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
> 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?
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."
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?
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
[1] https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2022/10/06/governance...
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.
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.
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
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.
> 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.
> 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.
https://soasis.org/posts/a-mirror-for-rust-a-plan-for-generi... - Is this the post ?
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.
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.
>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."
This is a very egotistical industry and this is one of many ways that manifests.
> 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?
>> 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.
My understanding is that they (unilaterally) changed the talk's status from "keynote" to "regular talk", so they didn't quite push them out.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
I mean, it's good to discuss different viewpoints, but programming choices is a hill I would never want to die on.
I read through the original blog post from JeanHeyd[1] and in no way do they mention anything related to being a person of color, why then does JT associate it with that? I have no idea about the inner workings of the rust leadership team and who they are even, but from the timeline described and from the original post, there's nothing the could be related to that. JeanHeyd is a technical expert and not a token, I feel like introducing the issue of being "a person of color" (as if white is not a color, but whatever) is strange IMO and also needs to be called out. I respect and enjoy JT's work and learned a lot from them, but this is also something that should not be just mentioned casually. If JeanHeyd was invited or their talk demoted because of the color of their skin then there's totally different conversation to be had (and a totally different kind of accountability).
This behavior is disrespectful _regardless_ of the skin color of the expert! It doesn't change it one bit.
Just because they're not white shouldn't afford them any special treatment, and I say that as a non-white person. Merit is what counts, treating experts with affordance to their biology is patronizing at the very least.
My two cents.
1: https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
But, it's ironic (and sad) that the same person who raised the issue of diversity in speakers - who would have been the first PoC doing a keynote - was treated like rubbish and essentially pushed out to the point they no longer feel comfortable being part of it at all. It's also interesting to note that while the issues the voting body had with their talk was solely to do with the content of the talk, it begs the question of if any other participant would be treated the same way in dealing with that issue arising. In my experience it's not uncommon for that sort of irony to play out, but that's purely anecdotal.
Also, of course white is a colour but I've always seen PoC as a slightly more language-open alternative to the previously commonly used "non-white" which feels notably like language from an era long past.
> as if white is not a color
But ‘person of color’ doesn’t include white people in the same way that ‘anti-semitic’ doesn’t include racism against Arabs. Yes, Arabs are also of Semitic descent, and yes white is a color, the meanings are not one-to-one mapped from their components. To deny that is to deny large portions of the English language.
Whoever on the Rust team made the decision to reach out and downgrade JeanHeyd's talk seems extremely incompetent.
Optics matter a lot here and a large portion of leadership roles is optics. It's careless to not take context into account, like the recent history of poor Rust-related optics (E.g. trademark thing) and JeanHeyd (The person they invited) talking about lack of black representation.
https://twitter.com/__phantomderp/status/1662511693136637952
I'm not disagreeing with your overall point, to be clear, but in my mind, leaving the burden of pointing out inequity to victims of it isn't great either. I guess a less problematic approach would be reaching out to that person directly to see if they feel like that's what happened, and how they'd like others to respond if so
[1] https://twitter.com/__phantomderp/status/1662511693136637952
You might want to look into the historical basis for this term before you make snarky comments about it. It comes across as dismissive. My understanding is the term "person of color" evolved from "colored" (which originally just meant black (in America at least)) and now encompasses non-white people.
Trying to expand it into a giant anti-anti-anti-woke frame is a little distasteful. Even if you're one of the people who thinks any discussion of race is racist, can't you just accept that some people view lack of diversity as a problem worth noting and leave it at that? It's evidence, right? Certainly "Rust has never had a non-white speaker" seems like a problem, even if it's not. It's not wrong to note it in passing in the context of another argument.
The behaviour is disrespectful regardless of colour, yes. But someone's skin colour does influence other people's behaviour.
There's a great deal to read on this topic if you're genuinely interested. Otherwise I just want to warn you that the way you phrase this comes across as rather ignorant and stepping on the border of racism.
Framing a technical presentation you disagree with as "making you uncomfortable" in highly manipulative fashion definitely deserves to be called out in public.
I am all for many of the stated goals of "woke" or whatever you want to call them, but it is really reminiscent of the politician who wants to ban porn but has his entire computer filled with it.
Best advice I have is, avoid the whole situation and have fun. If you really want this kind of stuff to be part of your career, this is what that kind of career path is... lots of politics, drama, defending a title, etc.
Conferences can be good for meeting people, and I guess self promotion. But it's just like anything else, there's going to be people who will do anything to meddle regardless of merit. There's going to be "cool kids" and "losers". If you seek equanimity, you won't find it in a hierarchical power structure.
