Migrating from GitHub to Codeberg ⚡ Zig Programming Language

[castholm]

@matklad

That being said, I feel like a culture of “inoffensive speech” sometimes gets carried forward too far, as there’s naturally a moving overtone window with respect to which words are acceptable to express “I strongly dislike this”, a treadmill of politeness. I also think it’s healthy to call a spade a spade, and that, in addition to speaker pledging to mellow their words, it is imperative for the listener to not use “tone is wrong” arguments to distract from substantial criticism. It is a fact of life that we all are sometimes wrong, and that getting called out on being wrong is inherently unpleasant, no matter the wording, but is better for everyone long-term.

(Rephrasing a comment I posted in a different community.)

This. I wish more people understood how tiresome tone policing is. Cultures where every word in an exchange must be chosen with micrometer precision to avoid making anyone feel even the slightest bit uncomfortable or personally attacked feel very alien and ridiculous to me, because that’s not how real people communicate in real life. Real people don’t express frustration (or any strong emotion) in a careful matter-of-fact manner that avoids causing hurt feelings. Real people express frustration by getting angry, using offensive language, calling people names and otherwise violating social codes they would follow in polite conversation. (And if they then later on feel that they went too far in the heat of the moment, they apologize and try to make amends.)

That said, I’m a bit of two minds about the (original) post. I agree 100% with the sentiment that Microsoft/GitHub has rotted from the inside out and that most people who currently work there should feel shame, and I think it’s refreshing to see it expressed so bluntly.

But on the other hand, there’s only really one thing I expect of core members when they speak on behalf of the Zig organization and it’s that they don’t make the lives of Zig users more difficult or make it embarrassing to talk about Zig. Being blunt and honest is great, but posting unnecessarily inflammatory blog posts or getting involved in dumb shit-flinging drama on social media only results in people forming negative associations with Zig and does not help its current users in any way.