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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.

by 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."

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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.
  - wokwokwok 3y ago
    How? Everything is done openly on https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs I mean, I hear you. I understand what you're saying, I just don't understand how you (or others) think this is related to the technical aspects of the language.
    - junon 3y ago
      Because the same people are involved, and they knowingly sidestepped these exact sorts of processes without care. It might not be important to you, but this seems like a red flag to many.
    - ReleaseCandidat 3y ago
      > Everything is done openly on https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs But the RFCs are written and reviewed by people. And they need to have the feeling that the work they do isn't useless because the one who actually decides is somebody else who hasn't been involved in the process at all until the very end. It's ok having somebody being able to veto stuff, but this must be known and communicated beforehand - "yes, that's ok for us, but $PERSON has the last word on this so we have to await his approval".
    - auggierose 3y ago
      If leadership acts so carelessly with regard to matters concerning a human being in such a shady and disrespecting manner, why would they act less careless with regard to technical matters? Will they just enforce their biased opinion, ignoring valid and generally accepted technical arguments? Rust leadership sounds a bit like the elite leadership of a communist state. I'd prefer an open dictatorship over that.
bjornsing 3y ago
> "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." I’m a bit hesitant to say this out loud, but… you can only cry over this “betrayal”, “mistreatment” and “cruelty” if you have lived a very protected life.
- Hendrikto 3y ago
  What are you saying? ”Suck it up.“?
  - WastingMyTime89 3y ago
    He is saying “be an actual professional and don’t bring a vocabulary pertaining to intimate discussions to the public sphere when what’s discussed is a technical conference.” It’s already barely acceptable in a purely American context. To me as a European, this is extremely off putting and culturally out of line which is a recurring problem with Rust.
    - zozbot234 3y ago
      It's a dog whistle. What the OP is actually saying is that he's extremely angry and pissed off that this was allowed to happen, and he's noping out for that eminently understandable reason. But if he said that in no uncertain terms (as a European very well might in similar circumstances!) he might fall afoul of the official Code of Conduct for being aggressive and threatening towards other contributors. Hence this weird talk about intimate "weeping" and "pain". Make no mistake, this is not some softy empath talk but quite the opposite!
      - naasking 3y ago
        > What the OP is actually saying is that he's extremely angry and pissed off that this was allowed to happen [...] But if he said that in no uncertain terms [...] he might fall afoul of the official Code of Conduct for being aggressive and threatening towards other contributors. So they need reverse psychology to express anger at injustice because of the Code of Conduct? What is this world we're building?
CoastalCoder 3y ago
I wonder if that quote was tongue-in-cheek. It reminds me of the reviews of the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt on Amazon [0]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Wolf-Short-Sleeve/dp/B002HJ377A https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Wolf-Short-Sleeve/dp/B...
glogla 3y ago
> Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling uncomfortable" I think it depends what you're uncomfortable with. I remember some drama about removing some speakers from security conferences a while back, because people were understandably uncomfortable with them being rapists. But being uncomfortable with ... talk about how compile time reflection might work in future versions of Rust? Huh? What? Also I do agree about the language. People are from different cultures and so on, yada yada, but to me the used language feels very overdramatized and childish.
lyu07282 3y ago
I thought "rust culture" came out of this sort of super SJW/woke culture of mozilla? Nothing against that sort of mindset in theory, but it sometimes leads to a certain irrational hypersensitive intolerant mob behavior and authoritarian/anti democratic tendencies. There was also the recent easily preventable drama [1] around the trademark guidelines some people left rust over. I don't really find any of this drama coming out of this culture very surprising. I write rust every day, I don't have to identify or interact with any sort of community around it, but I care about the future of it. I just hope it's already too big to fail at this point, because there is way more drama coming out of this community in the future, that's for certain. [1] https://github.com/blyxyas/no-rust-policy-change https://github.com/blyxyas/no-rust-policy-change
- gavaw 3y ago
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  - jackmott42 3y ago
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    - jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
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- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
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- kelipso 3y ago
  All this is painfully predictable if you remotely pay attention to their initial public facing culture, statements, etc lol.
- twic 3y ago
  Also, lots of people high up in Rust have a background in JavaScript, where drama is common, which I believe has helped normalise it as a mode of social interaction.
bradleyjg 3y ago