Blogs are way better than talks anyways.
that is why it is so disruptive in a professional setting, and kills all real honest cooperation
There is a wide wide world out there, and just as having an easy to use crate system is important, so is having a large community. You don't get to a large community by being exclusive, but by being inclusive.
your second point seems trivial, after all let's assume that most of us live and act accordingly (manipulation is bad, and if there's something uncomfortable about a presentation, then it should be directly addressed, etc)
but your first seems very interesting. can you please elaborate on who these grifters are, and how to identify them?
You give a talk. People show up. They clap at the end. Does it really matter what some title on some conference website is? The communication was perhaps a bit more confusing and hectic than it should have been, but does that really matter? Is that really a big deal?
I don't even understand why anyone would overly care about this in the first place, and now it's also an example of systemic bias against black people, "cruel", and "heartless"?
If the talk had been outright cancelled: sure, what would have been a right dick move. But from what I can see all that happened is that the "status" (that I don't think many pay attention to) got "downgraded" and (maybe) moved to a different timeslot. I'm just confused why this would spark such strong reactions.
In short, it's hard not to feel like you just got baited and switched, even if the withdrawal is for a good reason. "But you'll still be at the ceremony!" isn't a good argument because that wasn't the original invitation, and because you're putting them in a very uncomfortable position having to decide whether to continue to go or not.
For context, I've spoken at over 100 conference events. There are very significant differences in terms of the keynote speakers and regular speakers — generally in compensation, status, time, and prominence, at least for conferences that are larger than community events. Not all of these may not be obvious to attendees, but overall it's a fairly serious snub to pull the rug out from under someone like this.
Almost all of them had keynote speakers, who received a prominent spot, usually in the morning and on multi-tier conferences the only talk scheduled at that time slot. Based on content of most of those talks the expectation was to take a wider or deeper or just different look at our fields and not mainly present a smaller idea or solution.
But it also doesn't matter if you or I personally do or don't care about distinction. There is one made clearly and as soon as it is made, there is an implicit promotion or demotion depending on which way a person is being moved and one should have very good reasons to demote anyone publicly as they did here.
Do most people care if someone was a keynote speaker? No(Outside of academia). Is it a big deal if your talk was selected as a speaker or keynote speaker? No. But should you care if your talk is demoted from Keynote to non-keynote without following due process(and possibly because of personal biases)? Yes.
I don't know anything about any of the parties involved, but I feel like declining the talk was the correct thing to do and raising the lack of due process is also the correct thing to do.
You make up your mind about that kind of stuff BEFORE the invitation.
To have that taken away because you voiced a technical opinion some people didn't agree with is petty and childish. It wasn't even a political opinion, and it was public before he was voted on and invited.
If it's purely ego then there are even more serious concerns if ego dominants an entire conference organising committee then withdrawal was the only reasonable option.
For the uninitiated, a keynote sets a theme and tone for a series of talks.
Usually it's less technical and more personal than later talks. Explaining the significance of the topic that will be discussed in upcoming talks.
Maybe it's just been watered down to 'featured'/'sponsored'/'recommended' talk? I haven't been aware of that.
I could certainly believe that it means the difference between the amount of attendees, length of presentation, venue, etc etc. In those cases, it's quite a big deal and quite the dick move, especially given the seemingly unilateral process to "downgrade" the presentation.
- Is the content of the talk suitable for a keynote?
- Given that the talk was accepted as a keynote, is it ok for the organizers to change their mind and unilaterally demote the talk?
https://hackmd.io/mwCWfJpIT024vBYvKeHCtw?view gives an informed perspective on the second question.
People inviting the author knew about the content and the author double checked if they're ok with that direction. This wasn't a surprise or something missed. The original vote was done by enough people who can make the decisions.
What do you mean?
Can we just stop with this intolerance of differing opinions? It's OK to disagree with someone. We don't need to all share the same opinions. Why the fuck would you have a conference if not to inject some healthy discourse in your community?
I come from .NET background and am open to the idea of a realistic C/C++ replacement. My experience with .NET and its "community" has left me with a really comfortable feeling with regard to my ability to do business, just "get shit done", etc. To be clear, there isn't really a community. I think that's why you don't hear a whole lot of drama come out of it. It's more of a LARP where we pretend we have some kind of say and sometimes Microsoft's leadership agrees and it looks like we participated openly. Most on HN hate this, but when you are trying to build a stable B2B product and signing 5+ year contracts, it's a goddamn paradise to not have concerns about what angry corners of social media might be up in arms about today.
https://exceptionnotfound.net/the-catch-block-80-the-dotnet-...
There is a core of extremely zealous "Rust wins all the things" types who don't stop at advocating for a language on its technical merits: they have to belittle and berate users of other languages because their choice (or not: employment is what it is) isn't "correct." The Rust community has (a well deserved, in my opinion) reputation.
