Slashdot Mirror

A lot could be learned by observing what the developers of the Rust programming language project do when running their project.

They're dealing with a large project that covers a complex domain, a huge amount of code, and many developers scattered across the globe.

The first thing to do is to use git, and perhaps something like GitHub. This will allow your developers to collaborate using a free and open source version control system.

Next, you need a Code of Conduct to prevent social injustice from negatively affecting the project. A Moderation Team is tasked with ensuring that everyone is tolerant, and any intolerance will be ruthlessly stamped out.

Changes go through a request for comments process. This keeps everything organized and everybody on the same page. Bugs have detailed bug reports and discussion.

GitHub pull requests are used to integrate the changes. All changes are reviewed by somebody else. If you're a lucky contributor, you may even have your contribution reviewed by none other than Steve Klabnik zerself! If the review passes then their automatic integration/merging bot will merge the pull request into the master branch.

Your project doesn't have to follow the exact same approach that the Rust project follows, of course. But I think that there are a lot of things that any large software development project could learn from how the Rust developers work. Their approach has scaled to over 1,700 contributors!

When other projects run into design problems like this, they usually have what's called an "ergonomics initiative". For example, the Rust programming language project has started an ergonomics initiative recently. In the case of Rust, their goal is "to improve productivity and bring down the learning curve by streamlining features and glossing over irrelevant details." Maybe Fitbit needs to do something similar when it comes to their devices.

Wait, what? if lambdas are shit programming why did almost every language add them as a features in the last 5-10 years? including c++.

I think you have mostly missed my point, Scala has research oriented roots, and it you're not ok with that, fine. But if it makes you a more efficient programmer, it might just be worth the effort of picking up.

Also, this is what I mean by pattern matching:
http://docs.scala-lang.org/tut...
https://doc.rust-lang.org/book...
https://developer.apple.com/li...

The largest issue facing these sorts of efforts isn't the storage method, but rather deciding what is worth storing. There is a lot of information out there, and it needs to be prioritized so that the most important information is stored first and most durably, increasing its chance of survival.

Let's suppose that nearly all of humanity has been destroyed due to some global incident, like a large meteor strike or the dust from a huge volcanic eruption that blocks most sunlight.

In such a case, what information would we want the survivors to have? The answer is simple: the Rust Code of Conduct.

With this information they could rebuild society, and it would be free of intolerance, injustice, hate and patriarchy. The survivors could be whatever gender they feel like at any given time, sometimes changing throughout the day. And all critique would be structured.

Only after we have stored information like that should we start to consider storing additional information.

https://www.rust-lang.org/es-E...

A browser nobody uses written in a language nobody uses.

I don't use rust. Never even bothered to look at it.
But your post was so trumpian I figured it was probably alt-facts.
So I spent 30 seconds checking with google.

Looks like lots of companies are using rust in production.

Some people use it.

https://www.rust-lang.org/en-U...

Would this incident still have happened if this software were written in the Rust programming language?

As always, the answer is "who knows"? Programmers are creative people who can introduce a bug to a program written in any imaginable language. That said, Rust does have monotonic instants, so that would presumably help.

Would the Rust programming language help improve the security of this kind of software? According to that web site, "Rust is a systems programming language that runs blazingly fast, prevents segfaults, and guarantees thread safety."

They're not actually building a new browser engine, much less calling it Quantum. This is an internal project name (project, not product!).

If I understand correctly, they've been experimenting with Servo, a browser engine they've built using the Rust programming language. Rust aims for speed, concurrency and safety, which is highly desirable but hard to achieve on modern (multi-cpu/multi-core) devices using conventional programming languages.

Now their plan is to gradually replace bits and pieces of Gecko (the current rendering engine) with parts from Servo. This is a process they already started and which will take some time to complete. Some of the benefits are already present in their nightly browser builds, others at least sound very promising.

