Comment by diggan
10 months ago
> And then he can't help himself. After being so reasonable, he throws shade on Rust. Shade that is just unfortunately, just false?
Many discussions online (and offline) suffer from a huge-group of people who just can't stop themselves from making their knee-jerk reactions public, and then not thinking about it more.
I remember the "Filesystem in Rust" video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiPp9YEBV0Q&t=1529s) where there are people who misunderstand what the "plan" is, and argue against being forced to use Rust in the Kernel, while the speaker is literally standing in front of them and saying "no one will be forced to use Rust in the Kernel".
You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true.
I personally don't know how to deal with this either, and tend to just leave/stop responding when it becomes clear people aren't looking to collaborate/learn together, but instead just wanna prove their point somehow and that's the most important part for them.
If you watch that YouTube link, you'll see the same guy Ted Tso'o accusing the speaker of wanting to convert people to the "religion promulgated by Rust". I think he apologised for this flagrant comment, but this email shows he hasn't changed his behaviour in the slightest.
His email seems very reasonable to me (the thin-blue-line comment is a bit weird though). To me the problem are that some Rust people seem to expect that the Linux maintainers (that put in a tremendous amount of work) just have to go out of their way to help them achieve their goals - even if the maintainers are not themselves convinced about it and later have to carry the burden.
How many times will this need to be said: the Rust maintainers have committed to handling all maintenance of Rust code, and handling all breakage of their code by changes on the C side. The only "burden" the C maintainers have to carry is to CC a couple of extra people on commits when APIs change.
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> "the thin-blue-line comment is a bit weird though"
In US, "thin blue line" is a colloquialism for police officers who typically wear blue and "toe the line." You should not be downvoted/shadowbanned/abused for your post, IMHO.
> Ted Tso'o accusing the speaker of wanting to convert people to the "religion promulgated by Rust"
Given the online temper tantrum thrown by marcan, Ted Tso'o's comment seems totally reasonable, regardless of one's opinion of Rust in the Linux kernel.
Ted gave that rant 6 months ago, and it was in fact unreasonable if you look at the details of what they were discussing.
You're trying to use Marcan's ragequit to ex-post-facto justify Ted T'so when it's literally the other way around.
> tharne 4 minutes ago | parent | context | flag | on: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
>> > Ted Tso'o accusing the speaker of wanting to convert people to the "religion promulgated by Rust"
> That seems totally reasonable. Putting aside the technical merits of the Rust language for the moment, the Rust community suffers from many of the same issues currently hobbling the Democratic Party in the United States. Namely, it often acts like a fundamentalist religion where anyone who dares dissent or question something is immediately accused of one or another moral failings. People are sick of this nonsense and are willing to say something about it.
It's really interesting that every time I open a thread like this, countless people come out swinging with this claim that Rust is totally this religion and cult, while the rest of the thread will be full of C evangelism and vague rhetorics about how nothing like this ever works, while actively contributing to making sure it won't this time either.
99% of insufferable Rust vs. C interactions I've come across it was the C fella being the asshole. So sorry, but no, not very convincing or "totally reasonable" at all.
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Quite frankly, if I had the realization that despite assurances to the contrary, that my contributions to a project had been sabotaged for months or even years up to that point, I would have also had a hard time keeping a smile on my face.
This is ultimately what this drama comes down to. Not if Rust should or shouldn't be in the kernel, but with kernel maintainers' broken promises and being coy with intentions until there is no other option than to be honest, with the reveal that whatever time and effort a contributor had put in was a waste from the start.
It seems like the folks who didn't want Rust in the kernel will be getting their way in the end, but I had better never hear another complaint about the kernel not being able to attract new talent.
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[flagged]
> The same people community clutching pearls
This is an unfortunate typo because your meaning is completely lost.
If your claim is that individuals are being hypocritical then you may have a point. Especially if you can produce examples.
But if you mean community vs community then you have simply bought in to the religious debate which isn’t interesting.