Am I the only one that considers such arbitrary "diversity enforcement policy" horribly racist?
No organisation should be "called out for a lack of - insert-race-here- representation unless that organisation is in fact discriminatory. No one should be discouraged, relegated, skipped for mentoring or removed from a membership or a leadership role in an organisation because that person is the wrong race. Regardless of the reason why you feel that race is wrong. Calling out a group "for lack of Black representation" is basically telling every single non-Black member of that group they are less valuable because of the color of their skin.
People are not exchangeable units whose defining feature is the color of their skin. How can intelligent people not see this kind of thinking leads to the worst of social divisions?
Personally, I was with the author until that quote. If I was a member of that organisation I too would not be OK being represented by a person that makes such horribly offensive personal opinions known regardless of their technical expertise.
I don't think you're being very reasonable here. A lack of diversity is just a piece of data: it might be complete coincidence, or it might be related to some underlying bias or discrimination. "Calling out" a lack of diversity is just bringing attention to that piece of data. If you want to ignore it, fine. If you want to make a case that the lack of diversity isn't a problem and/or has nothing to do with bias, by all means do so. But you can't just tell people to shut up about inconvenient facts until discrimination is proved in a court of law (or to your own satisfaction, or whatever unstated burden of proof you think is sufficient).
Free speech and dissent is important. You might not like it when people point out obvious and available data like "hey, this group seems to be pretty homogeneous", but that doesn't mean those people should shut up.
On the one hand you have your "diversity enforcement policy" which is arguably racist. On the other hand you have black Rust developers but never any black speakers or organization leaders (in a community which doesn't hesitate to toot their diversity horn) which also arguably racist. So what gives?
>Personally, I was with the author until that quote. If I was a member of that organisation I too would not be OK being represented by a person that makes such horribly offensive personal opinions known regardless of their technical expertise.
You could ask yourself why something that someone else might see as a simple (minor) disagreement caused such as strong reaction in you.
When someone mentions a 'lack of Black representation', they're not saying that non-Black members are less valuable because of their skin color. Rather, they're highlighting that there appears to be a systemic issue preventing people of that particular race from participating or advancing in that space. By addressing these systemic issues, we can make organizations more inclusive and more representative of the broader community.
Nobody is suggesting that people are exchangeable units defined solely by their skin color. On the contrary, it's recognized that everyone is unique and has a diverse set of skills, experiences, and perspectives to contribute.
This does not mean discarding merit or reducing people to their race, but rather acknowledging that societal, cultural, and systemic barriers have created unequal access to opportunities. The ultimate goal is to ensure that everyone, regardless of their race, has an equal opportunity to succeed.
Intelligent people do see it. It’s typically people that have no actual direct value to contribute but still want to score points that focus on all kinds of secondary topics.
As things stand, this whole things smells very weird, so weird I almost cannot believe what happened, so would be most interesting to hear what the other side has to say.
On the other hand, there's more going on than what's being told publicly. Perhaps racism does play a role in this. The use of the word "uncomfortable" without clear explanation suggests this is more than just "we don't want another reflection flame war".
It's possible that this person was just hoping to use the keynote speaker as a token of inclusiveness, but I have to wonder if there isn't more going on if racism is brought up after incredible vague notions of people feeling "uncomfortable" being given as a reason why they keynote speaker got demoted to a normal speaker either.
I'm hoping the remaining leadership owns up to their mistake, put out a detailed reason why the purely technical topic of reflection is making them so uncomfortable, and lay out proper measures to prevent this from happening again, with the necessary correctional measures applied to the leadership member who went behind the others' backs on changing the invitation. They'd also need to come up with a clear and honest apology, of course.
If they can't give a decent objective reason why they're so "uncomfortable", or don't get real professional real fast, there's much more drama to be had the coming weeks.
And where do you live that inequities have never existed?
"Hey we think you have great ideas to share, and would really like you to share them."
On short notice: "One of our team members thinks your ideas aren't that important after all, we are going to remove you from the headline. Please keep it short kthxbye."
It shows bad planning, bad organization, lack of cohesion, and outright disrespect of your professional time. You may choose to accept that slap to your face (signaling that it's okay to do that to you), but there's nothing unprofessional about rejecting the attendance and rightfully criticizing the organizers for their rudeness.
Others acting professionally is the best outcome for those who do not do so.
This bit stood out to me as the main thing that's probably at least rationally explainable:
> Why did RustConf leadership go along with this decision and not protect the speaker? Why wasn't Rust leadership notified of the time period in which to change the decision?
which feeds from:
> A person in Rust leadership then, without taking a vote from the interim leadership group (remember, JeanHeyd was voted on and selected by Rust leadership), reached directly to RustConf leadership and asked to change the invitation.
