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Maybe I'm just old, but I want to focus on engineering outcomes, not "trolling." If that means "can't take a joke," that's fine, but also "haha I'm just joking" is often what people use to try and hide behind their actual intentions.

I don't even work on Rust anymore, and in fact started this thread with a criticism of Rust. There are lots of good criticisms of Rust. There is a difference between "this criticism isn't good" and "every criticism is an offense."

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Yes! I think Fil is great so far but I think as he gets a bigger audience he should, well, consider that and focus on clarity a little more than humor. You can see Andrew’s growth in that respect.

Rust folks, this whole thing is a thread about Zig’s new feature - not even a memory safety-related feature! - and we cannot spend the whole damn time talking about Rust.

Steve, even you - I don’t believe I have ever seen you say an unkind word. But have you considered that it may be unkind to have written more than half of the words on a thread about a Zig performance feature?

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> But have you considered that it may be unkind to have written more than half of the words on a thread about a Zig performance feature?

Inherently? No! I commented specifically because I was really glad to see this post. This work that Zig is doing is very good, and I wanted to call that out, in part specifically because I am on "the other side" in whatever sense that is. Why would it be unkind for kind words to be coming from me?

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I do see that you often have kind words for Zig and some attempt to more precisely define the differences.

What I mean is a bit different though, it’s that these arguments you get drawn into end up drowning out any real discussion of Zig’s progress. I don’t think that’s your intent but it is frustrating. I should be clear, I don’t think it’s wrong for you to defend yourself from accusations etc., I just wish it didn’t look like this.

I wonder how much better HN would be if they took a page from other forum systems that said “you know what, this whole branch of stuff should be moved over here and renamed so the original topic can move on”.

Sorry, all this may be unhelpful, I don’t know where the line should be, I’m just thinking out loud about the problem.

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Ah, I see what you're saying. Oh, trust me, it's very frustrating for me as well. It is especially frustrating in these specific circumstances because I know that Ron and I will not come to an agreement, so...
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> It seems Rust people just can’t take a little criticism, even when it comes from a clearly trolling language

I think this is a case of people who can dish it out but can't take it. As far as I'm concerned if you troll someone you should expect to get trolled back.

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