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Comment by egorfine | Hacker News Reader

I'm happy for all developers programming in their favorite programming languages. Programming for over 30 years I have seen entire ecosystems come and go.

What I don't get is the burning need for Rust developers to insult others. Kind of the same vibes that we get from systemd folks and LP. Does it mean they have psychological issues and deep down in their heart they know they need to compensate?

I remember C vs Pascal flame back in the day but that wasn't serious. Like, at all. C/C++ developers today don't have any need to prove anything to anyone. It would be weird for a C developer to walk around and insult Rust devs, but the opposite is prevalent somehow.

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Who is insulting others and where?

Based on this, and many other similar threads, it's the anti-Rust zealots insulting Rust users.

> What I don't get is the burning need for Rust developers to insult others

... where?

Rust developers have corporate backing and therefore feel superior even though the language is an ugly OCaml knockoff.

They have the backing to doing the right thing, because their language is memory safe and this everytime means absolutely secure. Irony off.

IMHO, Rust is proof that many programmers prefer over-engineering and unnecessary complexity with obtuse syntax over sound language design. My personal theory is that they subconsciously like to keep their craft esoteric and "magic." The importance of readability, simplicity, and KISS just isn't taught enough nowadays.

The general problem is that there’s a lot of activists online nowadays. I used to call myself an activist, but now it’s a dirty word which I associate with obsessive behaviour, harassment, cancellation attempts and being generally obnoxious with the purpose of achieving some goal.

I think it’s a combination of religion decreasing in importance and social media driving people mildly nuts. Many undertakings are collecting “true believers”, turning into their religion and social media is how they evangelize.

Rust is a pretty mild case, but it still attracts missionaries.

So, the people are different, Western society’s different and social media’s giving everyone a voice while bringing out the worst in them.

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