I can easily picture the RustConf leadership believing that the person from Rust leadership was either operating with full knowledge of the leadership, or would be communicating with them.
I've grown to really like Rust over the years, but this was very much despite the Rust fanatics, not because of them.
Now that ChatGPT has come along, I find it much preferable for coding assistance than dealing with the Rust fandom. "Why are you bothering with all this FFI stuff? You should just rewrite all your dependencies in Rust!" shudder
Disagreement in technical development is highly valuable... alternative points of view should be prized and inspected, not ostracized. Quashing alternate views and opinions is a sign of a small intellect and/or a narcissistic personality disorder.
For the good of the Rust community, there needs to be some transparency on who exactly did what and those people who deviated from Rust leadership rules need to apologize. It will probably be very uncomfortable for those individuals, but too bad... get over yourselves... you screwed up... you should try to make it right.
There is probably no salvaging this current situation, but a description of what happened, mistakes made, and an authentic apology would go a long way. If folks can't own their mistakes, they need to evaluate their character and consider stepping aside... although, if folks don't understand what they did was wrong, they are probably incapable of real introspection (see comment above about narcissistic personality disorder).
To those Rust leaders who felt uncomfortable with Keynote speaker's probable topics of address... and decided it was okay to let your discomfort lead to this disgraceful outcome... shame on you. You need to take a good look in the mirror and learn some scientific history (remember, it's computer SCIENCE): scientist who use politics to quash alternate theories and views almost always acted from narcissism and almost always harmed scientific progress. Your actions are probably harming Rust.
I don't at all mean that the people involved then are at fault, instead: It created structure where Rust community expects Rust leadership to be coherent, close-knit and well connected with the community. It also expects pretty top heavy governance.
I think that is fragile and prone to personality drama when the project grows and the connection with community becomes impossible. A more loose organization would be better. Leaders at the top then don't expect they can steer the project much, teams are independent, the whole thing chugs on with loose governance.
Modern corporate culture expects control, "control of the message" and control of everything. Here we have to release control, it's contrary to other goals of the open source project.
Other communities either try to actively hide problems, or handwave them as "boys will be boys shrug".
In short: gates are there for a reason.
I think it's a confluence of factors:
1) Open source is more about interpersonal collaboration than it ever has been. The lone hacker throwing tarballs -- or patches -- over the fence is dead. Open source projects now more closely resemble "real world" software projects: a team of engineers using collaborative tools, working toward a defined shared vision with management and oversight. Major projects no longer follow the BDFL model, instead using incorporated entities like the Linux Foundation to direct development replete with boards and committees, leading to more "office politics" in how major decisions get made. A tradeoff for the greater continuity and community input a foundation provides.
2) Open source is more diverse than ever before, and becoming more so. More diversity means more perspectives coming to the table.
3) Fully 25% of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ. Among hackers that number is higher; it's likely a majority of late Gen Y or Gen Z hackers are queer. And a significant fraction -- again, perhaps even larger than previous generations -- are neurodiverse. With these identities comes greater awareness of intersectional issues, and greater awareness of oneself as a member of certain classes. Pretending that this is irrelevant to software work -- hsistorically, predominantly a white male dominated pursuit -- is a fool's game. There are going to be struggles and clashes as members of different classes assert their grievances and call each other out.
In short, this kind of "drama" is a growing pain of open source becoming a real movement that invites and incorporates diverse voices. We'll muddle through it and move on.
Participative leadership, otoh, is a pain. Every topic is a tug-of-war. Every decision has a significant party that disagrees and is unhappy with the outcome. Every ego flourishes. Even the serene will feel poised and entitled to raise endless issues. There's a general lack of perspective and very few people celebrating what has been accomplished. All milestones are muddied by buts and ifs and people feel like shit.
Yet in every disagreement lies opportunity. Multiplying successes is the heart and soul of teamwork. That's why participative groups are better because worse is better. I hope the Rust team doesn't lose perspective and keep, as before, working hard to drive such a great language, toolchain and open community forward.
Another thing that rubs me the wrong way: "lack of Black representation". So here's the question: is somebody actively suppressing Black applicants, or are there simply no Black applicants?
If it's the former, obviously that's a huge problem. But I suspect it's the latter and if that's really the case then this seems like people basically rebelling against an objective reality they can do nothing against, but still make a drama over it. If there are literally no black people who want to do things X and Y, how is that even a reason to feel bad about stuff? Same way as you won't find many Japanese golfers in, say, Italy. There simply are not enough people out there with the characteristics you are focused on that do the things you feel they should feel more represented in. Nothing you can do.
