3 ms·

This whole affair is embarrassing to behold, and it makes it extremely difficult for me to try to build traction using Rust in my team when there is this level

This whole affair is embarrassing to behold, and it makes it extremely difficult for me to try to build traction using Rust in my team when there is this level of visible drama.

ChrisSD 3y ago
Your phrasing is interesting: "visible drama". Which suggests it would be "better" for Rust if it covered these things up :). Obviously that would be hard to do at the moment. It's actions are fairly open and there is a very keen interest in "drama" from everyone from HN to popular YouTubers who can boost the signal. Personally I think some amount of immediate drama is necessary to force positive change. Better than many orgs that keep this kind of thing behind closed doors (and somebody maybe writes a blog post about it years later).
- denotational 3y ago
  That wasn’t my intention, but I see how it could be read that way. I have colleagues on WG21 and there’s a degree of drama there too, but it’s mostly behind closed doors so it doesn’t tend to impact people’s view of the language too much. Open discourse can certainly be a virtue, but when on first glance it looks like there is constant bickering and poor leadership, it tends to put people off. Really my intended message is that people (probably the Rust Project in this case, although I’m not really close enough to have a valid opinion) should consider their actions a lot more carefully on account of the fact that everything is visible. Visible drama is what puts people off; avoiding the drama is the best approach rather than hiding it, but fundamentally what matters is whether people want to use the project or not.
jemmyw 3y ago
The folks I know who write rust code haven't mentioned this drama at all. I only dabble in it a little, but I'm guessing 99%+ of rust coders don't care and don't attend conferences anyway. I like reading about the drama, and I was also quite interested in the introspection stuff the talk was going to be about. However, none of this is going to influence my use of Rust going forward. It's just not that important.
- bsaul 3y ago
  I think you’re mistaken. Rust as a language is still very niche, and it has a lot of work to do become mainstream. This work is going to be accomplished (or not) by people very involved in the project’s governance.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    Didn't it crack the top 20 languages last year? Maybe even top 15? It's supported in the Linux kernel now, I think we're way past the point where we can consider it niche
    - bsaul 3y ago
      i think its current popularity (still not top 10) and its learning curve makes it still very vulnerable to another language integrating something close to what the borrow checker guarantees without the hassle.
  - bobnamob 3y ago
    I don’t think this is true any more. From my perspective rust has hit critical mass adoption wise. The hyper scalers are all using it, it’s on the way into the m$ and Linux kernels, developer mindshare is just a matter of time at this point

This whole affair is embarrassing to behold, and it makes it extremely difficult for me to try to build traction using Rust in my team when there is this level of visible drama.

ChrisSD 3y ago

Your phrasing is interesting: "visible drama". Which suggests it would be "better" for Rust if it covered these things up :). Obviously that would be hard to do at the moment. It's actions are fairly open and there is a very keen interest in "drama" from everyone from HN to popular YouTubers who can boost the signal. Personally I think some amount of immediate drama is necessary to force positive change. Better than many orgs that keep this kind of thing behind closed doors (and somebody maybe writes a blog post about it years later).

denotational 3y ago
That wasn’t my intention, but I see how it could be read that way. I have colleagues on WG21 and there’s a degree of drama there too, but it’s mostly behind closed doors so it doesn’t tend to impact people’s view of the language too much. Open discourse can certainly be a virtue, but when on first glance it looks like there is constant bickering and poor leadership, it tends to put people off. Really my intended message is that people (probably the Rust Project in this case, although I’m not really close enough to have a valid opinion) should consider their actions a lot more carefully on account of the fact that everything is visible. Visible drama is what puts people off; avoiding the drama is the best approach rather than hiding it, but fundamentally what matters is whether people want to use the project or not.

jemmyw 3y ago

The folks I know who write rust code haven't mentioned this drama at all. I only dabble in it a little, but I'm guessing 99%+ of rust coders don't care and don't attend conferences anyway. I like reading about the drama, and I was also quite interested in the introspection stuff the talk was going to be about. However, none of this is going to influence my use of Rust going forward. It's just not that important.

bsaul 3y ago
I think you’re mistaken. Rust as a language is still very niche, and it has a lot of work to do become mainstream. This work is going to be accomplished (or not) by people very involved in the project’s governance.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Didn't it crack the top 20 languages last year? Maybe even top 15? It's supported in the Linux kernel now, I think we're way past the point where we can consider it niche
  - bsaul 3y ago
    i think its current popularity (still not top 10) and its learning curve makes it still very vulnerable to another language integrating something close to what the borrow checker guarantees without the hassle.
- bobnamob 3y ago
  I don’t think this is true any more. From my perspective rust has hit critical mass adoption wise. The hyper scalers are all using it, it’s on the way into the m$ and Linux kernels, developer mindshare is just a matter of time at this point