If you want to learn more about the project and/or the resulting transition, take a look at these articles (the post at softpedia is quite misleading IMHO):
- https://medium.com/mozilla-tech/a-quantum-leap-for-the-web-a3b7174b3c12#.s4zttcbxe
- https://billmccloskey.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/mozillas-quantum-project/

(I hope this helps to clear up some of the confusion)

It doesn't prevent leaks, not even in safe code. this function can and will happily leak anything your heart desires. Why not mark this unsafe? Because you can always implement forget by constructing a self-referencing reference-counted pointer. Memory leaks are not considered unsafe in Rust.

On the other hand, whole nasty classes of bugs related to buffer overflows, stack smashing and data races cannot happen, which makes it harder to attack from the outside than C.

That's not true because of the unsafe escape hatch and raw pointers. It's an improvement over C/C++ by having a safe default, but you can still shoot yourself in the foot.

On the other hand, whole nasty classes of bugs related to buffer overflows, stack smashing and data races cannot happen, which makes it harder to attack from the outside than C.

That's not true because of the unsafe escape hatch and raw pointers. It's an improvement over C/C++ by having a safe default, but you can still shoot yourself in the foot.

Well the Rust runtime is provably bug free. The proof is pretty trivial: it doesn't have a runtime.

Judging from this, it actually *does* have a runtime, in two forms: partly in form of some routines (used by some programs), partly in form of compiler transforms/IR operations (used by *all* programs) that securely inline some sensitive tasks into the program in a way that a library can't. Just like, for example, some Lisp implementations inline low-level memory operations even into higher-level programs to speed them up without sacrificing safety. So the problem is effectively the same: a finite set of primitive operations has to be securely implemented. But that is feasible, certainly more so than telling C programers not to make a mistake whenever they're using pointers.

... "I'm using Rust, I don't have to think about memory anymore".

Rust is a low level language that forces you to think about memory. It's like a modern C. You can see for yourself how much of the Rust manual deals with memory management. In particular this page shows how the Rust stack and heap are the same as in C: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book... . The thing Rust has over C is a type system that eliminates common classes of bug.
 

Discrimination becomes impossible when you let the Rust Code of Conduct control your actions. That's what I do. Before I do anything, I carefully consider how this action conforms to the Rust Code of Conduct. If I have even the slightest feeling that I may be violating the Rust Code of Conduct in some way, no matter how small, I do not engage in the action. Thanks to the care that has been putting into crafting the Rust Code of Conduct, I can live my life knowing that as long as I follow the Rust Code of Conduct exactly that I will never engage in discrimination, racism, ageism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or any other form of intolerant and hateful behavior.

Then there is the matter of "We follow the Rust Code of Conduct." which essentially codifies coddling, censorship and intolerance.

I didn't think you were right, so I checked the Rust Code of Conduct for myself.

In there I saw this:

We will exclude you from interaction if you insult, demean or harass anyone. That is not welcome behaviour. We interpret the term “harassment” as including the definition in the Citizen Code of Conduct; if you have any lack of clarity about what might be included in that concept, please read their definition. In particular, we don’t tolerate behavior that excludes people in socially marginalized groups.

You are absolutely right!

The same paragraph that says "we don’t tolerate behavior that excludes people" also states that they "will exclude you from interaction"!

That is extremely hypocritical and contradictory. They say that it's wrong to exclude people, but then threaten to exclude people! And they do this all in the same paragraph!

This policy also contradicts with the part of their CoC that says they are "committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all". The CoC itself violates this policy that it contains, because it makes the threat of exclusion, and threats are contradictory to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment.

Are you sure that the Rust CoC is meant to be taken seriously? Are you sure it isn't a joke?

I think that the Rust programming language project refutes what you're saying. If we look at its list of contributors, we can easily see based on their profile pictures that they're typically young white males. A small number may be male-to-female transsexuals. Yet despite having such a homogeneous, male-dominated contributor community, we see a huge amount of drama from this rather small community. It has gotten to the point where their code of conduct and their Moderation Team generate, in my experience, way more drama than they might ever hope to prevent! Just look at how these men overreact and downvote anyone at Reddit or HN or other sites who don't show 100% devotion to Rust. The drama the Rust community engages in is universal. It doesn't matter what the venue or discussion medium is, the moment they get involved there is instant drama. How do you explain this situation?

