does anybody have thoughts on the Hare programming language
@Lady Barely any:
I like the ideas it's working with and the design-space it's aiming for,
I like that it is genuinely small-amount-of-code-to-support-its-features -- I can compile its full stack (i.e. including the assembler) on an android phone from sources.
(Needed a bit of modifying -- I'm still holding a vague intention of asking if that was the correct solution and share findings with them, I SWEAR--)
I think that distinguishes it in real ways from Zig, and gives it a real niche that it is aiming for and might well be valuable in. Or might be just a small group that is creating its own mildly-self-indulgent progamming AU of "technically coulda done this 20-40 years ago".
@Lady I am lightly skeptical of Drew DeVault's skill and self-discipline as a healthy community leader. I have limited evidence of this -- there is this on the mailing list where one of the maintainers steps down specifically over an (unspecified, and I have not speculated) "profound disagreement with Drew DeVault about what is and isn't appropriate behavior for a leader (or any prominent member) of a FOSS community":
https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare-users/%3CDEYK306CXS5Q.RKZTX5AT170V@turminal.net%3E
and this interaction with a mildly easy-to-aggression newcomer (Pre-dating that stepping-down. I can across it searching for an error I got while compiling):
https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare-users/%3C0ae5bc83-2c3f-4c1d-999c-f46ca6bdd712@app.fastmail.com%3E
(In particular I think the quick, passionate-chirping responses, and the timestamps showing the speed vs. how long he would have had to wait for someone to chime in with an imo more appropriate response, are what reflect badly on him in this interaction.)
@gaditb @Lady To me that second link shows poorly on person that asked the question. They got few hints that platform is not supported. That was ignored. After firm restating of the fact, that user escalated it and blocked responses. (I'm not part of the community. I just started evaluating the language - that is how i found this thread).
@platlas @Lady Sure, it shows poorly on the person asking that question.
But being a community moderator -- in particular, being a community moderator who is the BDFL and so the person resppnsible for setting the vision and tone of the project, and for mediating conflicts in the community -- gives a much higher standard for your behavior, and in particular you should be able to make a good-faith effort to de-escalate a social interaction even with a stubborn person not in the community.
DDV's response, ' What does the "W" in "WSL" stand for? ', was sent <1 min after the repeated refusal to accept the answer.
It was sent passionately, dismissively, and in an attempt to get a dunk in -- the most charitable intepretation is that he was trying to shut down the conversation so that it didn't keep going in loops on the mailing list.
I'm not saying that as a person he shouldn't have felt that, but that as a community moderator he shouldn't have sent that.
@platlas @Lady He could have held his tongue for 45 minutes and had faith in his community that they could respond more charitably -- and that faith would have been rewarded! A community member was actively writing a more elaborated response!
There are also ways to shut down a conversation that would have been more de-escalatory and more respectful. That is part of the job, and part of the power-set, of a community moderator.
He could have (probably best after there's a charitable, thorough response from the community) gone "Hey, this topic looks like it's going in a loop -- this question has had an answer and to make sure we respect the time and attention of the other people on the mailing list, I'm going to ask that this discussion end."
(Or if he was emotionally tilted for whatever reason at that moment, totally fine, he could have noticed that and stepped back and let (or asked) another community moderator to send that and keep an eye on possible follow-ups.)
@gaditb @platlas The “you cannot discuss Windows or macOS on the mailing list” thing is a bit of a red flag to me in general. Of course the goal of it is to reduce mailing list noise by filtering out platforms which the development team has no interest in supporting. But this is a limitation of the mailing‐list development model where every message has to go to everyone. The fact is that the project has no interest in supporting use‐cases outside of its own prescriptive scope. This level of paternalism implies a software community which does not trust its own users to make their own determinations about engineering decisions.
@platlas @gaditb The difference between computer science and software engineering is that sofware engineering involves compromises. The job of the engineer is to evaluate compromises and make a determination on which ones are most workable for solving a particular problem. If an engineer makes a determination on a compromise, like “I think it would be good to use Hare, but I would need to do it on WSL”, and you reject that determination out of hand, what you are saying is that you don’t respect them as an engineer. You disrespect them as a professional; you are saying you don’t believe in their ability to make their own determinations. That may be warranted in some cases, for example if somebody makes the decision to outsource important aspects of their work to AI. But it should be a judgement of last resort. A healthy community assumes that participants know what they are doing and are qualified to make their own determinations about whether something is a good idea.
@platlas @gaditb what i am suggesting is that they do not trust their users to do that moral calculus on their own. of course there are moral reasons not to want to use Windows, but there are also moral reasons why one might have to use Windows. when i talk about engineering being a discipline of compromises, this includes moral compromises. and i am calling Hare paternalistic because they do not provide a space for people to go “okay, i am aware of the ethical concerns here, but i have evaluated things in the context of my particular situation and this is the lesser of two evils”. instead, they have decided that their analysis must apply to every situation, and you must go outside the community if you encounter a situation where their analysis does not apply. this does not give me confidence that they will be good at tactfully navigating other situations where their analysis‐in‐general does not match specific users analysis‐in‐particular
@Lady @platlas That's assuming that everyone agrees they're doing software engineering, in that way, no?
But you can have a healthy community around doing software hobby-hacking (or whatever like a model rocket club is), or software amateur-art, or software whatever-the-equivalent-of-a-wood-shop-is.
I think your objection is reasonable as an argument that they're not a healthy community of software engineers, but they could be a healthy community of another type (even if they might use words differently).
@gaditb @platlas well, if you are developing a programming language that is not suitable for engineering that is a good thing to know, but my assumption was that they did intend Hare to be useful for engineering, and thus the community of users would include engineers and need to respond appropriately to engineering concerns
@Lady @gaditb Sometimes it is not only about engineering, sometimes people have also morals outside of that. (Like with AI and influence on climate change etc.). Another thing is that they do not hinder anyone on using it on other platforms, just not providing support. Are you suggest that they should provide support there?