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. I wouldn’t want to work with someone that wrote this. I’m not sure which is worse—if it’s hyperbole or it isn’t.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  This is modern wokespeak for "what you did is unprofessional and I'm not sticking around for more." A lot of the emotional hyperbole in this blog post is essentially that - emotional vulnerability and sensitivity is valued in "hyper-woke" contexts, while words like "unprofessional" are seen as callous - and I kind of read it that way rather than literally.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    I still don't want to do them the favor of normalizing such dramatic language by accepting it. Just call it "unprofessional" if you truly feel that it was.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      Unfortunately, you have to write for your audience. The audience for this piece seems to want emotional melodrama combined with diffusion of responsibility.
- adave 3y ago
  Let us see you rewrite it given the community culture and guidelines. Can't write i left because of toxic pieces of shit people with zero empathy.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Not sure how much the empathy levels of someone -- not an objective metric -- should be used when making professional calls about speakers in a foundation but you do you. The underlying problem seems to be: sidestepping democratic processes. IMO that is what should be addressed first and foremost.
adam_arthur 3y ago
Was actually super surprised by that line. Was with the post until then. Yes, treat people with respect, but we also need people to have even a marginal resilience to adversity. The bar for being emotionally damaged seems to be getting lower and lower for people. If you can’t take criticism, don’t work in open source. You will never have 100% support from all people at all times. Many developers will manage social interactions (and organizing conferences) badly. That’s life
- cmcaleer 3y ago
  This whole saga has been legitimate grievances clouded by lengthy blog posts that could have been so much shorter and less dramatically written. The other blog about this controversy clocked in at over 2000 words!
paddw 3y ago
This whole exchange feels off. Essentially, the underlying spat is over a strong technical disagreement, but it is being prosecuted in this weirdly stylized language of emotion and abuse. I have no idea how something like this can be overcome so long as the core Rust community feels this is an acceptable way to handle things. Clearly this is something which extends beyond the immediate leadership team.
- rtpg 3y ago
  The problem is that the strong technical disagreement was not brought up the many times it could have! Instead the stick was stuck in the bike wheels way after the bike was moving forward at a decent speed. Though “downgrading keynote to talk” is obviously not the same as an outright disinvite, the fact that the original invitee asked explicitly about this content being pre-RFC (giving rust leadership the out to resolve this amicably!), just makes it hard for me to say “oh this makes sense”. Perhaps this is inevitable in some sense if the critique is not brought up earlier. But it’s something that feels really avoidable if people were more honest about their own feelings on other peoples work.
  - WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
    > that the strong technical disagreement was not brought up the many times it could have! Consensus attained by a shouting match?
  - atoav 3y ago
    What I don't get here is the following. No matter how egalitarian you organize such a conference, doesn't it make sense that the organizers get the last say in what the keynote looks like? They have an rough overview over all contributions and they can decide if what you contribute is best suited to be a keynote. Of course that gives them a certain level of power of the discourse, but what is the alternative? Community-voted conference structures that fail to take many variables into account that you need to take into account for an enjoyable conference? If I were invited as a keynote speaker and the conference organizers tell me that the stuff I produced is good, but not suitable for the keynote I wouldn't blame them, but myself. The only instance I could imagine was if they invited me specifically for a spicy topic and my talk was too spicy for them. But a tech talk? Come on.
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skippyboxedhero 3y ago
Look at the leadership. They have a large number of non-technical people and placeholders. The reason why it has ended up becoming political is because Rust is run by politicians.
- estebank 3y ago
  Pray tell, who do you think are non-technical people in https://www.rust-lang.org/governance https://www.rust-lang.org/governance
  - skippyboxedhero 3y ago
    Everyone here knows exactly who I am talking about. That isn't who the leadership is (as you well know).
    - estebank 3y ago
      I honestly have no clue who you are talking about.
qwery 3y ago
Leaving (or excluding yourself from) something because of "personal reasons" is very different to excluding someone else because of your own discomfort, though.
wly_cdgr 3y ago
Yeah seriously. Still putting my eyes back into their sockets after they rolled out from reading that
coldtea 3y ago
>Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling uncomfortable" If anything, people should be pushed to accepting feeling uncomfortable. It means they're meeting challenging ideas, opposing viewpoints, and getting out of their comfort zone and echo bubble. Except if "not feeling comfortamble" is because someone e.g. exposes their junk, or farts endlessly on purpose during a conference. That, sure, should be curbed.
patrick451 3y ago
Yeah, this language is just such hyperbole. Cruelty is pulling someones finger nails out with vice grips. What Rust did is rude, not cruel.
tanepiper 3y ago
It is absolutely having an impact on the outside. I'm currently putting together the architecture of our new Content Delivery platform, and considering different parts of the stack. The look from the outside is of a project who recently has been making very bad decisions from leadership - it makes me consider what to get our team to upskill in, or to hire on, as we move away from "everything in JS". A Go stack is looking quite achievable.
Lammy 3y ago
> Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling uncomfortable" Ironic https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235124.html https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235124.html