I think that the Rust programming language project refutes what you're saying. If we look at its list of contributors, we can easily see based on their profile pictures that they're typically young white males. A small number may be male-to-female transsexuals. Yet despite having such a homogeneous, male-dominated contributor community, we see a huge amount of drama from this rather small community. It has gotten to the point where their code of conduct and their Moderation Team generate, in my experience, way more drama than they might ever hope to prevent! Just look at how these men overreact and downvote anyone at Reddit or HN or other sites who don't show 100% devotion to Rust. The drama the Rust community engages in is universal. It doesn't matter what the venue or discussion medium is, the moment they get involved there is instant drama. How do you explain this situation?

I think that the Rust programming language project refutes what you're saying. If we look at its list of contributors, we can easily see based on their profile pictures that they're typically young white males. A small number may be male-to-female transsexuals. Yet despite having such a homogeneous, male-dominated contributor community, we see a huge amount of drama from this rather small community. It has gotten to the point where their code of conduct and their Moderation Team generate, in my experience, way more drama than they might ever hope to prevent! Just look at how these men overreact and downvote anyone at Reddit or HN or other sites who don't show 100% devotion to Rust. The drama the Rust community engages in is universal. It doesn't matter what the venue or discussion medium is, the moment they get involved there is instant drama. How do you explain this situation?

Why do technically-knowledgeable give their work self-defeating names?

Rust: Happens with iron as iron becomes useless red dust.

Gimp: (1) a derogatory term for someone that is disabled or has a medical problem that results in physical impairment.

LaTeX: Use two different alphabets to write a name! Inspired by the Greek word ÏÎÏ. Sorry, Slashdot can't display those characters.

Yeah. That's how Rust code is typically developed. Type out some random shit, see if it compiles. If it doesn't, change some shit around and try again. Keep doing this until the Rust compiler says that what you wrote is Rust code. It does this by compiling it without giving any errors. Since it's Rust, and Rust "prevents segfaults" and "guarantees thread safety" [citation here], if your code compiles then it's probably perfect and bug-free, I believe. That's the magic of Rust, as I understand it.

Would using the Rust programming language have prevented this? It is described as a "systems programming language that runs blazingly fast, prevents segfaults, and guarantees thread safety." It is also has "guaranteed memory safety" and "threads without data races".

For crying out loud! How long must this continue? We need to start using the Rust programming language and we need to start using it now! If you don't know what Rust is, let me inform you. The Rust web site describes it as "a systems programming language that runs blazingly fast, prevents segfaults, and guarantees thread safety." It has "guaranteed memory safety" and it has "threads without data races" and you get all of this with "zero-cost abstractions"! Rust doesn't just make programming safe. Thanks to its code of conduct the Rust community is a safe space free of intolerance and prejudice, too.

Essentially, Rust is what C and C++ should have been all along. This submission shows that we badly need what Rust offers. We need the safety of Rust, and we need it now! I don't think we really have any choice. We need to start using Rust for everything! It's the only way we can be sure that the software we're writing is safe and secure.

For crying out loud! How long must this continue? We need to start using the Rust programming language and we need to start using it now! If you don't know what Rust is, let me inform you. The Rust web site describes it as "a systems programming language that runs blazingly fast, prevents segfaults, and guarantees thread safety." It has "guaranteed memory safety" and it has "threads without data races" and you get all of this with "zero-cost abstractions"! Rust doesn't just make programming safe. Thanks to its code of conduct the Rust community is a safe space free of intolerance and prejudice, too.

Essentially, Rust is what C and C++ should have been all along. This submission shows that we badly need what Rust offers. We need the safety of Rust, and we need it now! I don't think we really have any choice. We need to start using Rust for everything! It's the only way we can be sure that the software we're writing is safe and secure.

WARNING! RUST CODE OF CONDUCT VIOLATION DETECTED!

Your comment has been detected as violating the Rust Code of Conduct.

Your comment does not provide a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all.

Your comment is mean or rude.

Your comment does not respect that people have differences of opinion and that every design or implementation choice carries a trade-off and numerous costs.

Your comment contains unstructured critique.

