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> No, not really. Spinning the actix-web as the author's reluctance to accept PRs is a gross misrepresentation of the problem faced by the project. No, not rea

> No, not really. Spinning the actix-web as the author's reluctance to accept PRs is a gross misrepresentation of the problem faced by the project. No, not really. The author, a professional at Microsoft, was a hobbyist with rust who (by his confession) wished to explore the limits of performance using various techniques. People made a mountain out of the fact that his project rocketed up to the top of the TechEmpower benchmarks -- as if this obligated him to conform to their flash-mob wishes regarding sanitized code, whereas the project very explicitly made it clear that production use was at one's own risk. What happened to him was a hit-job by a bunch of entitled bullies. No less than Steve Klabnik acknowleged this ("far, far, far over the line"[0]). The fact that ntex exists today[1] yet the world has somehow not exploded yet demonstrates how overblown the criticisms were. [0] https://steveklabnik.com/writing/a-sad-day-for-rust https://steveklabnik.com/writing/a-sad-day-for-rust [1] https://github.com/ntex-rs/ntex https://github.com/ntex-rs/ntex

3np 5y ago
As an outsider, as it was clear that the author wasn’t that interested in reviewing safety patches, wouldn’t a “safe-actix” fork maintained by someone else have made everyone happy?
nuerow 5y ago
> No, not really. The author, a professional at Microsoft, was a hobbyist with rust who (...) It's very hard to believe that "a hobbyist" would, by mere chance, write the absolute best performing framework in the world. https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ Your comment not only lacks credibility but also sounds extremely petty.
- dralley 5y ago
  The problem is that actix-web (at the time, at least) was also quite benchmark-oriented -- it was doing a lot of things you don't necessarily want to do in production in order to get better benchmarks. And that was especially true of the benchmark code itself. TechEmpower's methodology, additionally, is not perfect. IIRC they support HTTP 1.0 only, which is not what most modern servers are focusing on, but actix-web did.
burntsushi 5y ago
You can't boil what happened down into a black-or-white simplification. Because what happened is more complicated than that. Some people went over the line, absolutely, but that doesn't mean any criticism of the project was overblown or inappropriate. Lodging criticism against a project doesn't have to imply any sort of obligation on anyone. There was some pretty bad misuse of unsafe in actix-web. And as I recall it, the author was resistant to fixing it, even when patches were provided. This is the author's right. It's their project. But it's anyone else's right to make this sort of thing visible, and to advocate against holding up actix-web (at the time) as a good example of what Rust programmers could deliver. A lot of people can't or won't communicate effectively, and often blur these lines. Either assuming there is entitlement where there is none, or expressing entitlement when they didn't mean to. But there is a reasonable position underlying what happened, and unfortunately some took it too far.

3np 5y ago

As an outsider, as it was clear that the author wasn’t that interested in reviewing safety patches, wouldn’t a “safe-actix” fork maintained by someone else have made everyone happy?

nuerow 5y ago

> No, not really. The author, a professional at Microsoft, was a hobbyist with rust who (...) It's very hard to believe that "a hobbyist" would, by mere chance, write the absolute best performing framework in the world. https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/ Your comment not only lacks credibility but also sounds extremely petty.

dralley 5y ago
The problem is that actix-web (at the time, at least) was also quite benchmark-oriented -- it was doing a lot of things you don't necessarily want to do in production in order to get better benchmarks. And that was especially true of the benchmark code itself. TechEmpower's methodology, additionally, is not perfect. IIRC they support HTTP 1.0 only, which is not what most modern servers are focusing on, but actix-web did.

burntsushi 5y ago

You can't boil what happened down into a black-or-white simplification. Because what happened is more complicated than that. Some people went over the line, absolutely, but that doesn't mean any criticism of the project was overblown or inappropriate. Lodging criticism against a project doesn't have to imply any sort of obligation on anyone. There was some pretty bad misuse of unsafe in actix-web. And as I recall it, the author was resistant to fixing it, even when patches were provided. This is the author's right. It's their project. But it's anyone else's right to make this sort of thing visible, and to advocate against holding up actix-web (at the time) as a good example of what Rust programmers could deliver. A lot of people can't or won't communicate effectively, and often blur these lines. Either assuming there is entitlement where there is none, or expressing entitlement when they didn't mean to. But there is a reasonable position underlying what happened, and unfortunately some took it too far.