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Wait. Let me get this straight. Someone is an expert in this field. They're asked to speak at RustConf after a leadership vote. They've also written an artic

by junon 3y ago

Wait. Let me get this straight. Someone is an expert in this field. They're asked to speak at RustConf after a leadership vote. They've also written an article about reflection in Rust - a purely technical thing that is already pretty widely disliked conceptually. (EDIT: the talk was about this, but it's also compile time reflection and came with the usual disclaimer that it was not representative of any of the Rust team's viewpoints or support) Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their demographic? And then they pushed them out of the conference behind leadership's back? Did I miss something? This is indeed really childish behavior. EDIT: oh. It's not even reflection, it's compile time reflection. As in, it's not the next Java but instead something that might actually be very useful for the language if done correctly. https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023 https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023 > The sudden reversal smacks of shadowy decisions that are non-transparent to normal contributors like myself. It is a brutal introduction to the way the Rust Project actually does business that is not covered by its publicly-available Procedures and Practices and absolutely not at all mentioned in its Code of Conduct. Agreed. The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins to fester. This is incredibly stupid behavior coming from what is being regarded as the next C++. Come on, Rust committee. Let's grow up here, shall we?

CRConrad 3y ago
From your link: > More specifically, I was nominated by “Rust Project Leadership” (to be exact with the wording) to give a keynote That wording is misleading. If what this “Rust Project Leadership” committee says doesn't stick but can be overridden by someone (or someones) else, then they're not actually leading anything; the overrider is. Have these people realised yet that they're just a façade?
indy 3y ago
Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling uncomfortable" Rust the language is pretty good but the community around it has become really off-putting. The thick veneer of empathy and compassion quickly devolves into "idiot compassion" and emotional blackmail. Even the linked post contains the following: "I left because when I felt JeanHeyd's pain and disappointment at being mistreated and betrayed, my heart broke. I wept because of the cruelty. But I also wept because I helped create the system that could do this to someone."
- deleted 3y ago
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- junon 3y ago
  Agreed, that part was a little ehh for me too. And I think a resignation is a complete overreaction, but hey, I'm not close to any of these people so what do I know. The original behavior is childish. And the quoted paragraph I have there about it revealing some internal mechanics of the leadership group is an important observation, one I'm much more concerned with. It's revealing that Rust's open operation may not be so open after all. That can quickly cause a lot of problems if not quelled.
- wokwokwok 3y ago
  Is it bad of me to say I really just don’t care? If he did the talk. If he did it as a keynote. If someone else is “leaving rust” because of it? It all seems so fabulously irrelevant, I really struggle to understand why: 1) I should care (I don’t, currently) 2) People are coming out of the woodwork to criticise the rust team / foundation whatever when they’re not involved. 3) Why people having emotions (eg. The person above, who does care) is somehow a bad thing? 4) Any kind of positive out come is going to come of this. I really struggle to view doing anything else as not hostile to the rust project or having an agenda (“stop rust being woke!!”) which is non technical, and unhelpful. Rust is great. It’s not perfect. The people who build it are not perfect, the foundation is not perfect. People are not perfect. It’s ok. Call out problematic behaviour, don’t obsess over it.
  - junon 3y ago
    From my understanding the Rust team was involved and they sidestepped democratic processes put in place to make sure the Rust foundation doesn't kill itself with unchecked mismanagement essentially. The point is more that this sort of unilateral decision should never have been possible to make in the first place. It should have been discussed and voted on before the talk was downgraded. Perhaps that specific incident is inconsequential, sure. I think even the speaker agrees so. But the fact that this lapse in process could happen within the Rust foundation at all is a red flag for other, more language-specific dangers.
taosx 3y ago
I don't get what's wrong with his post about reflection, why would someone be uncomfortable with a tool? https://soasis.org/posts/a-mirror-for-rust-a-plan-for-generic-compile-time-introspection-in-rust/ https://soasis.org/posts/a-mirror-for-rust-a-plan-for-generi... - Is this the post ?
- junon 3y ago
  Right. I didn't realize it was that sort of reflection, see my edit. I don't know if their approach is the right one. I think the visitor pattern is a bit limited in usefulness (where it fits nicely for serde, it'll fall flat for other more exotic use cases I think. But I've not thought about it for more than about 5 minutes and haven't considered any other possible alternatives - they have.) However, I agree with them in that the current song and dance with syn being the prevailing defacto crate most of our macros are built on is a bit absurd, especially since they refuse to open up proc_macro internals for use by the public. I can certainly see both sides' points but the net effect is that, right now, the macro business yields subpar error handling and feels very much hacked on rather than being a natural part of the language like most other things in Rust seem to.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I don't get it at all. Why would this would be inappropriate to cover in a keynote. Whether or not it ends up in the language, it's interesting material. It seems like it may be a case of people taking themselves too seriously; "we can't have that topic in our precious keynote!". Nobody cares!
- deleted 3y ago
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- ahahahahah 3y ago
  I think it would be totally reasonable for a core member to say something like, "I'm uncomfortable with a keynote about this compile time reflection from Person1. I think it could look like we're endorsing it more than we are prepared for." That's exactly how I might think and talk about some extensive complex proposal from some outsider for a problem that I have some ideas on how we might want to solve. All the people upset about the keynote changes describe it in such like exaggerated form, that to me it's hard to just believe that they are the reasonable ones here.
psychphysic 3y ago
> The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins to fester. https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/23/rust_moderation_team_quits/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/23/rust_moderation_team_... There seems be something rotten at Rust and I've no idea what but anyone who gets a close look at Rust leadership seems to sprint away. It doesn't seem to be a matter of stamping something out it'll be an entire overhaul.
- Ygg2 3y ago
  From Rust team discussion at Reddit, it's not that anyone sprints away, the answer is that no one has the time to balance volunteering for Rust, working on code, reviewing, doing technical review, and then on top of that moderation and doing diplomatic stuff. Essentially no-one wants to do diplomatic stuff, so it falls to only person that likes doing that stuff (which isn't a good thing). Which can leads to episodes like this.
  - psychphysic 3y ago
