Rust is political?

[SiliconWizard]

I find this statement concerning:

Rust believes that tech is and always will be political

https://twitter.com/rustlang/status/1267519582505512960

[Stray Electron]

   Don't know who or what Rust is and don't care.  More nonsense (click bait) from another noisy Social Media company.

[james_s]

Everything is political to people that are obsessed with politics. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

[Nominal Animal]

Languages are hard (to me, at least), as it is always a discovery to find out what people actually mean! 

In this case, I went to wiktionary, to find out.

If they indeed refer to political as "concerning or relating to politics, the art and process of governing", then it definitely is an alarming statement: in the same vein as claiming all human interaction is just a struggle for control and power.

(As a counterpoint, I personally am not at all interested in controlling other people or having any power over them [beyond that we both agreeing that the intent of such interaction is to be mutually gainful, useful, and informative overall].  I have wishes, but being someone who is fully aware of their own beliefs and wishes quite possibly being inadequate/incorrect/wrong at this point in time, I have zero intent on forcing them on anyone else.  The only thing I occasionally try to "force" is getting an acknowledgement for the underlying reasons for them, and that only so that there is at least a possibility for a mutually useful result from the interaction.  I consider being proven wrong and having learned something new, a much better "win", than having happened to change someone elses opinion.  Life, interacting with other people, became much less stressful, and much more fundamentally interesting, when I finally learned and adopted this attitude.)

[eugene]

It's unfortunate when a public person or entity uses whatever notoriety they have to make a political statement. Doesn't matter if I agree with them or not. That's not the point.

Now I'm less interested in learning rust...

[rsjsouza]

Go woke and go broke I guess?

People use these languages for reasons other than their stance on social and political issues. Opening this door will eventually lead to capable people leaving the bandwagon, tired of the policing and censorship about nuisances. This is not a matter of "if" but "when".

These apparently innocuous and well intentioned initiatives already infected many technical working groups and organizations around the world.

[AndyBeez]

Rather than "politicial", they may have meant Rust is egalitarian. An open source language for all platforms. Or maybe the Rustlings are now versioning their woke manifestos on Github? A Rustling is a person who programs in Rust; and may also be one who grew up as Harry Potter super nerd?

My study interest in Rust is through Solana crypto smart contracts. Smart contracts are written in Rust and added as immutable links onto the Solana blockchain. Which makes Solana smart contracts... way more difficult to get right when compared with Ethereum's virtual machine smart contracts. ETH uses Solidity which is designed from the ground up to do smart contracts. Solana smart contracts grind rust lumps into shapes that kind of fit the function. But Ethereum's smart contract gas fees cost more than a real tank of gasoline, and SOL is real cheap. Hence Rust. And Cargo, the Rust package manager.

Go woke and go broke

Print that on the blockchain, as an NFT

[T3sl4co1l]

Whether you choose to accept/acknowledge it or not (see above), the fact that most everyone here lives in a modernized world economy, means everyone participates in the exchange of goods, resources and labor.  Which is to say... is political.

Indeed you have to go very far out of your way to truly avoid being political.  You could minimize that by running off into the wilderness and living subsistence.  Even that's not easy to do, as almost all land is claimed in some way, and so your use of that resource may not go unnoticed.

And anyway, not making a choice (see above) is still a political choice.  One that's very easily exploited by those who DO care about making political choices... and who have the means to implement their plans.

Tim

[Nominal Animal]

everyone participates in the exchange of goods, resources and labor.  Which is to say... is political.

Is it?  (This is a real question to me, not a rhetorical device.)

Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary, and Cambridge Dictionary all refer to the art and process of governing in the definition of political; they do not define it as just operating/acting within a governed society.

In other words, the dictionaries seem to me to define the term as related to defining the rules of a society, and not as related to operating within existing rules of a society.

[T3sl4co1l]

everyone participates in the exchange of goods, resources and labor.  Which is to say... is political.

Is it?  (This is a real question to me, not a rhetorical device.)

Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary, and Cambridge Dictionary all refer to the art and process of governing in the definition of political; they do not define it as just operating/acting within a governed society.

In other words, the dictionaries seem to me to define the term as related to defining the rules of a society, and not as related to operating within existing rules of a society.

Feels outdated to me, then.  The usual things that people would consider "political" include merely discussing topic related to the above; while the above definition seems to suggest only literal politicians do any politic.  Which is a bit absurd with respect to how I've seen the word used.

Or we might put it another way and say, -- much as the rules of the English language evolve as it is spoke -- so too the members of a society define the rules of it to varying degree, and so everyone is political by association -- not just because they wrote something down on a piece of paper some other people consider important.

Tim

[MK14]

Even C has a number of built in political things/statements.  Such as:

Code: [Select]

<<        ... Supporting far left
>>        ... Supporting far right
++        ... Profit
--        ... Taxes
UB        ... Declaring something to be like a politician
Int       ... Unfairly discriminates against floating point people
Double    ... Discriminates against unmarried Single people
For (..)  ... For support of a particular party/political aim
//        ... Comment or No Comment
? :       ... Are you Voting for me or Not ?
true      ... It is True
!         ... It is NOT True
exit      ... Exit Poll Results


[rsjsouza]

everyone participates in the exchange of goods, resources and labor.  Which is to say... is political.