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We have used that video as an exercise in how not to achieve change. Assuming everyone is acting in good faith, the presenter missed the opportunity to build consensus before the talk, Tsu unwilling to budge a bit, but most of all the moderator unable to prevent the situation from exploding. This could have been handled much better by each of them.
In contrast to the parent: yes, the presenter says „you don’t have to use rust, we are not forcing you“ but he fails to address the concern that a change they introduce would error downstream and someone else had to clean up afterwards.
>In contrast to the parent: yes, the presenter says „you don’t have to use rust, we are not forcing you“ but he fails to address the concern that a change they introduce would error downstream and someone else had to clean up afterwards.
He did not fail to address that concern. And then Ted shouted him down for 2 minutes such that he couldn't get 2 syllables in to respond.
> We have used that video as an exercise in how not to achieve change
I'm not disagreeing with anything you said, just curious who the "we" you're referring to here, are you a kernel developer or something similar?
> Assuming everyone is acting in good faith
Why would we assume that Ted repeatedly using strawman fallacies, bleating appeals to emotion and acting like a victim...all the while shouting people down...evidence of "acting in good faith"?
When you shout over someone like that you're nothing but a bully.
> he fails to address the concern that a change they introduce would error downstream and someone else had to clean up afterwards.
Because that "concern" was a strawman. It demonstrated that Ted either did not understand what the presenters were asking for, or simply didn't like others asking him to do something, because he's very important and nobody tells him what to do.
As has been exhaustively explained by others in previous HN threads and elsewhere: the Rust developers were asking to be informed of changes so that Rust developers could update their code to accommodate the change.
Ted loses his shit and starts shouting nonsense about others forcing people to learn Rust, and so on.
> but most of all the moderator unable to prevent the situation from exploding
When someone is being abusive to others, the issue is never "the people on the receiving end are not handling it as best they can."
Further: did it occur to you that Ted's infamous short temper, and his "status" as a senior kernel developer, might be why the moderator was hesitating to respond?
Imagine how Ted would have reacted if he was told to speak respectfully, lower his voice, and stop talking over others. Imagine how the army of nerds who think Ted's behavior was acceptable or understandable.
I don't understand how abusive bullies like Ted are allowed the privilege of being a senior kernel developer. This feels, in the end, like the fault of Linus, for allowing abusive maintainers to maintain their grip.
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I'm not a rust or c developer.
> As has been exhaustively explained by others in previous HN threads and elsewhere: the Rust developers were asking to be informed of changes so that Rust developers could update their code to accommodate the change.
I don't understand why you don't see this as "a really big deal". The C developers make a breaking change. They fix all the C code, then they write an email to the Rust devs explaining the changes.
Then the process of making the change stops, and the C devs have to wait for a Rust dev to read the email, review the C changes, fix and test the resulting rust, and check in the update. (including any review process there is on the rust side.)
Is it hours, days, or weeks? Are there 2 people that know and can fix the code, or are there 100's. Do the C devs have visibility into the Rust org to know its being well run and risks are mitigated?
This is adding a hard dependency on a third party organization.
I would never dream of introducing this kind of dependency in my company or code.
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> Why would we assume that Ted […] acting in good faith?
Because he has done more for Linux than you ever will. Therefore, he gets all the benefit of the doubt, and you are assumed wrong
> "no one will be forced to use Rust in the Kernel"
Is this true, though? One reason for this altercation seems to be the basic circumstance that in Linux kernel development, if there is a dependency between two pieces of code A and B, the responsibility to keep B consistent with changes to A lies, in order, with anyone proposing patches to A, the subsystem maintainer for A, and finally the subsystem maintainer for B. If B is Rust code, such as a binding, then that's potentially up to 3 people who don't want to use Rust being forced to use Rust.
They're not "forced to use Rust". They are maybe forced to work with Rust developers of whichever subsystem needs to be updated, but that would always have been the case with the C developers of whichever subsystem needs to be updated too.
I don't think that is a correct interpretation. As I understand it, Linux does not have a notion of someone being obliged to help facilitate a patch, especially if it's not the narrow case of a maintainer and a patch to the subsystem they are in charge of. What do you do if you are a C developer modifying system A, your change has implications for system B which includes Rust code, and none of the Rust developers involved with B care to volunteer time to draft the necessary changes to Rust code for you?