    Perhaps, I've not followed closely but I know the subreddit is heavily moderated from overflow in to other media occasionally. Here is another independent person blowing the whistle on rust culture. https://hackmd.io/@XAMPPRocky/r1HT-Z6_t https://hackmd.io/@XAMPPRocky/r1HT-Z6_t How many times will this happen before people take it seriously? I'm fully prepared for some horrendous revelations in the future. And we'll all claim to have known nothing and seen no signs :)
    - ssokolow 3y ago
      An important distinction on their moderation style: --- It's not censorship, it's lack of resources. We're volunteers. When it's too much work to moderate a thread, we just nuke it from orbit. -- matthieum @ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13tsmht/jt_why_i_left_rust/jlxn9y2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13tsmht/jt_why_i_left...
      - ilyt 3y ago
mananaysiempre 3y ago
> They're asked to speak at RustConf after a leadership vote. > They've also written an article about reflection in Rust[...] > Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint [...]. As I understand their own words (your link), they wrote the article, were invited to talk, and decided to talk about the content of the article and related things (because that’s what they had been working on recently and you generally give talks about things you work on). Not making a value judgment, just want to point out the connection is less indirect than your comment implies.
- junon 3y ago
  Yes you're right, thank you :)
zozbot234 3y ago
Compile-time reflection is great in principle. It gets us quite close to the aim of compile-time dependent types, which would be a great feature for Rust and bring it close to parity with newer languages such as Zig, as well as lay the groundwork for further important developments such as proof-carrying code. It would be quite important to know why this Rust team member felt "uncomfortable" with the technical contents of this talk which were clearly described by the author as highly speculative, and thus inherently open to discussion.
brokenkebaby 3y ago
>Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their demographic? Claim of "feeling uncomfortable" was invented to be a tool of political fighting which allows to declare something, or somebody as unacceptable, completely avoiding debates. As it's becoming generally normalized, it's absolutely logical that it spills into other fields of human interaction. It's simple, and efficient, so why not?
- harpiaharpyja 3y ago
  > As it's becoming generally normalized, it's absolutely logical that it spills into other fields of human interaction. It's simple, and efficient, so why not? Is this sarcasm? I think it's pretty obvious why not. Broken communication, poor decisions, and the obvious fallout.
  - kyleee 3y ago
    Not sarcasm I think you just didn’t understand; they are not asking for reasons why it would be bad for this behavior to spread, but rather asking what’s stopping it? And it sounds like a rhetorical question as posed
- LouisSayers 3y ago
  This is like a modern day version of "they're a witch!", with the towns people rallying behind to burn them at the stake.
  - hamburglar 3y ago
    The corresponding magic phrase in liberal US school systems has become “equity issue.” I’m a pretty progressive guy but the number of times I’ve seen people “win” debates by declaring that their opponent’s ideas cause an “equity issue” with absolutely no rationale is unreal. And it can be applied no matter what position you’d like to support. Online work is an equity issue because poor kids don’t have computers. Giving all kids free laptops is an equity issue because poor kids don’t have professional parents who know how to help them use them. You can’t win. And, related to the OP, I believe one reason this ends up being used as a weapon is that it’s so arbitrary, you can never predict when or how it might be sprung on you, so it behooves you to go on the offense and invent the equity issues, vague “discomfort”, and declare others witches in the interest of self-preservation.
amelius 3y ago
Looks like the Rust community could use some reflection ;)
- cookieperson 3y ago
  [flagged]
- Viliam1234 3y ago
  Perhaps the people feeling most uncomfortable about reflection are those who need it most.
numlock86 3y ago
[flagged]
nindalf 3y ago
Notable that this was published on Friday evening/Saturday morning. The Rust project/leadership committee/RustConf folks need to coordinate, come to a consensus, make some painful decisions and communicate that with a united voice. That’s not going to happen on a weekend because some folks might not be available. I agree with everything that the speaker and JT have said in their respective posts. This is unacceptable, it needs to be fixed and the person who was “uncomfortable” needs to be held accountable. But I think it’s worth waiting for a couple of working days before picking up our pitchforks. Let’s give folks the benefit of the doubt. Let’s not ask the Rust committee to “grow up” when they haven’t done anything yet and haven’t even had a chance to respond.
b112 3y ago
Come on, Rust committee. Let's grow up here, shall we Rust may, or may not, be the next best thing. However, the zealotry expressed by some rust pundits, is very off putting to me. One thing I have learned, is that zealotry is where moral compromise enters, it is where "for their own good" and "the ends justify the means" starts, followed by concepts such as "we need to force people to understand". Some rust pundits seem to be such zealots, injecting rust commentary into everything. Almost religious. Thus, I am not surprised by this. To speak ill of the holy relic, to utter dissent, drives zealots to mad excess!
- pdimitar 3y ago
  You are generalizing. This is a very isolated incident, and one that I as a Rust dev am baffled about. It seems poorly handled by all sides involved. Have in mind that 99.99% of Rust devs out there chose it on technical merits and couldn't care less about their internal infighting even if we were paid to care.
  - b112 3y ago
    You are generalizing No, my statements about zealots in the rust community, are not generalizations. Rust has more zealots, than every other language combined. Note, advocates are not the same as zealots.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      I'm skeptical. This incident in particular doesn't prove that Rust has more zealots. Every single Rust dev I've worked with is a normal programmer who prioritizes merit and rational process. If you're already unfriendly towards the Rust community then this incident will only deepen your bias. I urge you to not assess the community with this flawed thought process. Rust devs are like all others.
      - b112 3y ago
        This incident in particular doesn't prove that Rust has more zealots. At no point did I claim it did. If you're already unfriendly towards the Rust community Where did I state this? It seems you are touchy on this front. And it seems as if saying that the rust community has some zealots, upsets you. Most other dev languages don't even have "communities".
bybybyby 3y ago
[flagged]
- lost_tourist 3y ago
  Everyone has an opinion. That's why we have committees, governments, etc, to have a voice. However, your or my opinion is no more valuable than anyone else's except to ourselves. I have definitely taken criticism of my code and architecture very hard, once I even got up after a meeting after my group voting against my architecture. I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into over about a month of late nights and plenty coffee. However, I accepted the decision (by team committee I guess you could say. I didn't cry that my feelings were hurt. I was actually vindicated about a year later when that project fell apart under the crush of being very brittle, whereas mine would not have. However, I didn't gloat, I helped replace their brittle infrastructure with the one I had stuffed away in a zip file and almost forgotten about. However, stuff like that is just work. I think that has to be kept separate from human rights like respect for your gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, etc . Those should never be negotiable and no one should be made to feel "less than" are a separate concern. No one should have to put up with that, but I don't think that's what this is about at all. We should all have a thin-skin and maniacal defense of those basic human rights. Not so much when it comes to a language architecture. Life isn't about "feeling comfortable" in all circumstances. So I don't think those situations are similar at all.
