about them, they are clearly quite specific about the behavior experienced.
  - 5y ago

_pmf_ 5y ago

About 80% of my university professors (CS and otherwise) were similar to this. I don't know what's wrong with this profession.

DonaldPShimoda 5y ago
FWIW, Matthias is known for being especially egregious in this respect even among other academics. But you absolutely have a point about there being a problem endemic throughout the profession.
kybernetikos 5y ago
I think it may be because of the teacher / student power dynamic. I expect you get used to treating everyone like they're much younger than you and that you can treat them disrespectfully without any major consequences.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Big Fish / Small Pond rules may also apply. And as the professor ages their best research may be behind them, and the ones who can't take a bitter pill like that may start punching down on people below them.
- mcculley 5y ago
  My limited experience with academia is that professors are thrust into a position of power with very little management training, experience, or support. Additionally, research professors may have no pedagogical skill and yet they are expected to both research and teach to some degree. This is a recipe for dysfunctional organizations and relationships.
thebooktocome 5y ago
I'm shocked that I was able to stay in academia long enough to finish my thesis. You're right, so many professors are just completely abusive, with absolutely no checks on the power they mismanage.
feminintendo 5y ago

newaccount2021 5y ago

Whatever happened to just telling people to go f*k themselves?

wearywanderer 5y ago

War is a continuation of politics by other means. But diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. And now verbal bullying is a continuation of violence by other means. By the principle of explosion, I think we're on the precipice of everything being a continuation of everything by other means.

useragent86 5y ago
Well, drive-by downvoting, effectively censoring comments one doesn't like, is certainly a continuation of bullying by other means. Of course, cleverness is frowned upon 'round here.

sigstoat 5y ago

huh, felleisen didn't strike me as any pricklier than your average college professor when i met him. certainly wouldn't have been in the top 10 racket contributors i'd expect to drive anyone away.

DonaldPShimoda 5y ago
I think you must not have interacted with him much, or have not talked with people who know him more closely. I was explicitly advised to avoid applying for my PhD at Northeastern unless I had incredibly thick skin to withstand the way he berates his students. So I didn't apply — I'm not signing up for that.
parenwielder 5y ago
Matthias is virtually always the prickliest person in the room at academic programming languages conferences, by quite a bit.
- bjoli 5y ago
  I remember seeing a talk about typed racket (by samth? Probably...) and he expresses a very personal view, something like "I think types are an important tool to enforce correctness of code" and someone in the audience said "I think you're full of shit!". Everybody sighed a short sigh and everything continued as usual.
plorkyeran 5y ago
I had pretty uniformly positive experiences with him as both a student and a TA for one of his classes, but the very important bit of context there is I was a student who did well enough in his class to be asked to TA. In retrospect I can remember him being pretty awful to some of the other students.

agumonkey 5y ago

good luck to matthew there's a lot to say about these situations - principles are not enough, investing in FOSS may bite you later if you feel hurt by the destination.. be sure to only stay where you're happy right now and don't assume an ideal won't be bad (not a judgement, just sharing a late realization) - 'show must go on' seems to be a deep reflex in humans.. should we teach stronger sense of respect ? what if matthew or anybody had stepped in vocally during that session and asked M.F. to tone it down or apologize right away ? (my 2cts: it should be a mandatory school lesson for most of us) - how can one form a side group to keep enjoying his time on whatever topic without having to deal with corrosive people ?

mattgreenrocks 5y ago

This is sad to read, as Felleisen has done some great research (I'm thinking of A-Normal Form). However, this doesn't excuse the conduct outlined here.

mkl95 5y ago

Felleisen is an academic, and his behaviour is very common in academia. It's trivial for college professors to get away with bullying people. In comparison, the software industry is relatively friendly and rewarding.

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parenwielder 5y ago
I can assure you that while it certainly is easy for faculty to get away with this behavior (Matthias himself being evidence of that fact), his behavior is well outside of the range of what could reasonably be considered normal, at least within computing academia in general.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  I suppose it depends on your definition of "normal." Just reading a couple of anecdotes about Matthias pattern-matches well against more than one faculty member I've encountered; if, say, 5% of faculty openly act this way with near zero repercussions, is it really "abnormal?"
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    Agreed. One of the many (and there were many) reasons that left me to leave academia was the huge egos and bullying of the famous professors. Getting chewed out by a cantankerous member of your academic community was just a cost of being an academic when I was in academia.
ska 5y ago
I don’t think this is actually more common on academia than elsewhere, really - but I do think that once you have reached a certain level in academic career, there are few consequences for it. This makes it stand out.
- 5y ago

buttholesurfer 5y ago

The author sounds whiney tbh. Why type all of that?

