Jon Pretty

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.

I think this is the crucial bit that upsets people (including myself) the most: just promote your stuff without declaring everything else as inferior and obsolete. This is the sane behavior most people in the Scala community already have and the few notable exceptions stand out.

It's what I try to do, but I also know it's extremely hard to get traction for a technically better solution when there's an incumbent. I have been particularly aware of this with trying to promote Magnolia "agnostically" when everyone else's frame of reference is Shapeless...

I understand the difficulty, but I think the point is: if you take the easy way out to crap on everybody else’s work to promote your own, you shouldn’t be surprised when everybody else gets upset. It is, after all, part of the process.

Yes, I am not suprised that people get upset about things they've devoted time and effort to. But the innocent bystanders, would benefit much more from some magnanimity on both sides. But people are inherently selfish. I know I am.