  - bybybyby 3y ago
    And that's the problem. You never stated the logical reason for why gender and race is different from technical opinions. If I say gender dysphoria is an actual disease and defect in human biology and that gender reassignment only causes more problems then it fixes. Then that is an aspect of the truth. It is uncomfortable, but it is the truth. Why should my comfort have extraordinary protection in this area but not in technical opinions? I'll tell you why. Because neither should have protection. Discomfort shouldn't be protected. Only truth should be protected. I agree with you in everything discomfort should have no protections at all, but the problem here is you're having a hard time separating truth and discomfort in the areas of gender and race. But you have an easy time of doing it with technical opinions. That is your bias.
losvedir 3y ago
> And then they pushed them out of the conference behind leadership's back? Effectively, but worth noting for clarity that they only explicitly wanted to demote the talk from keynote. But as this was disrespectful, the speaker withdrew entirely.
manojlds 3y ago
Rust leadership have a lot to reflect on.
wslh 3y ago
I see similar behaviors in multiple online "tech savvy" communities. I tend to minimize the behavior to "they don't know how to handle an online community and behave in a very childish way". It seems we need to recap what OSS communities have learnt from decades.
jmyeet 3y ago
I'm reminded of Sayre's Law [1]: > Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low. Conference speakers is the definition of low stakes rife for pointless politicking. I honestly don't understand why the Rust compiler reflection tech talk was the slightest bit controversial. Even if no one is in favor of the proposal, it can still be an interesting thought experiment. Such issues may expose design issues. I agree with other commenters: anyone who is prone to playing politics with these low stakes issues needs to be pruned before they do real damage. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law
analogdreams 3y ago
natural extension of the woke/SJW nonsense. it will ultimately be the downfall of all OOS as people refuse to contribute/engage.
thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
>> The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins to fester. This is incredibly stupid behavior coming from what is being regarded as the next C++. >> Come on, Rust committee. Let's grow up here, shall we? It is too much power held by one group with too little accountability. More transparency is needed and more people from different organizations need to be involved. The fact that JT and the rest of us have to guess what really happened speaks volumes.
- dralley 3y ago
  It seems like the problem here is not even power of one group, but an individual doing an end run around the group.
  - thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
    >> It seems like the problem here is not even power of one group, but an individual doing an end run around the group. If so where is the transparency and accountability? Who was the individual? Why did they do what they did? If they do not represent project leadership, what will be done to fix this situation and prevent similar problems in the future? If they do represent project leadership, why weren't the changes and the reasons for the changes communicated better? A group of people mysteriously calling the shots in a closed room ultimately alienates the community and will stifle the long-term success of Rust.
    - generalpf 3y ago
      This person claims to be one of the individuals. https://pony.social/@sgrif@hachyderm.io/110447363468527189 https://pony.social/@sgrif@hachyderm.io/110447363468527189
    - dralley 3y ago
      Keep in mind that this whole thing started only about 36 hours ago. The internet conditions us to expect immediacy but this is all being done by volunteers on a holiday weekend, not a corporate PR department. I doubt the full teams involved will even be able to convene until Tuesday at least due to people on vacation. The accountability must happen and shouldn't be ignored, and I hope that various parties step forward to handle the mea culpa responsibly, but it's a bit early to grab the pitchforks, light the torches and march to the town square.
PoignardAzur 3y ago
> And then they pushed them out of the conference behind leadership's back? My understanding is that they (unilaterally) changed the talk's status from "keynote" to "regular talk", so they didn't quite push them out.
GuB-42 3y ago
While the language itself looks fine, I find the community a bit off-putting. First the thing with the code of conduct and all that, that I think distracts from the technical questions. It is important to be inclusive, as not to exclude people who could make valuable contributions, but if it becomes a topic of argument, then it becomes counter-productive. The second is the "rewrite it in Rust" crowd. I mean, no language is strictly better than another, it is all about tradeoffs. And rewriting a piece of software is not a decision to be taken lightly, see the "second system" anti-pattern. Rust has a place, maybe an important place, but I dislike fanaticism in general. The first point seems to have died off a little, and most discussions I see about Rust now seem to be technical, which is a good point. And I expect the second point to become a bit less prevalent as the language becomes mainstream and stories about people being miserable with Rust will inevitable surface. I don't think a language can be considered mature unless (some) people start hating using it.
- quotemstr 3y ago
  > While the language itself looks fine, I find the community a bit off-putting I have wondered now and then about how the Rust community culture might have damaged the language. In particular, I've said for many years that Rust botched error handling by eschewing exceptions yet including panics anyway, leading to a doubling of the error handling infrastructure (you pay for both error objects and stack unwinding support) and the inability of the standard library to survive allocation failure. It's an unfixable mistake, although the language designers have walked it back the best they can over the years, culminating in the current yeet proposal. Did Rust end up with both errors and panics because the community suppressed robust debate in the name of kindness and "safety"? Was the current approach a way to try to make everyone happy without conflict?
  - fwungy 3y ago
    As someone learning the language on production code I must agree that the error handling of Rust is terrible. Exceptions have never been a struggle point for me with other languages, but Rust error handling has literally given me headaches.
  - 3y ago
phpisthebest 3y ago
From the very beginning Rust was a political movement first, and a programming lang second. People seemed to have forgotten some of the early events from years ago when Rust was less popular. >>The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins to fester It has been there since the formation of the Lang, it is built into the DNA of the community. people that want technical merits to shine are the ones trying to change the community, not the other way round
- jrsj 3y ago
  And of course now that the people who wrote the CoC aren’t even following it we know that was really just a political tool