EDIT: And before I keep receiving replies that are COMPLETELY OFF-TOPIC, my question to any reader or commenter is this: where do we draw the line on what should the Rust Foundation do when relating to world-wide social injustice problems? Many people seem to think that it's a trampoline to achieving social justice in the world and I strongly disagree with that stance. Let's keep our goals realistic and compartmentalized; there are other organizations out there that fight injustice as their main objective. Rust Foundation is not that.
There isn't a conference where I don't hear about a LGBTQ person not being offended by so and so.
Then you have the politics of who gets to set out the true vision or be a chair at this or that committee.
If you're serious about programming, you just stay away from both of these. Being a language expert is pretty irrelevant anyway, it's just some ego-boosting in case you can't be successful at your business domain.
Really? Which golang conference canceled an already invited keynote speaker because someone was feeling "uncomfortable"?
How many Python, C, C++, C# related conferences did so?
Genuinely curious, just to establish a baseline.
What will happen next ?
I do not want to pass judgment on either side or the claims made, but simply note this feels awfully similar to the way I’ve seen people treated at big corporate jobs when rival senior leaders go to war.
Is it that BDFL-based governance just works better, or do people have higher expectations from Rust community than from, say, Linux one?
Bless your heart. The modern world is tame and blissful in comparison to the world of the 90's. Then, most projects could be individually maintained and so treated their drama with public forks of source code and shrieking on mailing lists. We who lived through that remember the ejection of Theo from NetBSD and the resulting fork of OpenBSD, the XFree86/Xorg fork, the gcc/egcs fork, emacs/xemacs, the list goes on and on.
Today, most major maintainers are employed by name brand corporations to do their work, which highly constrains the amount of drama to "stuff that doesn't embarrass your boss". So board-level end-arounds like the linked article is all we get. It used to be much more personal.
I believe these must've been Oppenheimer's words
I'm having trouble finding it. Can anyone link this post?
Preferably at least 50% women.
Event organizers need someone who can think through all the angles of decisions made and how it affects attendees and the communities being represented. The fact that a group made up of logical thinkers couldn't foresee this (or maybe they did and just don't care), is sad.
Is his role significant enough that his departure from Rust will force Rust leadership to fix their internal problems?
Is it role significant enough? Yes. Will it force a fix to the problems? He was the leadership. And they lost other big figures in the past to this kind of shenanigans without change. So probably not
No, which is mentioned in the blog post that caused the OP's resignation:
"As the Rust Foundation had trouble with its trademark rollout and the Rust Project presented itself as the capable group that can do the right thing, I find myself in the opposite situation here. The Rust Foundation has handled the grant work with utmost grace, respect, and professionalism for myself and Shepherd’s time. Contrarily, the Rust Project deigned to effectively pass several mandates down through an opaque process that affected me, while refusing to air to-this-minute unknown grievances with the direction of the Compile-Time Midterm Report."
The people with a crab or the electric zig on their social media profile thing are all the same and will end up being disappointed the same way at some point
Don't fanboy, stay critic and reevaluate your tools needs whenever possible
Are we to surmise that some people in the Rust leadership felt that the speaker was invited because of their race/skin color, and objected on this basis?
Or is it less dramatic than that -- simply that some people in leadership felt that the technical content just wasn't good enough, and the author of the article we're reading can't bear someone being judged on technical merit?
Either way, to put it in simple terms, I think we're reading an article from someone on the woke/progressive side complaining about the actions of the other side, right?
Perhaps it's actually this article (a complaining article with bizarre overly emotional language) which is evidence of problems with Rust's leadership community and the decision being complained about was reasonable?
* it’s a language and technical thing so human emotions and feelings don’t matter HTFU
* there’s a race and diversity aspect and anything that has to do with race and diversity offends me HTFU
Or some variant.
These are people doing stuff they’re passionate about. You may be an end user and don’t care about the internal politics, but for these folks it’s a group of humans working together with all the emotional complexities of such things. It’s more like a job for them than a technical project - with all the HR issues those entail. If you’ve ever worked on a standards effort it’s even more the human complexity roller coaster than a job. Add in they’re a bunch of socially maladjusted nerds, and the thresholds for drama are lower and the ability to navigate is even worse.
So, I think empathy for those who are hurt and their reasons isn’t uncalled for. Hearing the other side would be useful too.
