5 ms·

> People will look on Rust community after this and say "Remember that time when _they_ where threatening kernel devs with social media drama?". It's not right

> People will look on Rust community after this and say "Remember that time when _they_ where threatening kernel devs with social media drama?". It's not right but that's the perception that will last. Happened with actix, happened with serde, and now being threatened by kernel contributors. The perception seems at least somewhat based in reality.

ecshafer 2y ago
Rust, which is a language I really enjoy, generates more social media outrage and religious wars than any other technical project I have been following for the past 20 years.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  There's something about Rust that draws Zealots (or draws out zealotry in people). It's not at Haskell's level, but there are several culty elements for the fanatics: secret knowledge, being 'chosen' or set aside from the ignorant plebians, and an unshakable belief in a form of rapture when the language will inevitably win when everyone realizes the superiority of monads/memory safety.
  - infamouscow 2y ago
    They have no moral or ethical foundation that's outside of themselves. When someone presents something that looks, sounds, and feels like morality, they latch on. Cults and gangs work in a similar manner, taking advantage of that which is lacking. Try asking a Rust zealot to give three different real world examples where someone should pick C++ over Rust, they can't do it. The zealots are literally incapable of viewing anything other than Rust as divine. Every experience I've have with Rust people has been negative and worthless, so I view Rust as a major red flag on resumes when hiring :)
- fransje26 2y ago
  It must be said that from an outsider's point a view, in quite a few aspects it very much sounds like a cult. Get an HN article about C++, and you can be certain the comment section is going to deteriorate at some point into a religious war mentioning Rust. Get an article about Rust, and there is going to be drama in the comments. As a programmer that could potential consider Rust, it is off-putting.
  - flykespice 2y ago
    I get the opposite experience, never saw those comments chiming in Rust everytime another programming language is mentioned or pushing in to rewrite everything into Rust, but I get comments complaining about such invisible forces.
    - superb_dev 2y ago
      It’s like how people complain about Apple users. You see more threads complaining about how annoying those Apple fanboys are than you see actual Apple fanboys being annoying.
      - pimeys 2y ago
        I mean... Every HN thread with Apple discussion is pretty annoying. It might not be annoying to you as an Apple user, but for many of us it's unbearable...
        superb_dev 2y ago
        Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I think blanket statements about a group like this are harmful and generally untrue
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      This has been my experience too. There were a couple of years (like 2016-2018) where I saw a handful of people pushing the RIIR line, but I've seen many more people for many more years complaining about how those RIIR people are everywhere. Any time there's an article on Phoronix that mentions Rust, the trolls come out in droves to whine about how toxic the Rust community is and how they make everything political, while the only people in those threads making anything political are the anti-Rust trolls themselves.
  - MisterTea 2y ago
    You can also be certain when reading a Zig post you will see "Why would I use Zig over Rust?" or "Isn't Zig unsafe?" They cant help but proselytize. Its like talking to my recent born again christian friend who cant help but steer every conversation to Christianity and reciting scripture. It's infuriating. Though TBH it very much feels like the cult of OOP that rocked the 90's. And look where that paradigm is now ...
- Lammy 2y ago