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - nullc 3y ago
      You don't normally needs a CoC to do the right thing, you need a CoC to justify doing the wrong thing.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - moomoo11 3y ago
    Everyone knows those are a childish tool used by bully nerds to wield power over others with this fake better than thou outlook on things that have nothing to do with programming or the computer. Like seriously I’m on a computer remotely discussing tech with people. I don’t personally care about who the other person is or does beyond their contribution to the repo and topic at hand. Beyond that, to weaponize decent behavior as a tool to do additional things, is not right. Sorry but when can we stop taking “developer advocate” type people seriously? They’re usually not devs or technical (at least in my own experience), and add all these side things which make no sense except in political organizations.
lost_tourist 3y ago
It's a shame that people are so thin-skinned they can't handle a difference of opinion on architecture. All I can say is wow. I feel they really need to use this as a moment of reflection. Is democracy dead? No committee will ever work if there has to be unanimous decisions on everything, unless you are living in an echo chamber.
softwaredoug 3y ago
Bad play Rust Declining a keynote because you disagree with it just works to highlight a lack of welcoming of diverse viewpoints in the community. Having a perspective highlighted you disagree with would actually show how open and welcoming the community is. This assumes of course the person was not making promises on behalf of the project to the community (who knows maybe they were?) but rather expressing their own opinions. Having a keynote is not some endorsement that this is the future direction of the project.
Varqu 3y ago
Never understood the childish fighting between languages, libraries within a language or as here different viewpoints. I mean, it's good to discuss different viewpoints, but programming choices is a hill I would never want to die on.
azangru 3y ago
> And then they pushed them out of the conference behind leadership's back? If I understand the story correctly, they downgraded the talk from a keynote to a regular talk. Which — if, like you say, was about purely technical thing that was pretty widely disliked conceptually — maybe shouldn't have been a keynote in the first place?
lolinder 3y ago
Some important context that's missing from your summary (and something I wasn't aware of until I dug into it more) is that the author was a member of Rust's core team [0] and the interim leadership group responsible for designing Rust's new governance structure [1]. They were the one who posted the new RFC on project governance [2]. This isn't a case of one person who was powerless to stop what happened and felt that making a big stink on the internet was the only solution—this was one of the primary decision makers shaping the future of Rust. I think there's a lot of context missing from this blog post about why they felt the need to resign rather than use their position to improve decision making. For now I'm withholding judgement on who will turn out to be in the right. [0] Still listed here: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core [1] https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2022/10/06/governance-update.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2022/10/06/governance... [2] https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3392 https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3392
- draw_down 3y ago
  [dead]
coldtea 3y ago
>Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their demographic? As if their personal beliefs or demographic would be more acceptable things to have concerns over, in a technical conference setting? This shit has just become too normalized and acceptable in contexts where it shouldn't be. You're not marrying them or making them friends.
atoav 3y ago
I may misunderstand something here, but I'd assume the organizers of a conference are in charge of deciding which talk goes where. Why is there an expectation for this to be different here? If I was askwd to give a keynote somewhere and upon presentation of my topic the organization decides another talk is better suited I would trust them that they wouldn't do that lightly.
nickysielicki 3y ago
Rust is not the next C++. C++ is the next C++, rust is something else.
gymbeaux 3y ago
I feel like I’ve observed similar “childish” behavior from the Go community more so, and to some degree in even the C# community where people were upset at Microsoft’s probably-malicious decisions (like removing Blazor debugging from non-Windows environments). Some of their proposed and implemented C# changes in the last couple of years seem really asinine too, not just to me but hundreds+ who voice their disappointment on Github. This is a very egotistical industry and this is one of many ways that manifests.
zeteo 3y ago
>Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their demographic? >And then they pushed them out of the conference behind leadership's back? >Did I miss something? This is indeed really childish behavior. You're jumping to a lot of conclusions here. The article was written by someone who is clearly upset about the incident and doesn't go into a lot of detail about the motivation of the other party ("as best as I understand it, because of the content of JeanHeyd's blog post on reflection"). Would the "uncomfortable" team members agree that it was a matter of "comfort" that was caused primarily by the topic of a blog post? Are any relevant facts, by any chance, left out of the article? We don't know. What we do know is that it didn't happen behind the leadership's back: "This discomfort was brought to the interim leadership group [...] A person in Rust leadership then [...] reached directly to RustConf leadership [...] RustConf leadership decided to wait a week [...] giving Rust leadership time to change its mind."
Animats 3y ago
> They've also written an article about reflection in Rust - a purely technical thing that is already pretty widely disliked conceptually. Maybe that really is the problem. Too much reflection leads to clever, but hard to debug hacks. Look what happened with C++ templates and, further back, LISP macros. That way lies code that's unusually hard to read and maintain. Rust probably shouldn't go that way. Do you want to have a keynote address on an idea of that type? It's more of a subject for a proposal talk.
- shash 3y ago
  C++ templates are not reflection; either compile time or runtime. There is a form of reflection, but that's RTTI, which is a totally different ballgame.
  - Animats 3y ago
    True, but both come under the heading of adding a level of indirection at compile time. It's a tough language decision on how far to go in that direction. Go, pre-template, was minimalist on this. C++ probably went too far. Where to stop is a good question.
- lolinder 3y ago
  The would-have-been speaker's blog post addresses this question specifically. He apparently pushed back many times on the idea of giving the keynote on his work and was assured that the Rust organization was aware of the topic and wanted him to go ahead [0]. Then they walked back on that. That's what I think most people find terrible about Rust leadership's handling of the situation. It's not that this specific keynote was super important, it's that the team let the speaker spend a few weeks preparing a keynote and then pulled the rug on him. [0] https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023 https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
commandlinefan 3y ago
> Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint FTA: > It was JeanHeyd who called Rust out for having no Black representation The implication here is that this person was uninvited for pushing a SJW agenda that the author agrees with but that rust’s “shadowy” leadership doesn’t.