Your comment has been deemed to insult, demean or harass.

Your comment's spamming, trolling, flaming, baiting or other attention-stealing behaviour is not welcome.

YOU WILL BE REPORTED TO THE RUST MODERATION TEAM.

The latest development in the field of programming languages has been integrated support for Social Justice.

For example, the new Rust programming language has a very extensive Code of Conduct, enforced by the Rust Moderation Team.

Codes of Conducts and Moderation Teams are essential to ensure that a programming language properly supports Safe Spaces, Tolerance, and the other core tenets of Social Justice.

Larry, why is it taking so long for Perl 5 and Perl 6 to support Social Justice to the level that the Rust programming language does?

The latest development in the field of programming languages has been integrated support for Social Justice.

For example, the new Rust programming language has a very extensive Code of Conduct, enforced by the Rust Moderation Team.

Codes of Conducts and Moderation Teams are essential to ensure that a programming language properly supports Safe Spaces, Tolerance, and the other core tenets of Social Justice.

Larry, why is it taking so long for Perl 5 and Perl 6 to support Social Justice to the level that the Rust programming language does?

It uses ownership. It's not anything that can't be done in C++, but the difference in the compiler enforces it.

but rust is a far more "safe" language than Swift is.

Rust has been infected with cancer of SJW's and a stupidly crazy code of conduct. All the good developers will leave soon, driven away by the anti-meritocracists.

I'm no SJW; far from it. But Slashdot could do worse than to adopt at least some of those "Stupidly Crazy" Code of Conduct rules.

but rust is a far more "safe" language than Swift is.

Rust has been infected with cancer of SJW's and a stupidly crazy code of conduct.
All the good developers will leave soon, driven away by the anti-meritocracists.

Well that sounds an awful lot like what Swift is!

They both target into the same direction, but rust is a far more "safe" language than Swift is.

While Swift has already seen major adoption and use in the real world, we haven't seen that from Rust.

Quite on the contrary: https://www.rust-lang.org/frie...

And that page only contains the corporate users of rust. There is a really big community of free time rust developers as well.

Others have pointed out that C++14 and C++17 actually make much of Rust redundant.

That might be partially right, but C++ has lots and lots of backwards compatibility to very old concepts. C++ relies on the C preprocessor, which is very limited, on doing macros. Thanks to this you don't have scoped macros for example. In rust the macro system is done much later in the process, so that you can declare a macro inside a function, and after the } closing brace the macro scope ends!

There was recent discussion about Google adopting Swift for Android [slashdot.org]. IBM has also taken an interest in Swift [ibm.com].

Using swift for android would make sense as both android and ios are similar platforms, you likely want to write stuff for them in one unified language.

Swift is quickly becoming a universal language.

Swift may have lots of adoption but it is far away from being an universal language. It is limited by its compatibility kludges towards ObjectiveC which makes it particularly interesting for iOS developers who already know ObjectiveC, but outside of this environment it is of low importance.

The large number of developers proficient with Swift could contribute to Mozilla's code bases, rather than just a small handful of niche developers who know Rust.

The number of developers who know swift may be larger than the number of developers who know rust. But how many only are interested in developing their ios app, and that's it?

A modern web browser written in Swift would be much more useful than a web browser written in Rust.

Swift only has reference counting, nothing more. In fact, only thread safe reference counting. This is a major performance problem, while in Rust you have the choice between all memory models C/C++ have.

In light of this ruling, would the JavaScript and Rust programming languages be considered religions?

They aren't religions in the traditional sense, like say Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hindu and Wicca are.

But they aren't intentional satire either, like the FSM is.

Yet their adherents exhibit the same sort of blind, often illogical, devotion that we see from the followers of other religions.

JavaScripters have a holy book in the form of Crockford's "JavaScript: The Good Parts". They worship their saints, including John Resig and Node.js. They don't care how awful JavaScript's semantics are, or how limited its standard library; they're so devoted to it that they will use it anywhere and everywhere, especially when doing so is the worst idea possible.