The same situation of course also arises between C-only subsystems, but then the natural solution is that you have to go and understand system B well enough yourself that you can make the necessary changes to it and submit them as part of your patch. In that situation you are "forced to use C", but that's a free square because you are always forced to use C to contribute to Linux code.
>They're not "forced to use Rust". They are maybe forced to work with Rust developers of whichever subsystem needs to be updated
So if the maintainer of subsystem X can be forced to work with the rust developers of their own subsystem, then that rust developer just got promoted to co-maintainer with veto power. Effectively that's what they'd be, right? I can see why maintainers might not like that. Especially if they don't think the rust dev is enough of a subject matter expert on the subsystem.
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It's absolutely not true, it's one of the lies being told by Rust 4 Linux people. The end goal is absolutely to replace every last line of C code with Rust, and that's what they will openly tell you if you speak to them behind closed doors. That's why there is always an implicit threat directed at the C maintainers about job loss or "being on the right side of history". The Rust 4 Linux people are absolutely attempting a hostile takeover and nobody should believe a word that comes out of their mouths in public mailing lists when they are contradicting it so consistently behind closed doors.
> You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true.
This is like probably 80% of people and fundamentally why the world is a hellscape instead of a utopia.
Maybe try not shoving things into people's faces and you'll find them to be much friendlier.
Nah, that's not the case. Not for that 80%. And even if they are friendlier, being willfully ignorant with a smile and a nod doesn't make it better.
The speaker doesn't understand the audience question and doesn't respond to it.
The audience member points out that they shouldn't encode the semantics into the Rust type system because that would mean that refactoring the C code breaks Rust, which is not an acceptable situation. The speaker responds to this by saying essentially "tell me what the semantics are and I'll encode them in the Rust type system." That's maximally missing the point.
The proposal would cause large classes of changes to C to break the build, which would dramatically slow down kernel development, even if a small handful of Rust volunteers agree to eventually come in and fix the build.
> You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true.
I have to say that I used to be excited about Rust, but the Rust community seems very toxic to me. I see a lot of anger, aggression, vindictiveness, public drama, etc. On HN you not infrequently see down voting to indicate disagreement. These clashes with the Linux maintainers look really bad for Rust to me. So bad that I'm pretty convinced Rust as a language is over if they're no longer banging on the technical merits and are instead banging on the table.
I'm sure there are great things about the community. But I would encourage the community to have higher standards of behavior if they want to be taken seriously. The Linux team seem like they're trying to look beyond the childishness because they are optimistic about the technical merits, but they must be so tired of the drama.
> I have to say that I used to be excited about Rust, but the Rust community seems very toxic to me. I see a lot of anger, aggression, vindictiveness, public drama, etc.
I had the same impression.
Why all this drama is 90% of the time around Rust people?
Because many of them are still relatively young. There is nothing wrong with youth, but it can contribute to over-zealousness.
Also, for many of them, Rust is the first systems language they've ever touched. And that fact alone excites them. Because now they can "dream big" too.
But they have bought into the whole C/C++ are by default insecure and therefore garbage. In their mind, no mortal could ever write so much as a single safe function in those languages. So their points of view are always going to be based on that premise.
What they fail to recognize is that an operating system kernel, by virtue of the tasks it has to perform- things like mapping and unmapping memory, reading/writing hardware registers, interacting with peripherals, initiating dma transfers, context switching, etc.- have effects on the underlying hardware and the runtime environment; effects that neither the type system nor the temporal memory safety of Rust can model, because it happens at a level lower than the language itself. Rust's safety guarantees are helpful, but they are not infallible at that level. The kernel literally changes the machine out from under you.
They further fail to appreciate the significant impedance mismatch between C and Rust. When one language has concepts that are in fact constraints that another language simply does not have, there is going to be friction around the edges. Friction means more work. For everyone. From planning to coding to testing to rollout.
