Jon Pretty

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 think this has always been the case. It’s also important to remember that these things are never taken in isolation. For example, Shapeless is transitively on almost everyone’s class path, which is the true incumbency. It’s not so much about mindshare.

Continually presenting and re-presenting what is good and beneficial about your own thing is a great way to go about solving this. While it is tempting to include a compare-and-contrast (or worse, contrived strawmen) in such things, doing to is toxic and usually self defeating.

Additionally, remember that in many cases, it isn’t the end users you have to win over, but rather the framework ecosystem. That’s a hard war, but a much more focused one. And again, one that is actively sabotaged by loud negativity and toxic marketing.

I get the frustration. I really do in more ways than one. But if the best way to make one’s own work look good is to do everything possible to make someone else’s look bad, then maybe the real problem isn’t tech incumbency.