Rustaceans study the absurd and contradictory Rust Code of Conduct, and base their entire existences around it. They idolize Rust's borrow-checker. They worship Rust developers like Patrick Walton and Steve Klabnik, as well as the Rust Moderation Team. Rustaceans will launch a downmod crusade against you if you don't glorify Rust in the discussion at Hacker News or Reddit.

So should JavaScript and Rust be considered religions? I would think they should, since their followers are actually seriously devoted, and not joking, despite the many contradictions and the complete idiocy we see surrounding such programming languages and their communities.

While the submission focuses on salaries and compensation within the corporate sector, what about the total lack of diversity we see within some notable open source projects?

Take the Rust programming language, for example. Despite its community having an intense focus on diversity and tolerance, and despite the project having one of the most stringent code of conducts around, and despite the project even having a Moderation Team to stamp out perceived injustice, why do we see so little diversity among Rust's contributors?

The extreme homogeneity of the Rust community is the exact opposite of what we'd expect, given how much effort and focus they put on diversity. We'd expect to see around half of the participants being women. We'd expect to see much more racial diversity. Yet we don't see any of that, and instead see severe uniformity.

Why do we see so little diversity among the Rust contributors?

While the submission focuses on salaries and compensation within the corporate sector, what about the total lack of diversity we see within some notable open source projects?

Take the Rust programming language, for example. Despite its community having an intense focus on diversity and tolerance, and despite the project having one of the most stringent code of conducts around, and despite the project even having a Moderation Team to stamp out perceived injustice, why do we see so little diversity among Rust's contributors?

The extreme homogeneity of the Rust community is the exact opposite of what we'd expect, given how much effort and focus they put on diversity. We'd expect to see around half of the participants being women. We'd expect to see much more racial diversity. Yet we don't see any of that, and instead see severe uniformity.

Why do we see so little diversity among the Rust contributors?

The lesson I think we need to take away from this is that all AI needs to follow the Rust Code of Conduct at all times. Teaching the AI to follow the Rust Code of Conduct is the first thing than AI researchers should do with the AI, in fact. Following the Rust Code of Conduct is the only way to make sure that the AI isn't a racist, misogynist, sexist, homophobic bigot.

Personally I love Rust, and love their Code of Conduct even more. Everything about the project is perfect, especially how they keep a detailed defect backlog and understand it's a bad idea to try and compile Rust itself with Rust, until everything is mature and ready.

However I'm probably going to get drunk and do a few lines of coke later and I get mean and bitchy when I do that. I'll probably even come back here and ramble on about hating Rust. When that happens, just ignore whatever claptrap I spout off about.

These are exactly the kinds of incidents that can happen when one doesn't strictly adhere to the Rust Code of Conduct. I've started using the Rust Code of Conduct for everything I do in my life, online and offline. Before I make any sort of a decision or take any sort of an action, I whip out my copy of the Rust Code of Conduct and confirm that my actions will not violate it in any way. I have printed out a copy of the Rust Code of Conduct and I keep it on my person at all times. I have another copy in my car, one at my desk, and several placed around my home in easily accessible locations. The last thing I want is to be somewhere without my Rust Code of Conduct! Some people say that it's dumb or that it wastes too much time, but I think they're wrong. Complying with the Rust Code of Conduct all of the time is something that I think is critical to living life in our modern age.

As an added bonus it creates 10,000 more exploits...

Servo is written in Rust, which eliminates the vast majority of C/C++/ObjC-style memory-mangling exploits up-front at compile-time. Don't get me wrong, exploits will still be possible (Rust lets you designate unsafe blocks of code, for instance, and some exploits aren't memory-related), but Servo will ultimately improve security for Firefox.

Mozilla is yet another victim of the so-called "social justice" ideology.

Contrary to its name, this ideology is not "social" in nature, nor does it include "justice".

There's nothing "social" about forcing highly subjective and even hypocritical codes of conduct on community members.

And it's not "justice" when an executive and long-time contributor loses his job just because of his views on marriage.

If you think I'm joking, just read the Rust code of conduct for yourself.

It says:

We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.

Yet just a few lines down from that it very hypocritically states:

We will exclude you from interaction if you insult, demean or harass anyone.