by junon 3y ago

CRConrad 3y ago

From your link: > More specifically, I was nominated by “Rust Project Leadership” (to be exact with the wording) to give a keynote That wording is misleading. If what this “Rust Project Leadership” committee says doesn't stick but can be overridden by someone (or someones) else, then they're not actually leading anything; the overrider is. Have these people realised yet that they're just a façade?

indy 3y ago

Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling uncomfortable" Rust the language is pretty good but the community around it has become really off-putting. The thick veneer of empathy and compassion quickly devolves into "idiot compassion" and emotional blackmail. Even the linked post contains the following: "I left because when I felt JeanHeyd's pain and disappointment at being mistreated and betrayed, my heart broke. I wept because of the cruelty. But I also wept because I helped create the system that could do this to someone."

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
junon 3y ago
Agreed, that part was a little ehh for me too. And I think a resignation is a complete overreaction, but hey, I'm not close to any of these people so what do I know. The original behavior is childish. And the quoted paragraph I have there about it revealing some internal mechanics of the leadership group is an important observation, one I'm much more concerned with. It's revealing that Rust's open operation may not be so open after all. That can quickly cause a lot of problems if not quelled.
wokwokwok 3y ago
Is it bad of me to say I really just don’t care? If he did the talk. If he did it as a keynote. If someone else is “leaving rust” because of it? It all seems so fabulously irrelevant, I really struggle to understand why: 1) I should care (I don’t, currently) 2) People are coming out of the woodwork to criticise the rust team / foundation whatever when they’re not involved. 3) Why people having emotions (eg. The person above, who does care) is somehow a bad thing? 4) Any kind of positive out come is going to come of this. I really struggle to view doing anything else as not hostile to the rust project or having an agenda (“stop rust being woke!!”) which is non technical, and unhelpful. Rust is great. It’s not perfect. The people who build it are not perfect, the foundation is not perfect. People are not perfect. It’s ok. Call out problematic behaviour, don’t obsess over it.
- junon 3y ago
  From my understanding the Rust team was involved and they sidestepped democratic processes put in place to make sure the Rust foundation doesn't kill itself with unchecked mismanagement essentially. The point is more that this sort of unilateral decision should never have been possible to make in the first place. It should have been discussed and voted on before the talk was downgraded. Perhaps that specific incident is inconsequential, sure. I think even the speaker agrees so. But the fact that this lapse in process could happen within the Rust foundation at all is a red flag for other, more language-specific dangers.

taosx 3y ago

I don't get what's wrong with his post about reflection, why would someone be uncomfortable with a tool? https://soasis.org/posts/a-mirror-for-rust-a-plan-for-generic-compile-time-introspection-in-rust/ https://soasis.org/posts/a-mirror-for-rust-a-plan-for-generi... - Is this the post ?

junon 3y ago
Right. I didn't realize it was that sort of reflection, see my edit. I don't know if their approach is the right one. I think the visitor pattern is a bit limited in usefulness (where it fits nicely for serde, it'll fall flat for other more exotic use cases I think. But I've not thought about it for more than about 5 minutes and haven't considered any other possible alternatives - they have.) However, I agree with them in that the current song and dance with syn being the prevailing defacto crate most of our macros are built on is a bit absurd, especially since they refuse to open up proc_macro internals for use by the public. I can certainly see both sides' points but the net effect is that, right now, the macro business yields subpar error handling and feels very much hacked on rather than being a natural part of the language like most other things in Rust seem to.
sanderjd 3y ago
I don't get it at all. Why would this would be inappropriate to cover in a keynote. Whether or not it ends up in the language, it's interesting material. It seems like it may be a case of people taking themselves too seriously; "we can't have that topic in our precious keynote!". Nobody cares!
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ahahahahah 3y ago
I think it would be totally reasonable for a core member to say something like, "I'm uncomfortable with a keynote about this compile time reflection from Person1. I think it could look like we're endorsing it more than we are prepared for." That's exactly how I might think and talk about some extensive complex proposal from some outsider for a problem that I have some ideas on how we might want to solve. All the people upset about the keynote changes describe it in such like exaggerated form, that to me it's hard to just believe that they are the reasonable ones here.

psychphysic 3y ago

> The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins to fester. https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/23/rust_moderation_team_quits/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/23/rust_moderation_team_... There seems be something rotten at Rust and I've no idea what but anyone who gets a close look at Rust leadership seems to sprint away. It doesn't seem to be a matter of stamping something out it'll be an entire overhaul.

Ygg2 3y ago
From Rust team discussion at Reddit, it's not that anyone sprints away, the answer is that no one has the time to balance volunteering for Rust, working on code, reviewing, doing technical review, and then on top of that moderation and doing diplomatic stuff. Essentially no-one wants to do diplomatic stuff, so it falls to only person that likes doing that stuff (which isn't a good thing). Which can leads to episodes like this.
- psychphysic 3y ago
  Perhaps, I've not followed closely but I know the subreddit is heavily moderated from overflow in to other media occasionally. Here is another independent person blowing the whistle on rust culture. https://hackmd.io/@XAMPPRocky/r1HT-Z6_t https://hackmd.io/@XAMPPRocky/r1HT-Z6_t How many times will this happen before people take it seriously? I'm fully prepared for some horrendous revelations in the future. And we'll all claim to have known nothing and seen no signs :)
  - ssokolow 3y ago
    An important distinction on their moderation style: --- It's not censorship, it's lack of resources. We're volunteers. When it's too much work to moderate a thread, we just nuke it from orbit. -- matthieum @ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13tsmht/jt_why_i_left_rust/jlxn9y2/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13tsmht/jt_why_i_left...
    - ilyt 3y ago

mananaysiempre 3y ago

> They're asked to speak at RustConf after a leadership vote. > They've also written an article about reflection in Rust[...] > Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint [...]. As I understand their own words (your link), they wrote the article, were invited to talk, and decided to talk about the content of the article and related things (because that’s what they had been working on recently and you generally give talks about things you work on). Not making a value judgment, just want to point out the connection is less indirect than your comment implies.