Is it?  (This is a real question to me, not a rhetorical device.)

Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary, and Cambridge Dictionary all refer to the art and process of governing in the definition of political; they do not define it as just operating/acting within a governed society.

In other words, the dictionaries seem to me to define the term as related to defining the rules of a society, and not as related to operating within existing rules of a society.

Feels outdated to me, then.  The usual things that people would consider "political" include merely discussing topic related to the above; while the above definition seems to suggest only literal politicians do any politic.  Which is a bit absurd with respect to how I've seen the word used.

Or we might put it another way and say, -- much as the rules of the English language evolve as it is spoke -- so too the members of a society define the rules of it to varying degree, and so everyone is political by association -- not just because they wrote something down on a piece of paper some other people consider important.

Tim

Politics indeed happen in several subsections of the society where career politicians are not present (politics in the workplace, for example). Despite I think that politics are pervasive in our lives, since many of our actions during our regular relationships must employ politics as a way to either convince people/groups of your points-of-view or give-and-take in negotiations, the intention of the tweet is flawed. The tweet itself is somewhat dubious and innocuous, but the retweetwd post below evidences the type of politics the assertive wants to enforce and I find out of place for a language. 

[MK14]

I find out of place for a language.

A computer programming language, should be free of biases, including political ones.  I.e. It should be politically neutral (uninvolved with politics).  Coincidental/accidental naming biases, it may have (Master/Slave/WhiteList/BlackList/Single/Related/DIM{low IQ, array sizing}) Etc.

Should just be accepted as part of the language (especially if long established, many decades ago, and the naming is purely coincidental), and NOT given political reasons for demanding their removal from programming languages.

[SiliconWizard]

Yep, and it was apparently also discussed on a number of forums, so that was certainly not just a one-time "innocent" phrase.

And no, tech is not political. That's an absurd statement. Political tech is political. The difference is significant.

[Bud]

Tech is full of politics. IT is full of politics. Sport is full of politics.

[Nominal Animal]

Feels outdated to me, then.  The usual things that people would consider "political" include merely discussing topic related to the above; while the above definition seems to suggest only literal politicians do any politic.  Which is a bit absurd with respect to how I've seen the word used.

I disagree, but I'm not a native English speaker anyway.

Discussion about governance and rules is political, of course.  Supporting or opposing a course of action done using taxes is about governance, and thus political.

Tools are not political.  Creating a sign is not political until you put a political message on that sign.  A sign that says "I sell apples for $1 apiece" is not political.  Languages are not political, until you rule certain words and idioms allowed to be used by only a specific subset of people (because that is a course of action intended to control or govern people).

I can understand, however, why and how the "vague-fication" of the term "political" can come about.  One is the politicization of nonpolitical things – like claiming terms "master" and "slave" to be political regardless of the context, that all human interaction is only a struggle for power and control over others, and so on; whereas it is exactly the context that determines whether they convey a political or nonpolitical meaning.  The other is gross misunderstanding of sociology and terms like culture, which indeed actually does cover everything humans do.  (Terms like "learned intelligence" and "emotional intelligence" are related: impossible and self-contradictory when examined at the definition level, and only constructed to evoke specific emotions in order to direct the discussion towards a specific political goal.)

If you allow arbitrary redefinition of words without any means of keeping track of those changes, does that language have any real use anymore?  I don't think so; it is just like spouting nonsense words and insisting that they have exactly the meanings you yourself define and nothing else.  Because of this, I suggest careful speech is paramount.  Instead of claiming "X is political", say "X is political, because Y", explaining Y to the best of your ability.  The former tends to lead to stupid, wasteful, and ineffectual word slinging; whereas the latter can actually cause something new to be discovered through interesting discussions.  It is a pity humans are so enamored of instant messaging that so strongly encourages the former over the latter.

[DiTBho]

A Rustling is a person who programs in Rust; and may also be one who grew up as Harry Potter super nerd?

or suPPa-powers, like suPPa-man 

[T3sl4co1l]

Tools are not political.  Creating a sign is not political until you put a political message on that sign.  A sign that says "I sell apples for $1 apiece" is not political.  Languages are not political, until you rule certain words and idioms allowed to be used by only a specific subset of people (because that is a course of action intended to control or govern people).

I'll address both points:

1. Apples.

I hinted at the context in my first comment:

most everyone here lives in a modernized world economy, means everyone participates in the exchange of goods, resources and labor.

There is no isolated act of "selling apples", just as there is no isolated act of "an electron moves 1mm through space".  Why did it move?  What else is moving?

Consider such hypotheticals:

A discriminated minority places a sign "Apples $1".
The police come and beat them nearly to death, tearing the sign and smashing the apples.
Was the sign a political act?

A person places a sign "Apples $1".
A line forms.  The person witnesses a thief beat another potential customer, and steal their dollar.  The thief moves to the front of the line.
Does the person accept the dollar?  Do they give the apple?  To whom do they give it?
Which one is a political act, if any?