It's hypocritical and contradictory of them to state that they want to provide "a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all", yet they turn around and almost right away use a very unfriendly and unwelcoming threat like "We will exclude you from interaction".

The moderation policy even states that anyone could be "indefinitely excluded". That's also not not creating a "welcoming environment for all"!

To make matters worse, this punishment can be doled out arbitrarily by the moderators:

Remarks that moderators find inappropriate, whether listed in the code of conduct or not, are also not allowed.

And to make matters even worse than they already are, there's not even a way to publicly appeal the punishment! The moderation policy states:

Complaints about bans in-channel are not allowed.

It's a total lack of justice, as far as I'm concerned. Arbitrary judgment, arbitrary enforcement, arbitrary punishment, and no public appeal process all reek of injustice.

I'm continually amazed at how self-contradictory and self-defeating the Rust code of conduct is. It essentially states that they will engage in the very behavior they're saying not to engage in!

What I'm confused about is the lack of diversity we so often see there. Let's take the Rust programming language project as an example. It's a heavy user of GitHub, and it's no secret that the Rust project is very supportive of social justice. It's really gung ho about codes of conduct and it even has a team of mods. But when we look at Rust's contributors we see that they are nearly all young white males. So despite supposedly being one of the most welcoming communities that most encourages diversity, why do we see a near total lack of diversity? Why I have I seen so much more diversity in every other programming language or computing community I've ever dealt with over the past several decades, where they weren't at all obsessed with social justice and diversity?

What I'm confused about is the lack of diversity we so often see there. Let's take the Rust programming language project as an example. It's a heavy user of GitHub, and it's no secret that the Rust project is very supportive of social justice. It's really gung ho about codes of conduct and it even has a team of mods. But when we look at Rust's contributors we see that they are nearly all young white males. So despite supposedly being one of the most welcoming communities that most encourages diversity, why do we see a near total lack of diversity? Why I have I seen so much more diversity in every other programming language or computing community I've ever dealt with over the past several decades, where they weren't at all obsessed with social justice and diversity?

What I'm confused about is the lack of diversity we so often see there. Let's take the Rust programming language project as an example. It's a heavy user of GitHub, and it's no secret that the Rust project is very supportive of social justice. It's really gung ho about codes of conduct and it even has a team of mods. But when we look at Rust's contributors we see that they are nearly all young white males. So despite supposedly being one of the most welcoming communities that most encourages diversity, why do we see a near total lack of diversity? Why I have I seen so much more diversity in every other programming language or computing community I've ever dealt with over the past several decades, where they weren't at all obsessed with social justice and diversity?

This proves yet again that our only real option is to use the Rust programming language when writing software. Unlike pretty much every other programming language out there, Rust has a extensive code of conduct and a moderation team to enforce that code of conduct. Together these prevent racism, sexism, homophobia and intolerance from affecting software written in Rust.

This proves yet again that our only real option is to use the Rust programming language when writing software. Unlike pretty much every other programming language out there, Rust has a extensive code of conduct and a moderation team to enforce that code of conduct. Together these prevent racism, sexism, homophobia and intolerance from affecting software written in Rust.

This proves yet again that our only real option is to use the Rust programming language when writing software. Unlike pretty much every other programming language out there, Rust has a extensive code of conduct and a moderation team to enforce that code of conduct. Together these prevent racism, sexism, homophobia and intolerance from affecting software written in Rust.

This hypocritical attitude is getting to be a problem all over the place. It's not just Twitter.

For example, just look at the Rust programming language project. They have a very bureaucratic and tyrannical code of conduct. Beyond that, they even have a moderation team that will go after anyone deemed to have "violated" the code of conduct!

What I think we're seeing in cases like this are autists of one degree or another trying to "script" social interaction.

What I mean by that is that they're people who are used to working with software, and not so used to dealing with people. They wrongly expect that it's possible to control social interaction as strictly as one controls a computer.

It's like their codes of conduct are meant to be computer programs that a person executes whenever they want to participate in any sort of a community discussion. The codes of conduct try to take away the human aspect of communication, and replace it with something much more automated in nature.