So you have well-intentioned, excited, but still self-righteous developers operating from what they perceive to be a position of superiority, who silently look down upon the C developers, and behave in a manner that (to outsiders at least) demonstrates that they really do believe they're better, even if they don't come right out and say it.
Just read the comments in any thread involving Rust. It is inconceivable to them that anybody would be so stupid or naive as to question the utility of the Rust language. To them, the language is unassailable.
The petty drama and social media brigading on top of it, along with the propensity to quit when the going gets tough, it's pretty easy to see why some people feel the way they do about the whole thing.
A programming language is not a religion. It is not a way of life. It is a tool. It's not like it's a text editor or something.
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The kernel is not exactly known for being drama-free, and this drama didn't start with "Rust people", it started with Christoph.
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Because that’s all your brain are capable of recalling, the ones with Rust-tagging.
With just a google search away you can dismiss your claim of 90% but you don’t want to do it because you only believe what you want to believe.
> The audience member points out that they shouldn't encode the semantics into the Rust type system because that would mean that refactoring the C code breaks Rust, which is not an acceptable situation. The speaker responds to this by saying essentially "tell me what the semantics are and I'll encode them in the Rust type system." That's maximally missing the point.
You have to encode your API semantics somewhere.
Either you encode them at the type system and find out when it compiles, or you encode it at runtime, and find out when it crashes (or worse, fails silently).
I disagree, they didn't straight out pointed this, because this is nonsense. Semantic changes can break anything, even if it's some intermediary API.
There are more breakage in rust due to the type-system-related semantics, but ideally a C dev would also want their system to break if the semantics aren't right. So this is a criticism on C..?
So following this argument, they don't want Rust because C falls short? Nonsense.
edit: The speaker did mention that they didn't want to force limited use on the base APIs, but that for a great deal of their usage, they could have determined fixed semantics, and make intermediary APIs for it. So this was not about limiting the basic APIs.
Here are the software requirements (inferred from the commenter):
- (1) the C code will be refactored periodically
- (2) when refactored internally it can break C code, but the change author should fix any breaking in C
- (3) Rust must not break when (1) happens
It's the Rust devs' job to meet those requirements if they want to contribute. It looks in the video like they don't understand this, which is pretty basic.
> You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true.
I think that's part of the gag.
"These people are members of a community who care about where they live... So what I hear is people caring very loudly at me." -- Leslie Knope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=areUGfOHkMA
>"These people are members of a community who care about where they live... So what I hear is people caring very loudly at me." -- Leslie Knope
that's a very healthy and - I feel - correct attitude towards this kind of criticism. I love when wisdom comes from stupid places.
Its quite a well-known wisdom. I think someone in one of Nintendo or Sony's studios has said it too, in the form of: a complaint is worth twice a compliment.
Satisfied customers will tell you they think your stuff is great, but dissatisfied customers will be able to hone in on exactly where the problem is.
You can even extend this to personal life: if someone tells you your shabby car doesn't fit with the nice suits you wear, you can either take it as a personal attack and get irritated, or take it as feedback and wash your car, spruce up the upholstery and replace the missing wheel cap. In effect they helped you take note of something.
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who asked him to fix Rust bindings or even look at the Rust code? Seems like an emotional nut.
> You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true.
It's called a strawman fallacy, and like all fallacies, it's used because the user is either intellectually lazy and can't be bothered to come up with a proper argument, or there isn't a proper argument and the person they're using it against is right.
If an honest alien says "we don't want to convert humans to our religion" that means you can have whatever religion you want. If a dishonest alien says it, it might mean "we don't want to convert humans because we are going to kill all humans", it's selectively true - they aren't going to convert us - and leaves us to imagine that we can have our own religion. But it's not the whole truth and we actually won't be able to[1].
An honest "no one will be forced to use Rust in the Kernel" would be exactly what it says. A paltering reading could be "we want to make Rust the only language used in the Kernel but you won't be forced to use it because you can quit". i.e. if you are "literally shoving facts in someone's face" and they don't change then they might think you are not telling the whole truth, or are simply lying about your goals.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paltering
And yet, you are bringing made-up analogy that suits you to the discussion.