  > more social media outrage and religious wars than any other technical project I have been following for the past 20 years. It is unfortunately wrapped up in larger-scale outrage culture than just within tech/programming circles. Rust as a community is very gay and very trans: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/02/19/2023-Rust-Annual-Survey-2023-results.html#community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/02/19/2023-Rust-Annual-Surve... https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results.html#community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Sur... To be clear I am 111% down for that as one of the Alphabet People myself lol. We just can't pretend like it isn't a factor. Disclaimer: I realize these numbers are probably skewed high due to self-selection of people who are willing to take diversity surveys. The actual percentages are probably somewhat lower, but Rust undoubtedly has the highest concentration of any programming-language community. Zero question.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    Personally I'd go with the "biggest worries graph" for an explanation as to why I avoid rust like the plague. If you have half of all respondents say that it's not used enough the corollary they seem to have derived is "let's force it everywhere so it does get used more". Meanwhile forth people are hacking away on building a gui in 300 bytes in a mailing list open since the 80s. I know which of the two languages was easier and more pleasant to hire for - which should be impossible as I kept getting told no one uses forth.
  - EdwardDiego 2y ago
    Always enjoyed the meme that it's a syntax error without wearing stripey leggings and/or cat ears.
  - lll-o-lll 2y ago
    > Rust undoubtedly has the highest concentration of any programming-language community. Zero question. How can you know this? What other communities even have such surveys? I would expect this to be similar in any language. Anecdotally, I see the % of gay/trans/neurodivergent to be much higher in the dev community than the general population, so the numbers don’t look strange to me. Perhaps it’s more vocal or more visible, but that would require much more analysis to enquire about cause and effect.
llm_trw 2y ago
Never hire zealots who don't share your religion, they may be cheap - or free in this case - but in the long run they cost you a lot more.
Klonoar 2y ago
Hang on there: the serde issue drama would’ve happened in any other ecosystem and doesn’t quite belong in this list, because it was about shoving a pre-compiled binary into the supply chain. (The actix drama was stupid IMO and is fair to criticize the community over tho)
- Filligree 2y ago
  Not true at all. Quite a few ecosystem communities are comfortable with having binary blobs sitting around, and wouldn’t cause any drama over that. Should they be? Well…
  - Klonoar 2y ago
    > Should they be? Well… You're so close to getting the point here. ;P
dralley 2y ago
There was plenty of indefensible behavior in the Actix debacle, but the reason it blew up was because the maintainer was genuinely wrong and was being a jerk on top of it. The sequence of events was: 1) Issue found by Shnatsel 2) Issue closed as harmless to users by fafhrd91 3) Issue proven harmful to users by Nemo157 and reopened by JohnTitor 4) Issue fixed and closed by fafhrd91 5) Issue proven unfixed and proposed new patch by Nemo157 6) New patch commented "this patch is boring" by fafhrd91 7) Issue is deleted 8) Fix is reversed by fafhrd91, issue still present http://web.archive.org/web/20200116231317/https://github.com/actix/actix-net/issues/83 http://web.archive.org/web/20200116231317/https://github.com... A maintainer that rejects a fix for an issue that was proven harmful to users on the basis that it was "boring" and then deletes the issue is a bad maintainer. Death threats and abuse were definitely not the right answer, but public criticism is not unreasonable in such a case. If it were just a hobby project and advertised as such then that would be one thing, but he plastered info about how it was used production by a bunch of big companies on the website. That is not how someone who calls their code "production-ready" acts.
- unclad5968 2y ago
  I'm not sure what you're arguing. Are you saying that because the Actix maintainer was "a bad maintainer" that the community shouldn't be held accountable for harassing him?
  - jdiff 2y ago
    This is explicitly not what they were saying. They explicitly wrote in their comment that you are replying to that this is not what they were saying.
srid 2y ago
Could you cite some references for actix and serde?