junon 3y ago
Yes you're right, thank you :)

zozbot234 3y ago

Compile-time reflection is great in principle. It gets us quite close to the aim of compile-time dependent types, which would be a great feature for Rust and bring it close to parity with newer languages such as Zig, as well as lay the groundwork for further important developments such as proof-carrying code. It would be quite important to know why this Rust team member felt "uncomfortable" with the technical contents of this talk which were clearly described by the author as highly speculative, and thus inherently open to discussion.

brokenkebaby 3y ago

>Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their demographic? Claim of "feeling uncomfortable" was invented to be a tool of political fighting which allows to declare something, or somebody as unacceptable, completely avoiding debates. As it's becoming generally normalized, it's absolutely logical that it spills into other fields of human interaction. It's simple, and efficient, so why not?

harpiaharpyja 3y ago
> As it's becoming generally normalized, it's absolutely logical that it spills into other fields of human interaction. It's simple, and efficient, so why not? Is this sarcasm? I think it's pretty obvious why not. Broken communication, poor decisions, and the obvious fallout.
- kyleee 3y ago
  Not sarcasm I think you just didn’t understand; they are not asking for reasons why it would be bad for this behavior to spread, but rather asking what’s stopping it? And it sounds like a rhetorical question as posed
LouisSayers 3y ago
This is like a modern day version of "they're a witch!", with the towns people rallying behind to burn them at the stake.
- hamburglar 3y ago
  The corresponding magic phrase in liberal US school systems has become “equity issue.” I’m a pretty progressive guy but the number of times I’ve seen people “win” debates by declaring that their opponent’s ideas cause an “equity issue” with absolutely no rationale is unreal. And it can be applied no matter what position you’d like to support. Online work is an equity issue because poor kids don’t have computers. Giving all kids free laptops is an equity issue because poor kids don’t have professional parents who know how to help them use them. You can’t win. And, related to the OP, I believe one reason this ends up being used as a weapon is that it’s so arbitrary, you can never predict when or how it might be sprung on you, so it behooves you to go on the offense and invent the equity issues, vague “discomfort”, and declare others witches in the interest of self-preservation.

amelius 3y ago

Looks like the Rust community could use some reflection ;)

cookieperson 3y ago
[flagged]
Viliam1234 3y ago
Perhaps the people feeling most uncomfortable about reflection are those who need it most.

numlock86 3y ago

[flagged]

nindalf 3y ago

Notable that this was published on Friday evening/Saturday morning. The Rust project/leadership committee/RustConf folks need to coordinate, come to a consensus, make some painful decisions and communicate that with a united voice. That’s not going to happen on a weekend because some folks might not be available. I agree with everything that the speaker and JT have said in their respective posts. This is unacceptable, it needs to be fixed and the person who was “uncomfortable” needs to be held accountable. But I think it’s worth waiting for a couple of working days before picking up our pitchforks. Let’s give folks the benefit of the doubt. Let’s not ask the Rust committee to “grow up” when they haven’t done anything yet and haven’t even had a chance to respond.

b112 3y ago

Come on, Rust committee. Let's grow up here, shall we Rust may, or may not, be the next best thing. However, the zealotry expressed by some rust pundits, is very off putting to me. One thing I have learned, is that zealotry is where moral compromise enters, it is where "for their own good" and "the ends justify the means" starts, followed by concepts such as "we need to force people to understand". Some rust pundits seem to be such zealots, injecting rust commentary into everything. Almost religious. Thus, I am not surprised by this. To speak ill of the holy relic, to utter dissent, drives zealots to mad excess!

pdimitar 3y ago
You are generalizing. This is a very isolated incident, and one that I as a Rust dev am baffled about. It seems poorly handled by all sides involved. Have in mind that 99.99% of Rust devs out there chose it on technical merits and couldn't care less about their internal infighting even if we were paid to care.
- b112 3y ago
  You are generalizing No, my statements about zealots in the rust community, are not generalizations. Rust has more zealots, than every other language combined. Note, advocates are not the same as zealots.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    I'm skeptical. This incident in particular doesn't prove that Rust has more zealots. Every single Rust dev I've worked with is a normal programmer who prioritizes merit and rational process. If you're already unfriendly towards the Rust community then this incident will only deepen your bias. I urge you to not assess the community with this flawed thought process. Rust devs are like all others.
    - b112 3y ago
      This incident in particular doesn't prove that Rust has more zealots. At no point did I claim it did. If you're already unfriendly towards the Rust community Where did I state this? It seems you are touchy on this front. And it seems as if saying that the rust community has some zealots, upsets you. Most other dev languages don't even have "communities".