throw7 5y ago

"The only workable tactic was to distance yourself" No. You stand up for yourself and call out the dick. He attacks you and you haven't even presented yet. When you are right, don't let bullies bully.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> No. You stand up for yourself Do you feel this is an acceptable way to respond to someone who's telling you they feel bullied? Shouting 'no' at them and telling them what they should have done instead, when presumably they felt they couldn't do that because they felt intimidated?
ImprobableTruth 5y ago
Well, that might work when talking about a situation where power is about equal, but when it's someone higher up in the chain, it's going to be much much harder.
andrewflnr 5y ago
That's the ideal, but is often not workable, for instance if you're a kid who is not good at violence, or if the dick is surrounded by people who are already determined to tolerate his dickishness. They already know.
- jasonschlatt 5y ago
  When I imagine this scenario, and imagine the two options of a) walking away, or b) giving the guy a terse piece of my mind and walking away, I feel like in the case of picking a) when b) wouldn't have hurt me I would feel spiritually diminished. Standing up to someone bullying you is the right thing to do, spiritually speaking. You also have to stop them from bullying you, of course, and the easiest way to accomplish that is often to walk away.
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ljm 5y ago
This is only going to end negatively if the bully has the tacit approval of all their peers. It's made clear by Matthew that the bully's behaviour was tolerated, so all likelihood is that he would be criticised for rocking the boat, potentially ostracised. At best he would get approval for it, but only in private with a "I will deny this if you say it out loud" disclaimer. Ultimately this would reflect worse on Racket's leadership team than it does on Matthias alone. They're all okay with it. If this was operated as an organisation then there would be some accountability. This is all innocent until proven guilty, of course, so it boils down to how the racket team responds, if they do.

desine 5y ago

Beautiful Racket was one of the sites that helped me learn the language/toolset, along with HTDP, by Felleisen. This is troubling, but the lack of detail and context is also troubling. I would wager most of us in the CS community have experienced personalities that deliver harsh criticism. The types of people that often don't realize how vicious their tone comes across. I also have no doubt that I on occasion have been more abrasive than I intended to. There's many in this community that are "on the spectrum", but there's an even broader spectrum that exists in programmers of people that are too in their own heads, or just not properly socially adjusted, with no medical definition. I don't wish to make excuses for bad behavior, but there's also the potential cultural differences of Felleisen being German, and the stress involved with trying to organize a convention. Even after being degraded by Felleisen, Butterick received a high rating for his teaching by Felleisen? This sounds like a stereotypically "cold" German personality and and a soft kind American personality just generating friction. I've seen it other times within my teams (without the specifically German cultural aspect); instances where one abrasive person doesn't realize how much they've affected one softer, kinder person. And instances where a sensitive person (not even overly-so) feels personally slighted by what was just a bad mood or an bad moment. I'm disappointed to hear that a great Racket contributor feels wronged and slighted, especially to the point of reducing his passion for contributing to the project. But the linked post doesn't give me enough to go to my pitchfork closet either. I guess it's something to keep an eye on for other signs

jgwil2 5y ago
> Even after being degraded by Felleisen, Butterick received a high rating for his teaching by Felleisen? I believe you've misunderstood a sentence from the article. The author meant he received higher ratings than all other teachers, including Felleisen, from students, not that Felleisen himself rated the author's teaching highly.
- desine 5y ago
  Ah, you're right, thank you. That does change the context a bit.
CoastalCoder 5y ago