On the race and diversity side: having a black person give a key note at a conference of this technical depth would be good. Arguing it shouldn’t matter doesn’t consider black engineers in a field where there are no peers like them that are visible. In your life where you’re surrounded by people like you everywhere you go it’s likely hard to understand directly, but as a nerd remember when you were in middle school and you just wished for one other person who loved assembler as much as you. That scratches the surface of the feeling of exclusion minority engineers feel - except it didn’t end in middle school, it happens every day in every interaction. Then when someone dares say “hey yeah I get you,” they get shouted down for “making it political,” which sounds an awful lot like “I don’t like black people standing up for themselves” to black peoples ears - further isolating them. I’m sorry you find that inconvenient and you feel like it shouldn’t matter. But as the person who doesn’t fit in and is made to remember that in situations and discussions like this, it’s bound to hurt. Hence, hence the emotions of hurt and betrayal on display.
And all the people who immediately started accusing rust of being "woke" are equally at fault here--don't think for a moment that I'm on your side. This whole thread is a disaster.
How did we get here in the first place that people seem to have religious beliefs over a language feature and want to scream at other people that they're heretics (and see the wailing and moaning in the Go community over generics for another example).
All of you, grow the goddamn fuck up, please.
Ngl, that looks like teen drama.
Really poor leadership, it seems there wasn’t even an attempt at mediation, or a vote, or anything.
The post claims that THERE WAS a vote, and that vote was to give the person a keynote talk... that was somehow rejected by the Rust Project... as the blog post asks at the end, how the heck can someone just say to the Rust Leadership, your vote is just void as I don't like the person or the talk?! How is that possible? Is the Leadership vote just accepted if the top dog likes the result, but not to be taken seriously otherwise?? How do people actually accept this kind of bullshit? If you are in the Rust Leadership, do you just accept being just a token like that? With your votes being completely ignored unless it aligns with the real power broker?
Or sometimes, yes, you end up exposing your organization as the cabal of racist authoritarian illegitimate corporate-sellout puppetmasters that it actually is.
But I mean... I don't see strong evidence of the latter, unless there is more to the backstory than I gleaned from the process above, which is:
1. No non-white person has ever given a keynote at RustConf (according to the linked "Why I Left Rust" post)
2. This one was going to be that.
3. But then the conference organizers canceled it, in a ham-fisted way.
4. But also, the topic was controversial, in the sense that at least some stakeholders may have felt "this kind of compile time reflection will definitely not be added to Rust in the foreseeable future"
So... it is absolutely understandable that the Meneide was highly irritated by the way it was handled, and ended up declining to present at all.
But did the Rust organization "disgrace" this expert in the field? Did Rust act as a "cruel, heartless entity"?
I will concede the late rejection (of the talk as a "keynote") was "unprofessional", but... was it "vindictive"? That implies the organization wanted revenge for something... what?
It's not clear to me after clicking and reading for almost an hour. But it seems to be consistent with the pattern of the various entities around Rust stepping on their own dicks. I'm reminded of the Rust Foundation taking out full-page newspaper ads like "IMPLEMENTING A CRYPTO PONZI SCHEME? DO IT FASTER IN RUST!" and then actual Rust core team people were like ":fuck-you-emoji: :barf-emoji:".
I would be perhaps relieved that they are apparently making a significant effort at reforming their governance (https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3392) were it not for the fact that one of the authors of that PR is the author of the post we're discussing here, who just quit the Rust project entirely. :grimace-of-regret-emjoi:
1. Dude gets invited to do a keynote.
2. Dude gets his keynote invite withdrawn because some members of the rust team were "uncomfortable" with the content of dude's blog. The content which was technical and not of the standard Twitter/cancellation variety.
3. Second Dude leaves rust leadership because he seen how the rust community treated first dude.
Alternatively, look at the Go community and leadership. The Go team discussed generics and eventually implemented them although leadership and the community was often against it. They certainly didn't cancel keynotes or speakers that were pro-generics.
Any project with such people in it would succeed despite of them, not because of them. It's sad to see a project burdened by egos and bureaucracy.
But other than that, rust is just a "modern ADA", nothing more. It cannot easily get interfaced with existing UI API either. Having verifiable code is a niche thing, it is very important, but most programmers don't need it.
Not to mention that rust is generally more difficult to read than C, and a language will always fail to be largely adopted if its learning curve is too steep. At least in C++, you can write code that resembles C, so it's still approachable to beginners. Not in rust.
I wish rust was easier to learn and had a syntax closer to C, while retaining its secure features. It has too many weird specific features and syntax that are too alien. A big reason python is popular is because it retains this "C style" and is so easy to deal with. Rust is the opposite of that.
Especial the combos of * and []. And it's full of tiny gotchas what is width of type char? What is UB? Why is it segfaulting and so on?
Sure to C trained eye it looks normal, but to a Rust trained eye Rust looks normal.