bybybyby 3y ago

[flagged]

lost_tourist 3y ago
Everyone has an opinion. That's why we have committees, governments, etc, to have a voice. However, your or my opinion is no more valuable than anyone else's except to ourselves. I have definitely taken criticism of my code and architecture very hard, once I even got up after a meeting after my group voting against my architecture. I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into over about a month of late nights and plenty coffee. However, I accepted the decision (by team committee I guess you could say. I didn't cry that my feelings were hurt. I was actually vindicated about a year later when that project fell apart under the crush of being very brittle, whereas mine would not have. However, I didn't gloat, I helped replace their brittle infrastructure with the one I had stuffed away in a zip file and almost forgotten about. However, stuff like that is just work. I think that has to be kept separate from human rights like respect for your gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, etc . Those should never be negotiable and no one should be made to feel "less than" are a separate concern. No one should have to put up with that, but I don't think that's what this is about at all. We should all have a thin-skin and maniacal defense of those basic human rights. Not so much when it comes to a language architecture. Life isn't about "feeling comfortable" in all circumstances. So I don't think those situations are similar at all.
- bybybyby 3y ago
  And that's the problem. You never stated the logical reason for why gender and race is different from technical opinions. If I say gender dysphoria is an actual disease and defect in human biology and that gender reassignment only causes more problems then it fixes. Then that is an aspect of the truth. It is uncomfortable, but it is the truth. Why should my comfort have extraordinary protection in this area but not in technical opinions? I'll tell you why. Because neither should have protection. Discomfort shouldn't be protected. Only truth should be protected. I agree with you in everything discomfort should have no protections at all, but the problem here is you're having a hard time separating truth and discomfort in the areas of gender and race. But you have an easy time of doing it with technical opinions. That is your bias.

losvedir 3y ago

> And then they pushed them out of the conference behind leadership's back? Effectively, but worth noting for clarity that they only explicitly wanted to demote the talk from keynote. But as this was disrespectful, the speaker withdrew entirely.

manojlds 3y ago

Rust leadership have a lot to reflect on.

wslh 3y ago

I see similar behaviors in multiple online "tech savvy" communities. I tend to minimize the behavior to "they don't know how to handle an online community and behave in a very childish way". It seems we need to recap what OSS communities have learnt from decades.

jmyeet 3y ago

I'm reminded of Sayre's Law [1]: > Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low. Conference speakers is the definition of low stakes rife for pointless politicking. I honestly don't understand why the Rust compiler reflection tech talk was the slightest bit controversial. Even if no one is in favor of the proposal, it can still be an interesting thought experiment. Such issues may expose design issues. I agree with other commenters: anyone who is prone to playing politics with these low stakes issues needs to be pruned before they do real damage. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

analogdreams 3y ago

natural extension of the woke/SJW nonsense. it will ultimately be the downfall of all OOS as people refuse to contribute/engage.

thesuperbigfrog 3y ago

>> The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins to fester. This is incredibly stupid behavior coming from what is being regarded as the next C++. >> Come on, Rust committee. Let's grow up here, shall we? It is too much power held by one group with too little accountability. More transparency is needed and more people from different organizations need to be involved. The fact that JT and the rest of us have to guess what really happened speaks volumes.

dralley 3y ago
It seems like the problem here is not even power of one group, but an individual doing an end run around the group.
- thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
  >> It seems like the problem here is not even power of one group, but an individual doing an end run around the group. If so where is the transparency and accountability? Who was the individual? Why did they do what they did? If they do not represent project leadership, what will be done to fix this situation and prevent similar problems in the future? If they do represent project leadership, why weren't the changes and the reasons for the changes communicated better? A group of people mysteriously calling the shots in a closed room ultimately alienates the community and will stifle the long-term success of Rust.
  - generalpf 3y ago
    This person claims to be one of the individuals. https://pony.social/@sgrif@hachyderm.io/110447363468527189 https://pony.social/@sgrif@hachyderm.io/110447363468527189
  - dralley 3y ago
    Keep in mind that this whole thing started only about 36 hours ago. The internet conditions us to expect immediacy but this is all being done by volunteers on a holiday weekend, not a corporate PR department. I doubt the full teams involved will even be able to convene until Tuesday at least due to people on vacation. The accountability must happen and shouldn't be ignored, and I hope that various parties step forward to handle the mea culpa responsibly, but it's a bit early to grab the pitchforks, light the torches and march to the town square.

PoignardAzur 3y ago

> And then they pushed them out of the conference behind leadership's back? My understanding is that they (unilaterally) changed the talk's status from "keynote" to "regular talk", so they didn't quite push them out.

GuB-42 3y ago

While the language itself looks fine, I find the community a bit off-putting. First the thing with the code of conduct and all that, that I think distracts from the technical questions. It is important to be inclusive, as not to exclude people who could make valuable contributions, but if it becomes a topic of argument, then it becomes counter-productive. The second is the "rewrite it in Rust" crowd. I mean, no language is strictly better than another, it is all about tradeoffs. And rewriting a piece of software is not a decision to be taken lightly, see the "second system" anti-pattern. Rust has a place, maybe an important place, but I dislike fanaticism in general. The first point seems to have died off a little, and most discussions I see about Rust now seem to be technical, which is a good point. And I expect the second point to become a bit less prevalent as the language becomes mainstream and stories about people being miserable with Rust will inevitable surface. I don't think a language can be considered mature unless (some) people start hating using it.

quotemstr 3y ago
> While the language itself looks fine, I find the community a bit off-putting I have wondered now and then about how the Rust community culture might have damaged the language. In particular, I've said for many years that Rust botched error handling by eschewing exceptions yet including panics anyway, leading to a doubling of the error handling infrastructure (you pay for both error objects and stack unwinding support) and the inability of the standard library to survive allocation failure. It's an unfixable mistake, although the language designers have walked it back the best they can over the years, culminating in the current yeet proposal. Did Rust end up with both errors and panics because the community suppressed robust debate in the name of kindness and "safety"? Was the current approach a way to try to make everyone happy without conflict?
- fwungy 3y ago
  As someone learning the language on production code I must agree that the error handling of Rust is terrible. Exceptions have never been a struggle point for me with other languages, but Rust error handling has literally given me headaches.
- 3y ago

phpisthebest 3y ago

From the very beginning Rust was a political movement first, and a programming lang second. People seemed to have forgotten some of the early events from years ago when Rust was less popular. >>The Rust project needs to stamp this out before it begins to fester It has been there since the formation of the Lang, it is built into the DNA of the community. people that want technical merits to shine are the ones trying to change the community, not the other way round

jrsj 3y ago
And of course now that the people who wrote the CoC aren’t even following it we know that was really just a political tool
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - nullc 3y ago
    You don't normally needs a CoC to do the right thing, you need a CoC to justify doing the wrong thing.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- moomoo11 3y ago
  Everyone knows those are a childish tool used by bully nerds to wield power over others with this fake better than thou outlook on things that have nothing to do with programming or the computer. Like seriously I’m on a computer remotely discussing tech with people. I don’t personally care about who the other person is or does beyond their contribution to the repo and topic at hand. Beyond that, to weaponize decent behavior as a tool to do additional things, is not right. Sorry but when can we stop taking “developer advocate” type people seriously? They’re usually not devs or technical (at least in my own experience), and add all these side things which make no sense except in political organizations.

