Comment by pron
2 days ago
> This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig.
Then why is it weird if you're saying the same thing? Different programming languages appeal to programmers with different tastes, and so it makes sense that some programmers would be drawn to language X and dislike language Y, while others would be the opposite.
Maybe it's even the other way around: different cultures and tastes give birth to different languages and community norms around them.
This is a good take. I was interested in accomplishing my goals and had an interest in both Rust and Zig. Going in, Rust was already proven to meet my needs and I was exploring Zig. Everything being centered around anti-Rust and “better than Rust” without meeting my needs made it a non-starter, it got in the way of discussing the languages themselves.
When was this? I've only seen this "anti-rust" vibe in the past few weeks, guess triggered by the Bun rewrite. Zig people usually will tell you to use the right tool for the job over shilling the language or that you don't need to use it yet (if you want a stable language/documentation) the language will be there if you want to check it in a few years.
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I have definitely witnessed very specific cultures around languages I really like that I generally just don't vibe with. The author creates something brilliant, but there's a cadre of early adopters that shape a political and somewhat egotistical community that rubs me wrong. Once I spot them, I don't engage with the community. And it's not even that I disagree with the politics they espouse... I'm usually on the same page, but it's just kind of exhausting and a little over the top.
I'm old-ish though and grew up apolitical, so I'm sure it's just a me problem.
In the case of Ruby, the contrast between the early community pre-Rails and what came after is astounding. Partly comes down to the personality differences between Matz and DHH, I guess. I loved the community pre-2005 and had no interest in engaging with it afterward (although I used Rails for a few personal projects).
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The year is 2026 and the only thing about coding that matters anymore is taste.
Edit: Thought about scare quoting “taste”
Pretty sure you could have said the same in 1986 and I know for sure you could have in 2006. Not sure why you think people having different tastes is new.
People also stopped coding in 2006?
It's not necessarily the thing that matters most to executives, who are often those making decisions, but it's always been the thing that mattered most to programmers (at least those of them who have any emotions or strong preferences toward programming languages).
Different tastes are aguable the only reason why different programming languages exist. They're all Turing complete after all.
Always have been. When something is your primary tool, you develop strong opinion about it. Code is notation, helping to describe solutions. Not everyone thinks and solve the same way, so strong preferences is not unusual.
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