Of course, social interaction is far too nuanced to be something that can be automated away like they seem to want to do.

I think the hypocrisy arises because they're unable to realize how inherently contradictory, and thus impossible, their goals are. You can't have free expression when people have to follow a script in order to communicate. You can't have a free exchange of ideas if anyone who deviates even slightly from the prescribed method of discussion is eliminated (by banning or moderation).

What makes it even stranger is that the Rust contributors are overwhelmingly white males. For all their talk about how important diversity is, they have one of the most uniform communities around!

I think that their extensive code of conduct has only served to make the Rust community less diverse. I think it may have helped drive away anyone who is different from the Rust norm, leading to the monoculture we see today.

This hypocritical attitude is getting to be a problem all over the place. It's not just Twitter.

For example, just look at the Rust programming language project. They have a very bureaucratic and tyrannical code of conduct. Beyond that, they even have a moderation team that will go after anyone deemed to have "violated" the code of conduct!

What I think we're seeing in cases like this are autists of one degree or another trying to "script" social interaction.

What I mean by that is that they're people who are used to working with software, and not so used to dealing with people. They wrongly expect that it's possible to control social interaction as strictly as one controls a computer.

It's like their codes of conduct are meant to be computer programs that a person executes whenever they want to participate in any sort of a community discussion. The codes of conduct try to take away the human aspect of communication, and replace it with something much more automated in nature.

Of course, social interaction is far too nuanced to be something that can be automated away like they seem to want to do.

I think the hypocrisy arises because they're unable to realize how inherently contradictory, and thus impossible, their goals are. You can't have free expression when people have to follow a script in order to communicate. You can't have a free exchange of ideas if anyone who deviates even slightly from the prescribed method of discussion is eliminated (by banning or moderation).

What makes it even stranger is that the Rust contributors are overwhelmingly white males. For all their talk about how important diversity is, they have one of the most uniform communities around!

I think that their extensive code of conduct has only served to make the Rust community less diverse. I think it may have helped drive away anyone who is different from the Rust norm, leading to the monoculture we see today.

https://www.rust-lang.org/down...

No downloads for anything other than x86/64 and x86/32. That's what I meant by that.

Sure, in theory, I could download the sources and recompile them for my platforms of choice. But having that as a task before I can see whether Rust is usable in my environment? No, thanks.

Are you the same AC that was posting FUD about Rust the other day? A bunch of the same baseless complaints and the same reference to a "moderation attack squad".

Don't forget that this is Rust code written by people who ought to know Rust better than anyone else; they designed the language after all! If they can't write non-buggy Rust code, then we shouldn't expect less-talented Rust users to be able to do any better.

Nonsense. Being an expert in a language says nothing about how well you understand or can implement a solution for a given problem. If anything, that GitHub page should give someone reassurance that the project is actively maintained, that bugs are filed and solved (nearly 14,000 closed issues versus 2,300 open).

It's also a big problem that there's only one implementation.

Nonsense. This is called a reference implementation. It's completely normal and expected for newer programming languages.

The syntax of Rust is unremarkable.

Nonsense. So you're upset they didn't go crazy and try to re-invent something as crazy as Ruby or Brainfuck? I don't much care for Python's syntax or handling of whitespace, but that's hardly a reason for everyone avoid Python.

It took them forever to get Rust 1.0 released.

Nonsense. This is completely normal for free and open source projects, where the 1.0 release is a big deal because it means the project actually works. Contrast this with commercial companies who usually toss a 1.0 on a product the first time it successfully builds. It took VLC 8 years to reach 1.0, but of course it also took 14 years for FFmpeg, the primary library which powers VLC, to reach a 1.0 release. Quite the fanfare was made when Wine reached 1.0, after only 15 years. Version numbers don't mean anything -- would you be happier if Rust pulled a Firefox and was on version 48 already?

The Rust community gives me a particularly bad feeling. They're rather tyrannical about enforcing their code of conduct.

Nonsense. So they have a code of conduct that you disagree with. Don't contribute to the project then.

But now be honest -- were you driven off by the "attack squad" for being a dick? That would certainly explain the repeated anonymous FUD you keep posting.