lost_tourist 3y ago

It's a shame that people are so thin-skinned they can't handle a difference of opinion on architecture. All I can say is wow. I feel they really need to use this as a moment of reflection. Is democracy dead? No committee will ever work if there has to be unanimous decisions on everything, unless you are living in an echo chamber.

softwaredoug 3y ago

Bad play Rust Declining a keynote because you disagree with it just works to highlight a lack of welcoming of diverse viewpoints in the community. Having a perspective highlighted you disagree with would actually show how open and welcoming the community is. This assumes of course the person was not making promises on behalf of the project to the community (who knows maybe they were?) but rather expressing their own opinions. Having a keynote is not some endorsement that this is the future direction of the project.

Varqu 3y ago

Never understood the childish fighting between languages, libraries within a language or as here different viewpoints. I mean, it's good to discuss different viewpoints, but programming choices is a hill I would never want to die on.

azangru 3y ago

> And then they pushed them out of the conference behind leadership's back? If I understand the story correctly, they downgraded the talk from a keynote to a regular talk. Which — if, like you say, was about purely technical thing that was pretty widely disliked conceptually — maybe shouldn't have been a keynote in the first place?

lolinder 3y ago

Some important context that's missing from your summary (and something I wasn't aware of until I dug into it more) is that the author was a member of Rust's core team [0] and the interim leadership group responsible for designing Rust's new governance structure [1]. They were the one who posted the new RFC on project governance [2]. This isn't a case of one person who was powerless to stop what happened and felt that making a big stink on the internet was the only solution—this was one of the primary decision makers shaping the future of Rust. I think there's a lot of context missing from this blog post about why they felt the need to resign rather than use their position to improve decision making. For now I'm withholding judgement on who will turn out to be in the right. [0] Still listed here: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core [1] https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2022/10/06/governance-update.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2022/10/06/governance... [2] https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3392 https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3392

draw_down 3y ago
[dead]

coldtea 3y ago

>Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their demographic? As if their personal beliefs or demographic would be more acceptable things to have concerns over, in a technical conference setting? This shit has just become too normalized and acceptable in contexts where it shouldn't be. You're not marrying them or making them friends.

atoav 3y ago

I may misunderstand something here, but I'd assume the organizers of a conference are in charge of deciding which talk goes where. Why is there an expectation for this to be different here? If I was askwd to give a keynote somewhere and upon presentation of my topic the organization decides another talk is better suited I would trust them that they wouldn't do that lightly.

nickysielicki 3y ago

Rust is not the next C++. C++ is the next C++, rust is something else.

gymbeaux 3y ago

I feel like I’ve observed similar “childish” behavior from the Go community more so, and to some degree in even the C# community where people were upset at Microsoft’s probably-malicious decisions (like removing Blazor debugging from non-Windows environments). Some of their proposed and implemented C# changes in the last couple of years seem really asinine too, not just to me but hundreds+ who voice their disappointment on Github. This is a very egotistical industry and this is one of many ways that manifests.

zeteo 3y ago

>Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint - not their behavior, personal beliefs, or even their demographic? >And then they pushed them out of the conference behind leadership's back? >Did I miss something? This is indeed really childish behavior. You're jumping to a lot of conclusions here. The article was written by someone who is clearly upset about the incident and doesn't go into a lot of detail about the motivation of the other party ("as best as I understand it, because of the content of JeanHeyd's blog post on reflection"). Would the "uncomfortable" team members agree that it was a matter of "comfort" that was caused primarily by the topic of a blog post? Are any relevant facts, by any chance, left out of the article? We don't know. What we do know is that it didn't happen behind the leadership's back: "This discomfort was brought to the interim leadership group [...] A person in Rust leadership then [...] reached directly to RustConf leadership [...] RustConf leadership decided to wait a week [...] giving Rust leadership time to change its mind."

Animats 3y ago

> They've also written an article about reflection in Rust - a purely technical thing that is already pretty widely disliked conceptually. Maybe that really is the problem. Too much reflection leads to clever, but hard to debug hacks. Look what happened with C++ templates and, further back, LISP macros. That way lies code that's unusually hard to read and maintain. Rust probably shouldn't go that way. Do you want to have a keynote address on an idea of that type? It's more of a subject for a proposal talk.

shash 3y ago
C++ templates are not reflection; either compile time or runtime. There is a form of reflection, but that's RTTI, which is a totally different ballgame.
- Animats 3y ago
  True, but both come under the heading of adding a level of indirection at compile time. It's a tough language decision on how far to go in that direction. Go, pre-template, was minimalist on this. C++ probably went too far. Where to stop is a good question.
lolinder 3y ago
The would-have-been speaker's blog post addresses this question specifically. He apparently pushed back many times on the idea of giving the keynote on his work and was assured that the Rust organization was aware of the topic and wanted him to go ahead [0]. Then they walked back on that. That's what I think most people find terrible about Rust leadership's handling of the situation. It's not that this specific keynote was super important, it's that the team let the speaker spend a few weeks preparing a keynote and then pulled the rug on him. [0] https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023 https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023

commandlinefan 3y ago

> Rust members were "uncomfortable" with this purely technical viewpoint FTA: > It was JeanHeyd who called Rust out for having no Black representation The implication here is that this person was uninvited for pushing a SJW agenda that the author agrees with but that rust’s “shadowy” leadership doesn’t.