by indy 3y ago

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.
- wokwokwok 3y ago
  How? Everything is done openly on https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs I mean, I hear you. I understand what you're saying, I just don't understand how you (or others) think this is related to the technical aspects of the language.
  - junon 3y ago
    Because the same people are involved, and they knowingly sidestepped these exact sorts of processes without care. It might not be important to you, but this seems like a red flag to many.
  - ReleaseCandidat 3y ago
    > Everything is done openly on https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs But the RFCs are written and reviewed by people. And they need to have the feeling that the work they do isn't useless because the one who actually decides is somebody else who hasn't been involved in the process at all until the very end. It's ok having somebody being able to veto stuff, but this must be known and communicated beforehand - "yes, that's ok for us, but $PERSON has the last word on this so we have to await his approval".
  - auggierose 3y ago
    If leadership acts so carelessly with regard to matters concerning a human being in such a shady and disrespecting manner, why would they act less careless with regard to technical matters? Will they just enforce their biased opinion, ignoring valid and generally accepted technical arguments? Rust leadership sounds a bit like the elite leadership of a communist state. I'd prefer an open dictatorship over that.

bjornsing 3y ago

> "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." I’m a bit hesitant to say this out loud, but… you can only cry over this “betrayal”, “mistreatment” and “cruelty” if you have lived a very protected life.

Hendrikto 3y ago
What are you saying? ”Suck it up.“?
- WastingMyTime89 3y ago
  He is saying “be an actual professional and don’t bring a vocabulary pertaining to intimate discussions to the public sphere when what’s discussed is a technical conference.” It’s already barely acceptable in a purely American context. To me as a European, this is extremely off putting and culturally out of line which is a recurring problem with Rust.
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    It's a dog whistle. What the OP is actually saying is that he's extremely angry and pissed off that this was allowed to happen, and he's noping out for that eminently understandable reason. But if he said that in no uncertain terms (as a European very well might in similar circumstances!) he might fall afoul of the official Code of Conduct for being aggressive and threatening towards other contributors. Hence this weird talk about intimate "weeping" and "pain". Make no mistake, this is not some softy empath talk but quite the opposite!
    - naasking 3y ago
      > What the OP is actually saying is that he's extremely angry and pissed off that this was allowed to happen [...] But if he said that in no uncertain terms [...] he might fall afoul of the official Code of Conduct for being aggressive and threatening towards other contributors. So they need reverse psychology to express anger at injustice because of the Code of Conduct? What is this world we're building?

CoastalCoder 3y ago

I wonder if that quote was tongue-in-cheek. It reminds me of the reviews of the Three Wolf Moon t-shirt on Amazon [0]. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Wolf-Short-Sleeve/dp/B002HJ377A https://www.amazon.com/Mountain-Three-Wolf-Short-Sleeve/dp/B...

glogla 3y ago

> Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling uncomfortable" I think it depends what you're uncomfortable with. I remember some drama about removing some speakers from security conferences a while back, because people were understandably uncomfortable with them being rapists. But being uncomfortable with ... talk about how compile time reflection might work in future versions of Rust? Huh? What? Also I do agree about the language. People are from different cultures and so on, yada yada, but to me the used language feels very overdramatized and childish.

lyu07282 3y ago

I thought "rust culture" came out of this sort of super SJW/woke culture of mozilla? Nothing against that sort of mindset in theory, but it sometimes leads to a certain irrational hypersensitive intolerant mob behavior and authoritarian/anti democratic tendencies. There was also the recent easily preventable drama [1] around the trademark guidelines some people left rust over. I don't really find any of this drama coming out of this culture very surprising. I write rust every day, I don't have to identify or interact with any sort of community around it, but I care about the future of it. I just hope it's already too big to fail at this point, because there is way more drama coming out of this community in the future, that's for certain. [1] https://github.com/blyxyas/no-rust-policy-change https://github.com/blyxyas/no-rust-policy-change

gavaw 3y ago
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- jackmott42 3y ago
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  - jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
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MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
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kelipso 3y ago
All this is painfully predictable if you remotely pay attention to their initial public facing culture, statements, etc lol.
twic 3y ago
Also, lots of people high up in Rust have a background in JavaScript, where drama is common, which I believe has helped normalise it as a mode of social interaction.

bradleyjg 3y ago

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. I wouldn’t want to work with someone that wrote this. I’m not sure which is worse—if it’s hyperbole or it isn’t.