CoastalCoder 5y ago

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threatofrain 5y ago
And what is the moral wisdom in contemplating this scenario if you've already rejected the means as unworthy?
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  > And what is the moral wisdom in contemplating this scenario if you've already rejected the means as unworthy? A fair question. I guess there are several answers: (1) I was concerned that just because I mentioned being curious how that approach would play out, some readers would assume that I was advocating violence, and respond accordingly. I wanted to be very clear that that's not the case, because that would end all discussion. (2) I was mostly just wondering aloud how that would play out, because I'd like to understand human behavior better. I.e., I was doing a thought experiment, and realized that I didn't have any good guess for what the actual aftermath would be. So I was hoping to get other people's thoughts on the matter. EDIT: It seems I chose the wrong forum for the question, or made some other error. I'll delete the post, as it seems to not be contributing to meaningful discussion.
jgwil2 5y ago
I mean, have you ever punched somebody in the face? I'll admit the thought occurred to me as well but in practice, I think most people have a strong aversion to violence, not to mention the potential criminal liability.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  Not to mention the fact that you might also end up getting beaten up by the person you assaulted, which would make you even worse off.
- mikelevins 5y ago
  I've punched many people in the face many times, and been punched in the face and in other body parts many times, too. Hard-contact martial arts was once one of my favorite hobbies, and I owned a martial arts studio for some years. Like other commenters, I do not generally advocate punching someone in the face for saying something rude or cruel, especially if you're well-adapted to fights and they aren't. It's probably unethical and definitely likely to cause you legal grief. I will say this, though: in twenty years or more of a hobby that involved punching people in the face, kicking them hard enough to knock outlines of their bodies into the drywall, and choking them to the edge of unconsciousness, I never saw the kind of thoughtless cruelty and bullying that is described here. Mostly I saw a lot of mutual courtesy and respect, with exceptions on rare occasions. I will say that people who like to punch down seem to lose their enthusiasm when they discover unexpectedly that they're actually punching up. Perhaps it will amuse you, as it did me, to hear about a fellow I know who is large and strong and skilled who dropped by to visit in person someone who had been bullying and abusing him online. No violence ensued, but the bully experienced an epiphany about the value of courtesy and discretion.

Sr_developer 5y ago

Just 2 comments. Life has taught me that no matter how noble, pure, well-intended or just a cause is you will find exactly the same interpersonal dynamics that you will find in most organizations, including many despicable ones. Our extremely thin varnish of civilization is not strong enough to stop millions of years of evolution fine-tuning us to be hierarchical tribal apes living in small groups.Remember that every time you join a movement, you will have to deal with the same bullshit than in everywhere else. The second one, quoting the author: ". I’ve navigated plenty of difficult people—LA lawyers, SF venture capitalists, et al." I would say that the author must have experienced a very narrow window of human types if those are the examples he came up with. I just found it funny, no need to make a drama about it.

scabarott 5y ago
If you've dealt with VC's or lawyers before you'll understand this example. Of course many probably worse examples from Academia or restaurants or military or whatever but if you're a software entrepreneur these are very good examples.
- Sr_developer 5y ago
  I guess I agree, with the caveat that this applies to white middle-class Americans.Otherwise those VC/lawyers are not even on the top half of "dificult people" you can face on earth.

dleslie 5y ago

As an aside: I'd _really like_ to purchase Beautiful Racket in dead-tree form. I much prefer having a book open on my work bench to follow along to, than a website. Monitors are tiring to look at for long periods.

dtornabene 5y ago

Seeing a lot of "no evidence" and such from comments and just putting it out there that I had heard of behavior like this over ten years ago living in Boston and meeting former students of Felleisen. I've been a lisp person for many years and worked right down the street from NEU. I use racket, and use tools that are built on Racket fwiw.

Gimpei 5y ago

My first job out of college was at a magazine. The two editors there were in their 70s and notorious for being bullies (although for what it's worth, one of them mellowed out after their editorial assistant committed suicide). There wasn't a day when I wasn't yelled at repeatedly, and the taint seeped down, with everybody lower down the rung yelling at anybody below them. It was easily the most toxic environment that I've ever experienced, and I've worked in academia! People were breaking down in tears all the time. Ex editorial assistants would send in letters written in crayon from insane asylums. The funny thing was that instead of resenting their tormenters, most people adopted a very protective stance towards these editors, as if they were children. Sadly, the impression that I got was that a lot of other publications had similar problems--smart but extremely neurotic bosses who regularly demeaned their employees. This was in 2000, around the time when "The Devil Wears Prada" came out. The one upside was that it permanently scared me out of publishing, which turned out to be an excellent career choice.

