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Comment by dsacco | Hacker News Reader

The Rust Evangelism Strike Force is a huge turnoff to the language. It's gotten to the point where we can't have reasoned discussions about C++ or C, let alone about their merits, without a newly enlightened user coming in and trying to direct the conversation to Rust.

It's really okay to have a future where C++ and Rust are both popular, widely used languages. I'm happy to acknowledge the merits of Rust as a language and even talk about them without inserting it into every conversation about low-level computing.

I'm sure the language designers and core developers don't actively endorse this behavior, but somewhere along the way it became a core part of the culture. This world domination shit has to stop.

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Their entire selling point is that c is dangerous and rust is safe. It sort of creates an adversarial relationship.

That said, while it might be annoying to serious c programmers, they aren't really the intended audience. It's new programmers that matter. Or people who bounce between languages anyway.

> "The Rust Evangelism Strike Force"

Instant classic

I think it was coined by http://n-gate.com (mentioned in HN a few times last month), but I can't be sure.

What I do know is that a) it's hilariously on point b) Google search now autocompletes on it for me.

FWIW, the behaviour is not just not endorsed, but actively disendorsed, e.g. the code of conduct (which applies to the Rust-team-run venues) includes "Respect that people have differences of opinion and that every design or implementation choice carries a trade-off and numerous costs. There is seldom a right answer.", and /r/rust has a "No zealotry" rule. Both of these are enforced in their respective spaces, and both of these have existed for years: they're not a reaction to the recent RESF meme.

It's... harder/less-defensible to enforce codes of conduct/rules like these in third-party spaces, but Rust people still do often call out incorrect assertions/ridiculous comments. Someone not familiar with the community may not recognise that the people doing the calling out are actually "prominent" voices.

This is like the evangelists' attempt to distinguish "safe rust" from "unsafe rust": it's a distinction without difference. "The community" isn't just the inner circle of official Rust team members and evangelists and their particular forums where they can enforce any policy as aggressively as they like. For better or worse, "the Rust community" will necessarily be bigger than that if/as Rust grows.

My view is that Rust risks a similar track as Haskell if the community continues to grow in the way it has recently. It's not a healthy community, outside of the circles you note. Quite the opposite--I view it rather as being fairly toxic.

I don't understand what exactly you're disagreeing with. I was strengthening "I'm sure the language designers and core developers don't actively endorse this behavior", and also mentioned how those people do try to keep discussions truthful and relevant outside those spaces.

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