4 ms·

It’s a common HN trope to generalise a “community” based on a handful of people or even just one person. “See this is why I dislike the xyz community”, says a p

It’s a common HN trope to generalise a “community” based on a handful of people or even just one person. “See this is why I dislike the xyz community”, says a person justifying their confirmation bias. Perhaps the world is too complex without breaking it down into in-groups and out-groups, with any out-groups supposedly being completely homogenous. Pretty intellectually lazy but fairly common on HN, to the point where it’s not even worth calling out.

johnisgood 10mo ago
I mean, I was going to reply "take a wild guess" to him, but your message is correct, too. (I may come across as an Ada zealot myself.)
- nickpsecurity 10mo ago
  Quick, random question. I heard way back that SPARK was getting safe pointers in response to Rust's borrow checker. Has full Ada solved their unsafe de-allocation problem in a way that's comparable to the borrow checker's guarantees?
  - johnisgood 9mo ago
    Yes, it was introduced many years ago and has been in production for quite some time now. You can completely eliminate use-after-free, double-free, dangling pointers, memory leaks, and null dereferences. You should take another look, lots have changed in this scene.
jacquesm 10mo ago
You may be correct but pjmlp is not one of those and if you had been here long enough you would have known that. You're the one creating an in-group here and putting yourself on the 'good' side. Perhaps that is too complex for you but I think it is intellectually lazy not to get who you're referring to before making comments such as these. Note that your strawman "See this is why I dislike the xyz community" wasn't part of this thread at all.
- pjmlp 10mo ago
  A community is made by all of its participants. One could also say some in the C or C++ communities actually care about security, thus no need for Rust or alike, yet no one is paying attention to those small groups in the corner. A village is judged by its population actions, and even the black sheeps count to its overall image from outsiders.
  - jacquesm 10mo ago
    Indeed. If there is one person here that keeps their footing in language debates it is you (and I'm always blown away with how many details you have at instant recall that I never realized were there). So thank you for the lessons over the years, it has helped me evaluate my choices better. As for that sentence: I think Rust has its place, I do not agree at all with their 'rewrite' mantra because there are a ton of risks associated with rewrites that have nothing to do in what language the code is written in, just that it is a rewrite. I think the Rust folks should go all-in on Redox and fix their tool optimization issues. And do one thing and do that well rather than to be the next Swiss army knife of programming. And I also think that the C and C++ folks can do a lot better still. Filip is doing something interesting I think and if there a practical solution to the C heritage I think it lies more in his direction than in rewriting billions of lines of battle tested code. Performance isn't nearly as important as it used to be. Another thing that I think would be beneficial would be to take as many device drivers out of the linux kernel as possible and run them as userspace processes. Anyway, belated Merry Christmas to you and a pre-emptive happy 2026!
    - pjmlp 10mo ago
      Same, all the best for 2026.
- testdelacc1 10mo ago
  That dude said “even worse when coming from supposedly security conscious programming language community”. The comment is dripping with contempt, pointing out that the “community” makes tall claims that are unfounded. And he said this based purely on one comment. This contempt clearly indicated a dislike, which I generalised to “I dislike xyz community”. To which you reply with “strawman”. Sure. You’re then accusing me of being intellectually lazy for not giving high karma accounts the respect they deserve. Come off it. I’m going to judge comments by their content, not by the karma of the author. You shaming me is not going to make me change that. What’s crazy is that judging people by their karma instead of their words is actually lazy. Isn’t this obvious? Do I need to get another 20k karma before you’ll understand that?

johnisgood 10mo ago

I mean, I was going to reply "take a wild guess" to him, but your message is correct, too. (I may come across as an Ada zealot myself.)

nickpsecurity 10mo ago
Quick, random question. I heard way back that SPARK was getting safe pointers in response to Rust's borrow checker. Has full Ada solved their unsafe de-allocation problem in a way that's comparable to the borrow checker's guarantees?
- johnisgood 9mo ago
  Yes, it was introduced many years ago and has been in production for quite some time now. You can completely eliminate use-after-free, double-free, dangling pointers, memory leaks, and null dereferences. You should take another look, lots have changed in this scene.

jacquesm 10mo ago

You may be correct but pjmlp is not one of those and if you had been here long enough you would have known that. You're the one creating an in-group here and putting yourself on the 'good' side. Perhaps that is too complex for you but I think it is intellectually lazy not to get who you're referring to before making comments such as these. Note that your strawman "See this is why I dislike the xyz community" wasn't part of this thread at all.

pjmlp 10mo ago
A community is made by all of its participants. One could also say some in the C or C++ communities actually care about security, thus no need for Rust or alike, yet no one is paying attention to those small groups in the corner. A village is judged by its population actions, and even the black sheeps count to its overall image from outsiders.
- jacquesm 10mo ago
  Indeed. If there is one person here that keeps their footing in language debates it is you (and I'm always blown away with how many details you have at instant recall that I never realized were there). So thank you for the lessons over the years, it has helped me evaluate my choices better. As for that sentence: I think Rust has its place, I do not agree at all with their 'rewrite' mantra because there are a ton of risks associated with rewrites that have nothing to do in what language the code is written in, just that it is a rewrite. I think the Rust folks should go all-in on Redox and fix their tool optimization issues. And do one thing and do that well rather than to be the next Swiss army knife of programming. And I also think that the C and C++ folks can do a lot better still. Filip is doing something interesting I think and if there a practical solution to the C heritage I think it lies more in his direction than in rewriting billions of lines of battle tested code. Performance isn't nearly as important as it used to be. Another thing that I think would be beneficial would be to take as many device drivers out of the linux kernel as possible and run them as userspace processes. Anyway, belated Merry Christmas to you and a pre-emptive happy 2026!
  - pjmlp 10mo ago
    Same, all the best for 2026.
testdelacc1 10mo ago
That dude said “even worse when coming from supposedly security conscious programming language community”. The comment is dripping with contempt, pointing out that the “community” makes tall claims that are unfounded. And he said this based purely on one comment. This contempt clearly indicated a dislike, which I generalised to “I dislike xyz community”. To which you reply with “strawman”. Sure. You’re then accusing me of being intellectually lazy for not giving high karma accounts the respect they deserve. Come off it. I’m going to judge comments by their content, not by the karma of the author. You shaming me is not going to make me change that. What’s crazy is that judging people by their karma instead of their words is actually lazy. Isn’t this obvious? Do I need to get another 20k karma before you’ll understand that?