C++ does better in some ways, and much worse in others (i.e. the incredibly verbose language, the Turing complete templates, the documented standards that take years to be implemented by any real compiler). Both languages are excellent for their problem space, but terrible for beginners.
Rust isn't verifiable code, the language is far from formally verified. Just one level down into the standard library you'll find tons of unsafe{} blocks and other performance related trickery that invalidates the idea of pure verification. It does verify more things, like ownership, that other languages like C++ ask you to do yourself (i.e. remember to use move() because the compiler won't tell you if you don't) but that's just a drop in the bucket of program verification. It also produces better programs, in my opinion; the logs of programs written in other native languages quickly end up full of failed assert()a and memory corruption related crashes still happen to me on a weekly basis. Rust programs have their flaws (for example, being completely unable to deal with memory exhaustion from a language perspective) but I see a lot fewer Rust crashes and bugged our programs than any other language in that space.
I also reject the notion that Rust is hard to read than C. It's more verbose, for sure, but that same complexity is still present in all of those "simple" C programs. You can just use mut for every variable and reassign it, you don't need to do all those functional operations or shadowing that you see in many Rust code bases. You can't ignore Result or Option types like you can in C, but in C fork() can still fail regardless of whether you're forced to deal with it or not, integers are still cast regardless of explicit casting, and all of the hidden assumptions about structs, pointers, and lifetimes are still present, regardless of whether you write them down or not. C lacks the ability to express complexity you're supposed to know, but that makes it more difficult to read correctly, not easier. The biggest issue with Rust readability is the alternate syntax inside macros, but there are plenty of preprocessor statements that do very much the same thing. Microsoft had developed some very extensive frameworks that are completely strung together by preprocessor macros exactly because the language was too limited to do what they wanted (but they couldn't afford to invent a better language, yet).
I don't think Python is C like at all. It's a scripting language without static typing so it can't really get too complex in the first place. Syntax wise, I'd group is closer to PowerShell than to C. Where it can, it does insert complexity (lambda functions, list/dict comprehensions, object oriented design) but it's relatively simple because you don't deal with memory allocation, pointers, or concurrency yourself.
You may be interested in Zig. It seems to be to C what Rust is to C++. The language isn't completely finished yet, but it's getting there. It features many modern language features in a language that is very C-like, with a potential solution for the allocation problem built into the language standard.
(I don't agree with flagging either)
I'm actually really glad to see this sort of stuff be aired in the community, and I hope it strengthens the Rust community and makes the language stronger. I really hope that Rust gets greater adoption. The syntax with lifetimes is a bit painful, but everything else is really amazing for making super fast code when needed.
My guess is that it wouldn't have conquered every arena of computing outside of desktop computing like it has.
Fact of the matter: our entire industry is never taught how to professionally communicate, and these constant drama fests are the manifestation of immature communication skills, across the board, our entire industry.
I have being part of rust community since 2013, I have seen lots of oddities over the years in this community. While it is inspiring to see such a dedicated and passionate community it is also upsetting to see same community kill off its own members based on disagreements and inability to carry any sort of constructive discourse.
Conference organizers sucked at communication, both internally and with the speaker.
But the speaker doesn't take the affront in stride, instead choosing to make a stink on Twitter, complain, swear about a ruined weekend, and call people racist. Not the kind of professionalism I would expect from a prospective keynote speaker.
JeanHeyd race-shamed their way right onto the main stage for a global tech conference? I can't imagine why anyone would take offense to that agenda. Yes, must be related to a blog post about compile-time reflection.
To me this was a great and necessary decision.
Did I get that right?
More empathy is welcome (from the keynote person, too). Instead of giving up, let's try to improve things and avoid blaming instead. Blaming is not the best way to improve things, even if it hurt you.
Input: Presentations on some topics from some people.
Output: Fuzzy logic here right ?
I'm actually working on an app for organizations to make clear, fair, and transparent decisions systematically so things like this don't happen.
Programmers are control freaks.
If you don't let yourself to reach into things and flip bits in the machine's memory, that's going to boil over somewhere.
It would have been interesting, to write about who and what topic was chosen as a replacement as well. I guess, I can understand not wanting to have to do much with people, who for not justifying reasons demote a speaker, whom one thinks highly of. It probably raises the question of what is more important to oneself. The project or the other people involved in it. Apparently the project was not important enough.
This blog post has a feel of creating more drama though. The person considers themselves important enough, that people may wonder why they left Rust. Well, normal people leave and when people ask, they answer. Possibly in detail, possibly a canned answer. If people really want to know, they can ask. Making it a public announcement has the drama feel to it.