pclmulqdq 3y ago
This is modern wokespeak for "what you did is unprofessional and I'm not sticking around for more." A lot of the emotional hyperbole in this blog post is essentially that - emotional vulnerability and sensitivity is valued in "hyper-woke" contexts, while words like "unprofessional" are seen as callous - and I kind of read it that way rather than literally.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  I still don't want to do them the favor of normalizing such dramatic language by accepting it. Just call it "unprofessional" if you truly feel that it was.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    Unfortunately, you have to write for your audience. The audience for this piece seems to want emotional melodrama combined with diffusion of responsibility.
adave 3y ago
Let us see you rewrite it given the community culture and guidelines. Can't write i left because of toxic pieces of shit people with zero empathy.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Not sure how much the empathy levels of someone -- not an objective metric -- should be used when making professional calls about speakers in a foundation but you do you. The underlying problem seems to be: sidestepping democratic processes. IMO that is what should be addressed first and foremost.

adam_arthur 3y ago

Was actually super surprised by that line. Was with the post until then. Yes, treat people with respect, but we also need people to have even a marginal resilience to adversity. The bar for being emotionally damaged seems to be getting lower and lower for people. If you can’t take criticism, don’t work in open source. You will never have 100% support from all people at all times. Many developers will manage social interactions (and organizing conferences) badly. That’s life

cmcaleer 3y ago
This whole saga has been legitimate grievances clouded by lengthy blog posts that could have been so much shorter and less dramatically written. The other blog about this controversy clocked in at over 2000 words!

paddw 3y ago

This whole exchange feels off. Essentially, the underlying spat is over a strong technical disagreement, but it is being prosecuted in this weirdly stylized language of emotion and abuse. I have no idea how something like this can be overcome so long as the core Rust community feels this is an acceptable way to handle things. Clearly this is something which extends beyond the immediate leadership team.

rtpg 3y ago
The problem is that the strong technical disagreement was not brought up the many times it could have! Instead the stick was stuck in the bike wheels way after the bike was moving forward at a decent speed. Though “downgrading keynote to talk” is obviously not the same as an outright disinvite, the fact that the original invitee asked explicitly about this content being pre-RFC (giving rust leadership the out to resolve this amicably!), just makes it hard for me to say “oh this makes sense”. Perhaps this is inevitable in some sense if the critique is not brought up earlier. But it’s something that feels really avoidable if people were more honest about their own feelings on other peoples work.
- WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  > that the strong technical disagreement was not brought up the many times it could have! Consensus attained by a shouting match?
- atoav 3y ago
  What I don't get here is the following. No matter how egalitarian you organize such a conference, doesn't it make sense that the organizers get the last say in what the keynote looks like? They have an rough overview over all contributions and they can decide if what you contribute is best suited to be a keynote. Of course that gives them a certain level of power of the discourse, but what is the alternative? Community-voted conference structures that fail to take many variables into account that you need to take into account for an enjoyable conference? If I were invited as a keynote speaker and the conference organizers tell me that the stuff I produced is good, but not suitable for the keynote I wouldn't blame them, but myself. The only instance I could imagine was if they invited me specifically for a spicy topic and my talk was too spicy for them. But a tech talk? Come on.

deleted 3y ago

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skippyboxedhero 3y ago

Look at the leadership. They have a large number of non-technical people and placeholders. The reason why it has ended up becoming political is because Rust is run by politicians.

estebank 3y ago
Pray tell, who do you think are non-technical people in https://www.rust-lang.org/governance https://www.rust-lang.org/governance
- skippyboxedhero 3y ago
  Everyone here knows exactly who I am talking about. That isn't who the leadership is (as you well know).
  - estebank 3y ago
    I honestly have no clue who you are talking about.

qwery 3y ago

Leaving (or excluding yourself from) something because of "personal reasons" is very different to excluding someone else because of your own discomfort, though.

wly_cdgr 3y ago

Yeah seriously. Still putting my eyes back into their sockets after they rolled out from reading that

coldtea 3y ago

>Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling uncomfortable" If anything, people should be pushed to accepting feeling uncomfortable. It means they're meeting challenging ideas, opposing viewpoints, and getting out of their comfort zone and echo bubble. Except if "not feeling comfortamble" is because someone e.g. exposes their junk, or farts endlessly on purpose during a conference. That, sure, should be curbed.

patrick451 3y ago

Yeah, this language is just such hyperbole. Cruelty is pulling someones finger nails out with vice grips. What Rust did is rude, not cruel.

tanepiper 3y ago

It is absolutely having an impact on the outside. I'm currently putting together the architecture of our new Content Delivery platform, and considering different parts of the stack. The look from the outside is of a project who recently has been making very bad decisions from leadership - it makes me consider what to get our team to upskill in, or to hire on, as we move away from "everything in JS". A Go stack is looking quite achievable.

Lammy 3y ago

> Much less weight should be given to someone "feeling uncomfortable" Ironic https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235124.html https://gcc.gnu.org/pipermail/gcc/2021-March/235124.html