vanderZwan 5y ago
> for what it's worth, one of them mellowed out after their editorial assistant committed suicide Maybe it's just me, but I don't think "used to be super-toxic but once they tormented someone into suicide they got better" is worth shit.
- serf 5y ago
  so then no real reason for the terrible person to improve? Now that they've goaded someone into a suicide they're unforgivable, regardless of their remorse/regret/introspective consideration? i'd rather live in a society that gives bad people a motivation to improve, rather than one that condemns all people who commit bad actions as tainted forever by their previous regretted action. a terrible person who has improved through introspection and societal nudging into a decent human being is society's trophy for a job well done. It's exactly the desired outcome; to continue to condemn the apologetic and rehabilitated individual is useful for nothing except for petty vengeance between the victim's social network and the perpetrating individual - it serves little to no societal good.
Cub3 5y ago

eigenhombre 5y ago

I've followed Racket and the OP's work from a distance for some time. This post rang bells for me, based on similar interactions with a few bad apples over about twenty years in the field of physics. I applaud the poster for the clear and measured language of his post, for his bravery in calling out this kind of behavior, and for taking steps needed to remove himself from the situation. I hope the Racket community takes steps to eliminate the problem at the root.

neilv 5y ago

I'm very sorry to hear that Matthew Butterick had some bad experiences. He's been a brilliant and energetic contributor to the Racket community. Clearly, something went wrong. For what it's worth (looking at some of the comments from people not very familiar), my own experiences with Matthias Felleisen have been positive. (I started contributing to what was then called PLT Scheme around 2000, have had lunch with him twice, and a few times over the years have had some mutually-candid conversations with him, about concerns affecting the project/community.) While I might describe Matthias as a freethinker and straight-talker, everything I'm aware of that he's said or done in the two decades I've been around seems to come from altruistic intentions. I know Matthias cares about the community. (He was very welcoming when I started, and we've discussed it over the years.) I think he'll want to personally investigate and consider what happened that resulted in alienating Matthew B., and try to correct any problems that he can. This isn't just about Matthew B., but also about constantly seeing how we can be the best community for everyone. That's not a solved problem, and I suggest it's best approached as an ongoing process of humility, honesty, and support -- everyone feeling safe to raise concerns/problems, and everyone feeling safe to examine how we can improve.

velcrovan 5y ago
> I think he'll want to personally investigate and consider what happened that resulted in alienating Matthew B., and try to correct any problems that he can. Given MB's level of investment in Racket and its community, you'd expect that it would have been addressed in January, when he told the Racket team he was out. Whatever you think about Felleisen it seems pretty likely that he was aware before now and had already made up his mind not to address it.
- neilv 5y ago
  If it clarifies anything, I suspect that, when he says "core team", he means something like the inner-circle of a few university researchers. > In January 2020, I told two members of Racket’s core team t [...] They were always witnessed by others on the Racket core team.* The inner-circle set is similar to that of Matthias and his grad students who started Racket (PLT Scheme). Though the inner-circle is actively involved with the community, there's always been a definite separation. So, the community would be oblivious to some things in the inner circle, and vice versa. (BTW, that organizational dynamic might be evolving, including learning from Rust's evolution. Aaron Turon's talk at RacketCon, about Rust governance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1t4zGJYUuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1t4zGJYUuY )

gkya 5y ago

So I went over and looked around this Felleisen person's personal website, and... how do I put this, he is one unpleasant insufferable dude. Enter the rabbit hole: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/ http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/ > → personal site > Warning You are about to leave campus and visit a web site > with centrist views that may offend readers used to safe spaces. I followed the link, and felt too much cringe to be able detect offense per se. Personally I am avoiding Racket so long as this man is anywhere near it. Luckily I didn't invest any significant time in it before. I feel deeply sorry for his grad students and underlings, despite knowing none. It must've been an ordeal for each and every one of them.

parenwielder 5y ago
The link to the personal site was a byproduct of what he described as a "social experiment" in which he published the James Damore memo on his office door, and was offended that students reported him to the dean for acting to create a hostile work environment, rather than engage with him directly about the scientific merits of Damore's memo. He describes this himself here: https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Free_Speech.html
- afavour 5y ago
  Seems like a strange course of action. What if someone just wants to come and see you and not debate the scientific merits of Damore's memo? The man is a computer science professor, after all. I don't know about "hostile work environment" but it seems needlessly antagonistic to me.
  - parenwielder 5y ago
    needlessly antagonistic is a fair characterization of his approach to the world at large
    - brudgers 5y ago
      It is not needless. It is self serving. It expresses his privilege and power in the explicit environment where they matter most. It amplifies them.

rebelshrug 5y ago

Several years ago, I worked on some open source projects that involved Racket. The community and Matthew Felleisen in particular were very helpful, and it sticks with me that the project founder took time to teach me idiomatic/correct ways to write Racket code and tests. Not condoning Matthew Felleisen's behavior towards Matthew Butterick - people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect - but there does seem to be a side to M.F that enjoys teaching and evangelizing Racket.

