Comment by abenedic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abenedic | Hacker News Reader

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Regardless of the person's reaction, they do make a very good point. There is a weird thing that happens when you criticize Rust on HN or Reddit where lots of people jump in to prove that any criticism is invalid. I like Rust well enough. I like C too, I have my issues with both, but when someone does raise an objection it can be hard having people pile on them after.

A point of fact is that the two data structures are different. There was even an article on the front page today about how minor changes to data structures can dramatically impact performance.

Anyway, my main point is that there should be a space to discuss the relative merits and issues of languages without it resorting to petty fighting, which even you and the OP and the other commenter are engaging in.

Please everyone try to use the principle of charity when reading a post on this site. There is a good chance the person you are responding to has a reasonable background and isn't totally ignorant. Instead of playing on pedantry, try to understand where they are coming from and understand a one-off post on an internet forum is not the strongest argument they could make.

> There is a weird thing that happens when you criticize Rust on HN or Reddit

Can I ask where this impression came from? The original, now-downvoted comment that started this thread wasn't criticizing Rust, it was criticizing the article. If people disagree with that person's criticism of the article (which is itself not a criticism of C, and acknowledges as much), I'm afraid I don't see how that contributes to any perception that people are unjustifiably leaping to defend Rust.

> Can I ask where this impression came from?

Are you serious now? I mean you are very active Rust activist on both HN and Reddit and you exactly know what Rust Evangelic Strike Force is and where it came from. I've seen multiple threads on HN and Reddit where people do exactly what OP wrote. I don't know if it's denial or ignorance on your side or you are writing this with premeditation.

The "Rust Evangelism Strike Force" is a dumb meme (but I repeat myself) that gets used sarcastically, and was originally coined by people who were themselves critical of Rust. If you have links to instances of people doing exactly as OP wrote, please paste them here; I am mod of /r/rust, where we have had a "No zealotry" rule ("Stay mindful of the fact that different technologies have different goals and exhibit fundamentally different tradeoffs in pursuit of those goals.") since long before cat-v.org concocted the RESF, and I am happy to rein people in if their heads get too big. :)

As to whether my above question is serious, the answer is yes, because truth be told I see more people complaining about Rust Evangelism than I see instances of evangelism in the first place, to the extent that I wonder if that itself has become a meme by now.

> where we have had a "No zealotry" rule ("Stay mindful of the fact that different technologies have different goals and exhibit fundamentally different tradeoffs in pursuit of those goals.")

I've never wrote anywhere that you encourage that kind of behavior. There is a difference between encouraging and pretending that problem do not exist. Seems that you are just biased and what you are doing here is white washing a community you are part of.

> If you have links to instances of people doing exactly as OP wrote, please paste them here;

I would rather spend time with my family than searching whole HN and Reddit for obvious things that were mentioned here multiple times by multiple people but I've found couple of links fast (not for you, but for other readers) [1][2]. And this are only two examples that I've found fast. Those are examples of things that you surely have read and aware of. Another example is some Animats posts in some C++/Rust debate thread on HN in which he was describing his experience and technical details while criticizing Rust and was downvoted to hell.

Here you have another person writing same thing and dbaupp acknowledging that the problem exist [3].

This comments didn't come from vacuum and denying that problem exist will only make it worse.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/5fyhjb/golangs...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17088181

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14178950

Well, first let me take this out of the way: if plenty of people do what the OP was complaining about, I would welcoming he complaining about them, but not about people that didn't do it.

Now, I'm having problems understand what that Rust Evangelic Strike Force is, and what nefarious goals it could have. Do you have a pointer? (Also, is it a funny group?)

We're the Rust Evangelism Strike Force and we'll convince you to write more secure code!

It's fairly clear from the context of the comment he was asking about where the impression came from in this thread. I have no doubt he was interesting because he believes it is somewhat unjustified and self perpetuating, but if this thread is any indication, there may be some truth to that.

So, to restate the question clearly and unambiguously, what prior to kibwen's question lends someone to think this is a matter of Rust evangelists taking issue, and not the somewhat common HN interaction of someone calling out someone else for, in their eyes, misinterpreting or ignoring and aspect something and then denigrating it for that lack?

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