I get this feeling often with rather publicly well known projects. Supposedly prominent people who are so kind to donate their time to the cause, but at a hickup leave the project and write a drama blog post or worse tweet or something. Seemingly making us think, that they are a great loss for the project. Well apparently their priorities were different. More about the people or prestige of working on the project than the actual project, which they might even be harming with their drama blog post.
And then that section:
> I also felt the weight of the context of the decision. JeanHeyd isn't just a recent grant recipient of the Rust Foundation. JeanHeyd has important history with the Rust project.
> It was JeanHeyd who called Rust out for having no Black representation among Rust conference speakers. Rightly so, as both the Rust organization and the conferences had little to no Black representation.
> When I saw an organization that not only could act so coldly to an expert in the field, but also to one who was a vocal critic of Rust's lack of diversity, it was hard not to see the additional context.
> Systems have memory and biases. If the people that make up the system don't work to fight against these, they are perpetuated.
No, no, no. Firstly, no explanation, what JeanHeyd actually did for Rust. Nagging about lack of diversity OK, but did they make suggestions for people to invite? Or was it just complaining? I would not call it "important history" then. Complaining about diversity or the lack of is easy. Did they do anything themselves to change it? And why the racism? What inherent qualities does JeanHeyd ascribe to "black" people? And what significant contributions did JeanHeyd make?
I am for diversity, but it needs to be based on actual merit and not just that stupid "Oh we got no blacky, lets invite one, then we are good!". Make it a reasonable choice! Look for the talent and invite it, not because of some skin color ideas. Make sure you do not fall into bias avoiding other ethnicities because of who they are. But also make sure not to overlook greater merit, because you haven't ticked a bock on your skin color check list yet. If a "black" person is the best fit, choose them. If not, then choose someone else. Don't friggin base it on color. If you base these things merely on color of the skin, you are opening the doors for the unpleasant crowd, who will argue, that a person did not get into their position by merit, but by skin color. You don't want such crowd, so don't attract them with such argumentation.
> As my buddy Aman pointed out, the context that this would have also been the first keynote by a person of color at RustConf should not be lost here.
And the value in that is? Just to be aligned with ideology? Or some racism behind it?
As a viewer I want a good keynote. I don't care what the color of that person is. Why do you make it a color question? What does it have to do with color? This kind of argumentation makes me think, that they are actually more racist than others. It is all so forced, it is no longer authentic. Let it be done in authentic ways. And again, don't argue on the basis of skin color, otherwise you are just as racist as the guy who rejects a person on the basis of skin color.
In some situations one can argue on the basis of additional diverse cultural background being brought into a situation, group, company, etc. It needs to have something to do with the subject at hand though. Say for example a teacher in a primary school. There it could make a difference to have a person with different cultural background, to teach the children more things and make them aware of different culture. It is an argumentation one can follow. But just arguing: "We don't have 10 'black' people at our conference yet." is very weak and ethically slippery terrain.
Why can't we just focus on code and the brilliant work from JeanHeyd rather than politics? The Servo post was a reminder of how it used to be.
Is this an accusation that the change was made on racial grounds? Otherwise I fail to see why mentioning it.
If we can just all get on the same page about this, we'll be able to figure out who it's appropriate for us to hate, as levelheaded software engineers who never let emotions cloud our judgments.
This whole post really is a first world problem and the issue at had is as great as the great explosion of the ant hill in the back garden, which almost no-one cares about.
Programmers want good stable languages that are a joy to work with. Everthing else but this can take a hike.
tl/dr: "The key message in this text is a call for accountability following the decision to downgrade JeanHeyd Meneide from keynote speaker at RustConf due to disagreements with his blog post. The decision was perceived as disrespectful and cruel, lacking in appropriate organizational procedures. This has highlighted a larger systemic problem within the Rust organization and prompted the author's resignation. They call for a full investigation, a greater focus on accountability rather than diplomacy, protection of individuals from such unjust actions, and the implementation of safeguards to prevent similar incidents in the future."
"But it was just a downgrade. I shake my head at people that say things like this. Clearly, they are not used to treating people - let alone experts in the field - with respect. "
It was actually just a downgrade - and using terms like 'cruel' lacks proportionality.
It's a bit petty, especially for these kinds of public grievances over very personal, pedantic kinds of things.
Obviously what Rust did was 'not good' - these things happen all the time - and they need perspective and context.
All this huff and puff from people who take themselves a bit too seriously, maybe to the point of arrogance - we're professionals not artists, and that means 'making sausage as best we can'. It's all sausage, nothing is perfect, toes get stepped on - roll with it - that is the sign of maturity and confidence. If there is a systemic issue take that up.
Paradoxically it's these kinds of public slap fights over that make me wary of being engaged with a community, it's too much Kardashian.