ecshafer 2y ago

Rust, which is a language I really enjoy, generates more social media outrage and religious wars than any other technical project I have been following for the past 20 years.

sangnoir 2y ago
There's something about Rust that draws Zealots (or draws out zealotry in people). It's not at Haskell's level, but there are several culty elements for the fanatics: secret knowledge, being 'chosen' or set aside from the ignorant plebians, and an unshakable belief in a form of rapture when the language will inevitably win when everyone realizes the superiority of monads/memory safety.
- infamouscow 2y ago
  They have no moral or ethical foundation that's outside of themselves. When someone presents something that looks, sounds, and feels like morality, they latch on. Cults and gangs work in a similar manner, taking advantage of that which is lacking. Try asking a Rust zealot to give three different real world examples where someone should pick C++ over Rust, they can't do it. The zealots are literally incapable of viewing anything other than Rust as divine. Every experience I've have with Rust people has been negative and worthless, so I view Rust as a major red flag on resumes when hiring :)
fransje26 2y ago
It must be said that from an outsider's point a view, in quite a few aspects it very much sounds like a cult. Get an HN article about C++, and you can be certain the comment section is going to deteriorate at some point into a religious war mentioning Rust. Get an article about Rust, and there is going to be drama in the comments. As a programmer that could potential consider Rust, it is off-putting.
- flykespice 2y ago
  I get the opposite experience, never saw those comments chiming in Rust everytime another programming language is mentioned or pushing in to rewrite everything into Rust, but I get comments complaining about such invisible forces.
  - superb_dev 2y ago
    It’s like how people complain about Apple users. You see more threads complaining about how annoying those Apple fanboys are than you see actual Apple fanboys being annoying.
    - pimeys 2y ago
      I mean... Every HN thread with Apple discussion is pretty annoying. It might not be annoying to you as an Apple user, but for many of us it's unbearable...
      - superb_dev 2y ago
        Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I think blanket statements about a group like this are harmful and generally untrue
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    This has been my experience too. There were a couple of years (like 2016-2018) where I saw a handful of people pushing the RIIR line, but I've seen many more people for many more years complaining about how those RIIR people are everywhere. Any time there's an article on Phoronix that mentions Rust, the trolls come out in droves to whine about how toxic the Rust community is and how they make everything political, while the only people in those threads making anything political are the anti-Rust trolls themselves.
- MisterTea 2y ago
  You can also be certain when reading a Zig post you will see "Why would I use Zig over Rust?" or "Isn't Zig unsafe?" They cant help but proselytize. Its like talking to my recent born again christian friend who cant help but steer every conversation to Christianity and reciting scripture. It's infuriating. Though TBH it very much feels like the cult of OOP that rocked the 90's. And look where that paradigm is now ...
Lammy 2y ago
> more social media outrage and religious wars than any other technical project I have been following for the past 20 years. It is unfortunately wrapped up in larger-scale outrage culture than just within tech/programming circles. Rust as a community is very gay and very trans: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/02/19/2023-Rust-Annual-Survey-2023-results.html#community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/02/19/2023-Rust-Annual-Surve... https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Survey-results.html#community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Sur... To be clear I am 111% down for that as one of the Alphabet People myself lol. We just can't pretend like it isn't a factor. Disclaimer: I realize these numbers are probably skewed high due to self-selection of people who are willing to take diversity surveys. The actual percentages are probably somewhat lower, but Rust undoubtedly has the highest concentration of any programming-language community. Zero question.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  Personally I'd go with the "biggest worries graph" for an explanation as to why I avoid rust like the plague. If you have half of all respondents say that it's not used enough the corollary they seem to have derived is "let's force it everywhere so it does get used more". Meanwhile forth people are hacking away on building a gui in 300 bytes in a mailing list open since the 80s. I know which of the two languages was easier and more pleasant to hire for - which should be impossible as I kept getting told no one uses forth.
- EdwardDiego 2y ago
  Always enjoyed the meme that it's a syntax error without wearing stripey leggings and/or cat ears.
- lll-o-lll 2y ago
  > Rust undoubtedly has the highest concentration of any programming-language community. Zero question. How can you know this? What other communities even have such surveys? I would expect this to be similar in any language. Anecdotally, I see the % of gay/trans/neurodivergent to be much higher in the dev community than the general population, so the numbers don’t look strange to me. Perhaps it’s more vocal or more visible, but that would require much more analysis to enquire about cause and effect.

llm_trw 2y ago

Never hire zealots who don't share your religion, they may be cheap - or free in this case - but in the long run they cost you a lot more.

Klonoar 2y ago

Hang on there: the serde issue drama would’ve happened in any other ecosystem and doesn’t quite belong in this list, because it was about shoving a pre-compiled binary into the supply chain. (The actix drama was stupid IMO and is fair to criticize the community over tho)

Filligree 2y ago
Not true at all. Quite a few ecosystem communities are comfortable with having binary blobs sitting around, and wouldn’t cause any drama over that. Should they be? Well…
- Klonoar 2y ago
  > Should they be? Well… You're so close to getting the point here. ;P

dralley 2y ago

There was plenty of indefensible behavior in the Actix debacle, but the reason it blew up was because the maintainer was genuinely wrong and was being a jerk on top of it. The sequence of events was: 1) Issue found by Shnatsel 2) Issue closed as harmless to users by fafhrd91 3) Issue proven harmful to users by Nemo157 and reopened by JohnTitor 4) Issue fixed and closed by fafhrd91 5) Issue proven unfixed and proposed new patch by Nemo157 6) New patch commented "this patch is boring" by fafhrd91 7) Issue is deleted 8) Fix is reversed by fafhrd91, issue still present http://web.archive.org/web/20200116231317/https://github.com/actix/actix-net/issues/83 http://web.archive.org/web/20200116231317/https://github.com... A maintainer that rejects a fix for an issue that was proven harmful to users on the basis that it was "boring" and then deletes the issue is a bad maintainer. Death threats and abuse were definitely not the right answer, but public criticism is not unreasonable in such a case. If it were just a hobby project and advertised as such then that would be one thing, but he plastered info about how it was used production by a bunch of big companies on the website. That is not how someone who calls their code "production-ready" acts.

unclad5968 2y ago
I'm not sure what you're arguing. Are you saying that because the Actix maintainer was "a bad maintainer" that the community shouldn't be held accountable for harassing him?
- jdiff 2y ago
  This is explicitly not what they were saying. They explicitly wrote in their comment that you are replying to that this is not what they were saying.

srid 2y ago

Could you cite some references for actix and serde?