DonaldPShimoda 5y ago
Felleisen's entire goal with the Racket project has been teaching-focused from the beginning. I don't think anybody in the community doubts that he cares about teaching and evangelizing Racket. The problem is that he has a very... how to put it. Matthias seems to believe that you must fight and struggle your way through academia and prove your worth to earn respect at even the most basic level. He is known for verbally abusing his students regularly. As I wrote elsewhere, I was explicitly discouraged from applying to Northeastern if I didn't feel I could withstand certain kinds of regular verbal abuse at his hands. That's unacceptable behavior, regardless of the "true intent" underlying it.

sgt 5y ago

That's terrible - I wonder if it's just a lack of empathy from Matthias site. That's no excuse to behave like that in public and especially ridiculing you in front of a group. Maybe nobody tells him about his personality flaw. Or at least in a way that he comprehends it. Interestingly, from a review on ratemyprofessors.com: >I hated his guts while in his class, but in retrospect he's almost certainly the best teacher I've ever had. As somebody said above, this guy is absolutely brilliant. He will kick your butt, but it's all for your own good in the end. He seems to really care about teaching, and it shows. I've had a professor like that and it takes a while to realize that those people are needed. For lazy students it may be a proper wake up call to the real world.

nomrom 5y ago
>I've had a professor like that and it takes a while to realize that those people are needed. For lazy students it may be a proper wake up call to the real world. I'm sure we can aspire to better approaches that are not bullying.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  Maybe? But the ironic thing is - if the prof let the lazy student be lazy and silently condemn them to mediocrity, nobody would raise a peep and everyone would be fine. It's only when the prof cares about to go take a personal risk to try to get through to the student (which they would only care to do because they care about the student) can someone complain. So I think your comment is mainly unhelpful. The people you're responding to are making the bold point that the unpopular approach WORKED, HELPED and possibly CHANGED THEIR LIFE. Which is probably not in line with the traditional definition of bullying which is bothering someone out of malice, which sounds like is NOT what is happening.
  - nomrom 5y ago
    It worked, but at what cost? How many brilliant people quit because they were bullied? It's shortsighted, and morally wrong.

zarkov99 5y ago

Good lord. Why not hash things out with Mathias forceably and directly right then and there? Why this victim pantomime? Mathew is a grown men, surely he can find more direct ways to stand up for himself instead of obliquely trying to cancel the guy to whom we owe racket.

nnf 5y ago
You might be surprised to learn some people aren’t comfortable “hashing it out forcibly and directly right then and there.” I would venture to guess most of the people here would not do that, especially when caught completely off guard and in a group of their peers who aren’t sticking up for them.
- zarkov99 5y ago
  Perhaps we all could recognize courage is a virtue and strive to demonstrate it? Much of the sickness in our culture would instantly be cured if we valued and demonstrated genuine bravery instead of replacing it with victimhood signaling.

muyuu 5y ago

I think it's a bit dangerous to pass judgment without having first-hand account of the facts. Having said that, a lot of people are in the wrong here if this account is accurate. If volunteers are invited to teach, then everybody needs to be onboard and agree beforehand, and no considerations regarding previously known qualifications can be raised after this process is over. Boundaries need to be clearly set so these situations cannot arise. OTOH taking unwarranted criticism is also not a good thing. If you see something like this you need to tell the big honcho to STFU, esp. when it's volunteer work anyway. Perhaps not in everybody's character to do this but once one has had some experience of this sort (I have) and given it some thought, it should come naturally.

gilrain 5y ago
> Perhaps not in everybody's character to do this but once one has had some experience of this sort (I have) and given it some thought, it should come naturally. And if your abuser is influential in your field, it will come naturally to _them_ to hinder or destroy your career. Your advice assumes the abused is in a position secure enough to call out their abuser. In real life, abusers specifically choose targets who cannot easily resist.
- muyuu 5y ago
  leaving aside your completely fictional assumptions vs this case, bullies actually thrive on fear and silence - if you make their aggression visible to all, they cower

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Arjuna144 5y ago

This matches the experience I had during my university studies. I saw that professors are often highly "educated" but lack very basic emotional intelligence. This is really sad to see, as it shows how our education system lacks when we can only teach people to do rational thinking to solve rational problems in the outside world but do not provide them means to conduct themselves and others in a graceful manner. This is so poor, made me really sad. When I saw this more in more in my professors I became more and more despised when I saw the blind awe that my fellow students had towards these professors when I saw them more and more like pitiful "rational intelligence" heaps that have never learned methods to become peaceful, joyful and loving on the inside... Not saying that all professors are like that though, I also had two professors whom I greatly appreciated for their philanthropy!

