Jon Pretty

I get that, I really do. It's a commendable effort but you need to come to term with the possibility of failure. You can't let it affect you and make you answer impulsively. The way I see it, you are just reinforcing other people ideas in this way.

I would certainly encourage everyone to avoid answering impulsively. After being dragged into a conversation I didn't want to be in just over a week ago, I can recommend against impulsive answers.

But what would failure look like? A segregated community where people don't, can't or won't agree, where there's no pushback against mutual antagonism, and one where nobody actually cares about it any more because they've given up?

I still care about it because it's not the welcoming community I want to be a part of. There were huge efforts made to make functional programming more welcoming to newcomers, particularly minorities, and that's a value I want to uphold and encourage.

Right now, there seems to be a general lack of awareness about how offputting a community dominated by angry, middle-aged, white men looks. Sure, I'm all of those things too. But I'd like people to say least have some hope that it doesn't have to be this way.

What I don't understand is what you are expecting from libraries authors affected by the "aggressive marketing". They can be nice and fight marketing with facts but it gets tiring. Eventually they either give up or fight back. Both are bad but you can't blame authors.

Well, I don't think I or anyone else should be surprised when someone promotes or defends something they have devoted time and effort to. There's nothing surprising about Raúl defending against perceived criticism of Cats, or John pushing his own libraries and ideas.

To be fair, it's a bit surprising (ok maybe not entirely surprising, but certainly extenuating) to constantly push your own ideas at the expenses of others. It's entirely possible to promote something you have devoted time and effort to without bringing everything else down.