A person places a sign "Apples $1", knowing that their neighbor has posted a sign "Apples $2".
Is this a political act?

A person places a sign, "Apples $1".  Large Fruit Company buys up all the neighboring lots and posts signs on them, "Apples $0.50".  Both parties know $0.50 is selling the product at a loss, no matter how much efficiency (and migrant labor, and..) Large Fruit Company might bring to bear.
Has a politic been committed?
Does it matter if Large Fruit Company lobbied the local, state or federal government to obtain those lots?
What if the migrant labor refuses to work for such a pittance, the police are called, and they get deported; several subsequently contract debilitating diseases on their way back to, or in, their returned countries; several others die of gang violence; still others die of various other problems in their returned countries?

There are more combinations and permutations than I can possibly name, and enough of them connect, directly, or 2nd or 3rd degree, with the governance of society, so that it's not even very useful to distinguish between them; hence, everything is political.


2. Language is being used to rule us, right under our noses.  This may not be as apparent to you, but the US is unfortunately festering with it.  Example:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/08/politics/critical-race-theory-panic-race-deconstructed-newsletter/index.html
Current targets include "CRT", trans and other LGBTQs, and even accusing opponents of being pedos.  By associating negative connotations to previously stable and meaningful terms, they deny their opponents the use of those terms.  Accuse their opponents's arguments and statistics of being nothing but "conspiracy theories" (while peddling misinformation themselves).  And the use of "every accusation is a confession", accusing opponents of doing things many of them have been credibly accused, or convicted, of.

A recent microcosm of the latter, kind of in the opposite direction interestingly enough:
https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/usqb72/uhhhh_hes_all_yours/i9574e2/
- Prominent figure announces alignment shift
- Commenter wholly unimpressed; party better aligns with figure's values anyway?
- Claims it's a distraction from something
- Next day, oh what do you know: https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-paid-250000-to-a-flight-attendant-who-accused-elon-musk-of-sexual-misconduct-2022-5
- What do you know, new party better aligns with figure's actions too

So, not all of these strategies specifically use the distortion of language, but are used as rhetorical devices and so are related, worthy of note.

Tim

[MK14]

"Apples $1"

That's NOT political.  I think you are overthinking the situation.  Just because a 'safe', 1.5 volt AAA battery, is NOT generally considered to be an electrical safety risk (with rare exceptions, such as fire hazard risks, or dangers if swallowed).  Worrying about, what if the 1.5 V battery ***could*** be unsafe, as someone ***might*** connect it up to a live, 1,000 volt power source.

It WOULD be political, if it said "Apples $1, only for sale to 'good' Christians, who have gone to prayers this week, and NOT for sale to purple people, with green/blue stripped skin colour".

TL;DR
A sign that says "Apples for sale, at $1", is a sign that says "Apples for sale, at $1".  It is arguably the people who start claiming it IS POLITICAL, that I think are starting the problems in the first place.  E.g. Complaining about technical things being called Client/Server, because of possible relations to previous slavery (Server/Master/Slave/BlackList/WhiteList/Male/Female{connectors} etc) things.  Although, it is possible that consideration of some technical terms, **might** be appropriate, but I hope not.

[T3sl4co1l]

I mean, I can only explain the concept.  If your mind is closed to it, you don't have to brag to the world that you refuse to accept it.  It's... not a contest?

Tim

[MK14]

I mean, I can only explain the concept.  If your mind is closed to it, you don't have to brag to the world that you refuse to accept it.  It's... not a contest?

Tim

Unlike Maths/Science and Electronics, much of the time.  Where many answers, are somewhat fixed and in general agreement, with most people.  In many cases they can be proved/validated, or at least experimental evidence can be gathered, and conclusions made.

Political things, tend to be much more subjective, with many people offering lots of different opinions.

So, I don't think saying things like "closed minds" and/or "bragging to the world".  Are the best/right way of handling situations, where peoples opinions/ideas on political things differ.

[tszaboo]

hence, everything is political.

Nowadays, with cancel culture, I cannot even express my true thoughts anymore.
Some jaded * , who had the twitter account for Rust just decided: "Now I have enough followers, it is time to retweet Defund police propaganda"
If you every wrote that you like Rust, now you are labeled.

BTW, if you search a little on the internet, I'm fairly sure that we would find that apple (the fruit) is fatphobic and racist. Cause that's the world we are living in  . I want my Web 2.0 back.

[MK14]

I cannot even express my true thoughts anymore.

It is important that you do, to keep freespeech alive, well and kicking.  Otherwise, it can cause issues, in the short and long terms.

[SiliconWizard]

A Rustling is a person who programs in Rust; and may also be one who grew up as Harry Potter super nerd?

or suPPa-powers, like suPPa-man 

Actually, I think they tend to refer to themselves as "rustaceans". Don't ask.

[AndyBeez]

Rustaceans indeed. Rustlings are newbies. Like me. It's also a Rust languagd tutorial project https://github.com/rust-lang/rustlings/

I suggest the difference between Rust and C++ is Rust is loaded with a suPPa excitted developer community that's just suPPa excitted!!!!!

I don't think I will be sticking around. Politics or not.