kovacs_x 5y ago
being emotionally smart, being good at teaching and being smart at <something> are three different skills. Academia is just a place where it shows highly.

stickyricky 5y ago

> No facts were disputed. The incidents were numerous, happening over a period of years. They were always witnessed by others on the Racket core team. For that reason, there’s no need to enumerate the details now. This is the software world's equivalent of vaguebooking. Please provide quotes or precise anecdotes which can be confirmed or denied by witnesses and Felleisen.

blindmute 5y ago

I believe this sort of thing is what happens when children are not taught to stand up for themselves: based on the post, the author never had a conversation with his attacker, asked for an apology, or did anything other than meekly tuck his tail. Then years later he posts this. Being a bully is not good, but neither is being a needless victim.

yawaramin 5y ago
You know what's really not good? Victim blaming. We know, beyond a doubt, that when people are victimized out of nowhere, they often are too shaken by the experience to defend themselves properly. Expecting everyone to have the defense mechanisms of a Special Forces soldier is not helpful.
- blindmute 5y ago
  What you call victim blaming here, I call expecting a certain amount of accountability for oneself. And yes, I do expect everyone to have, or to cultivate, the ability to handle themselves in social situations. I believe this expectation to be infinitely more helpful for society at large than the sympathy on tap commonly seen instead. Perhaps he was shaken in the moment, but the author apparently had at least a full year to handle this. Were this post written after he failed to diffuse the situation, after standing up for himself, and the bully just kept being an asshole, then a post like this would be warranted to warn the community at large. As it stands, the tone reads much more childishly to me than it could have.

doneata 5y ago

I see that Matthias has responded and issued an apology on his website: https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Apology.html https://felleisen.org/matthias/Thoughts/Apology.html

dabernathy89 5y ago
Although weirdly he only apologized for the single incident Matthew described in detail, even though Matthew explained that it was just one example from years of bad behavior.
robocat 5y ago
HN discussion about response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27544797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27544797 although very low quality comments so far. https://lobste.rs/s/6rnyn9/why_i_no_longer_contribute_racket https://lobste.rs/s/6rnyn9/why_i_no_longer_contribute_racket has some good quality discussion on this topic.

OrangeG 5y ago

There are two types of comments here: 1. Bullying is bad (which I completely agree) 2. I saw Matthias a mile away and he was rude. But it seems like only a few of you met him. Yet, you feel free to come and talk about him based on what you hear. If you talked to Matthias for more than 10 minutes, you'd know that he spends 5 times more on his lectures compared to your "cool professors" every single year. You'd know that he goes out of his way to help any academic who asked for his help. You'd know that all he talks about is "the community" and how he can make things better for everyone. I'm in sciences for a little over 10 years and my experience is that people like Matthias are extremely rare. I can't speak to his science because it's really not my field, but he most certainly gets out of his way to help junior people (like myself). Especially those who wouldn't be heard otherwise (like myself, an international woman in sciences). He listened to me complain about my work environment so many times, encouraged me to continue. He helped me to make important career and personal decisions. On multiple occasions. I think my PhD experience would be drastically different without his help and I know that I'm not the only one! Now, Matthias can be opinionated and intense. I argued with him about science, politics and many other topics, but he never makes it about you! You can discuss literally anything with him and he never passes judgement. He's actually really open to criticism (as evident from his apology). I'm not belittling MB's experience. I just thought that I'm one of the many people Matthias helped and he has an extremely compassionate side that people should know before they label him as "bully"! Edited to fix a couple typos.

taylodl 5y ago

This reads to me as a textbook case for how not to handle conflict. It doesn't appear as though the author ever discussed this issue with the Racket core team or informed this Matthias Felleisen person, whom I don't know, how their outburst had been received. The author never explicitly states they had done this other than stating the facts are not in dispute and these events were witnessed by members of the Racket core team, who are going to be reluctant to resolve the conflict on the author's behalf without solicitation (that's human nature - conflict avoidance). If that wasn't done and instead the issue was taken public then it's likely to be perceived as an ambush. Now you're in a state where both parties are aggrieved and so effecting a reconciliation at this point is nigh impossible.