> Kinda wish the author would attempt to collaborate rather than write stuff like this and I’m too dumb for Zig’s new IO interface but, whatever, it’s their blog so they can do what they want.
Damn, Andrew Kelley really come across as a dickhead when taking any bit of criticism about his language, often painting them as bad actors trying to sabotage the language.
This isn't the first time he repeats this behavior.
EDIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=45119964 https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=43579569
> any bit of criticism about his language
I'm not even sure that it's criticism. I read it as a genuine open question.
At least in my experience, asking questions like this through GitHub issues or a mailing list are met with negativity. I don't want to post through a channel where I'll get a snide, terse response from a maintainer. I'd much rather post to my blog audience, who I find to be generally knowledgeable and friendly enough to already be following me. And if I found an answer, I'd post about it and explain what I learned in the process, linking from the existing post.
In a lot of ways, I think Andrew's response is exactly the sort of flavor of reply that I would have expected no matter what channel the question had been posed through, and that's exactly why I wouldn't have gone through those channels if I was the author. His reply didn't answer the question aside from implying it's maybe an issue, nor did it invite feedback.
Yeah, and his behavior in this LLVM discourse thread made me not want to ever try Zig: https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-libc-taking-a-dependency-on...
That all seemed pretty adult and tame. Maybe slightly stand-offish at worst. And I tended to agree with Andrew in that thread. A project like Zig is an absolutely massive undertaking. I can cut Andrew some slack. Not everyone is perfect all the time, and his behavior there was nowhere close to BS I have seen in other open source projects. Ahem, Linus.
Did you read until the end of the thread? I was thinking the same at first but only because it took awhile for the conversation to play out.
From my plain reading he didn't take time to understand the proposal before providing feedback. That's fine as far as being busy or miscommunication goes, it happens, but after it was pointed out he never apologized or offered more constructive feedback. Which again is fine, but I'd expect a technical leader to not isolate the maintainers of their most critical dependency. Clearly he gave them a terrible first impression.
I'm guessing you never tried Linux either
Just because a popular project leader is a jerk does not mean the way to success is to be a jerk too.
Sure, but the evidence suggests that a complete inability to deal with jerks is going to be very limiting.
Maybe for some people. But most people are not jerks and you can absolutely limit yourself to dealing with them only.
Unless you want to participate in your HOA or local government, then I can't see how to limit myself to dealing with only non-jerks.
That was not my takeaway from his comment at all.
Quite. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect someone to check the issue tracker before blogging and I don't think Andrew's response was at all problematic.
I'd say the only issue what the "too dumb, but whatever" comment.
That should have been removed and it would have been totally reasonable.
Edit: Oh actually, the author has another blog post titled "I'm too dumb for Zig ...". With that context, it makes sense and I agree it's a reasonable response. I'm sure other readers like me didn't know that context though.
Idk, Andrew's comment seems fair enough to me.
Andrew may be expressing frustration or dismay or annoyance in that statement, but he is not definitively "painting them as bad actors trying to sabotage the language". You are HEAVILY reading into his statement.
He only said he wishes the author would have taken a different approach. So what? Why does everyone have to jump in and start psychologizing or essentializing Andrew based on one paragraph?
Why does one paragraph have to say so much about who he is as a person? Even if it did piss him off for a few hours, so what? He's not allowed to wish someone took a different approach?
I tend to think Andrew Kelley is a great guy, not just technically but as a person. And I think that because I've listened to him talk for dozens of hours. I can guarantee you that that one sentence he wrote is not the beginning of a character assassination campaign against the author of this blog.
He made Zig because he wanted to put something good into the world and improve the state of software. How about we include that in our analysis of Andrew's character? I'll leave it to the reader to consider whether the multi-year full time dedication to Zig should be weighed more heavily than a personal feeling he had for two minutes that he expressed respectfully without attacking anyone's character.
From his "Open Letter to Everyone I've Butted Heads With":
> My friend - it's not personal. I care about you. I actually do value your opinion. I'm interested in your thoughts and feelings. I want to make you happy. I'm sad that I can't serve you better with my open source project. I want to. I wish I could.
> I'm hustling. I'm playing the game. I'm doing what it takes to make this thing mainstream and a viable, practical choice for individuals and companies. If you talk shit about Zig in public, I'm going to fight back. But I respect you. I see you. I understand you. I don't hate you. I would literally buy you a drink.
https://andrewkelley.me/post/open-letter-everyone-butted-hea...
Nothing wrong/strange in those posts.
In any case I've seen how communities treat the authors of important projects that touch their livelihood or habits to be unsurprised an author may lose it at times.
I know what you mean, but name-calling has got to be one of the worst ways to call for some decorum. It just leads to flame wars. (Be the change you want to see, and all that.)
EDIT I totally missed the context
Read the comment I replied to.
edit: np :)
My bad :)
Yea I think my post came off as insulting which I didn't mean at all (I particulary don't consider "dickhead" as insult but more a synonym for bad character)
I have nothing against him at all or his language (in fact I hope it further replaces C dominant position in embedded systems and low level programming), I just wish he toned down his passive attitude against criticism acting in good faith.
Interesting. I liked the candid honesty.
yup, he's also got a consistent history of aggressively disparaging and misinformed comments about go, fwiw