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Not the OP, but here's an explanation anyway: the Rust community is full of superficially kind and polite language, enforced ruthlessly, that masks a high level
by throwaway432242 5y ago
Not the OP, but here's an explanation anyway: the Rust community is full of superficially kind and polite language, enforced ruthlessly, that masks a high level of politics, intrigue, and backstabbing. The problem is worsened by people being unable to talk about it in the open due to the Rust community's enforced superficial politeness --- it's against the rules, you see, to accuse someone who's using such helpful and kind language of doing something wrong.
Example: see the drama surrounding https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130
The Linux kernel people are completely different. They're direct, aggressive, and have arguments directly, out in the open. Linus will call you an idiot in public, which is a big no-no in "nice" places like Rust, but if you fix whatever it is that's making him call you an idiot, Linus will then take your code and think nothing more about the incident.
By contrast, in Rust-land, disputes might simmer forever because nobody is allowed to by "mean" and bring them out into the open. Things will just mysteriously not happen for you and you'll get more and more frustrated that nothing seems to be making any sense.
In other words: Linux has an old-school hacker culture, and Rust has the culture of a college campus.
People used to the Rust style think of the Linux community as a bunch of toxic aggressive assholes. People used to the Linux style think of the Rust people as a bunch of toxic passive-aggressive assholes.
(I personally much prefer the Linux style.)
- pdimitar 5y agoClassic example of filter bubble. I've seen what you describe about the Rust community in many others -- and only occasionally in the Rust one. Super strange comment, your one. Goes into "Rust devs can't take criticism" land and has no leg to stand on at that.
- Dylan16807 5y ago> see the drama surrounding https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513130 That was drama, yes. I didn't see any intrigue or backstabbing or superficial politeness. By superficial politeness do you mean keeping certain things private?
- seanw444 5y agoInterestingly, most of the personal websites and journals I've seen of various developers that primarily use Rust in their projects, have this exact undertone to them. I'm still not certain why this is, but I can definitely sympathize with your description.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoI'm still not certain why this is It's mostly sheltered Americans who misinterpret Linus's way of doing things as "toxic". Said sheltered Americans also coasted their way through life without ever having a Linus-esque reality check, so again they perceive that kind of concise communication as a personal material attack on them. Is Linus a bit too curt? Maybe, but he gets things done.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- smoldesu 5y agoThe biggest differentiation is that C is not an opinionated language, whereas Rust is. There are right and wrong answers in Rust (look at Actix, for christ's sake), where often the friction generated is because of a fundamental misunderstanding in how it works. C is much more freeform, where you could probably write 500 incorrect solutions and 5 perfectly safe ones. That sort of programming style worked great for the early kernel org, but now we're shifting our focus towards security and correctness. C still works, but Rust is simply a lot more ergonomic for the majority of situations.
- zozbot234 5y agoI've never seen people refrain from engaging in technical debates in the Rust community because they were scared of seeming unkind or impolite. I'm sure that one could argue that other programming language communities have issues with this one way or the other, but the complexity of things that are decided wrt. Rust is such that the way people phrase things just doesn't affect much. There's simply no harm in being kind and polite about this stuff, having good arguments is ultimately what matters.