this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Sorry but this is a pretty weird criticism to have. It's like saying that a squirrel would be a better fish if it were a trout. A squirrel is a mammal, not a fish. Lemmy was intentionally written in Rust when the devs started the project. It's clear that it's in Rust by looking at any of the documentation. Yet this comes across as criticizing their project for what they've always said it was, while using said project to do so. Just a bit boggling.
If you like Java, contribute to Sublinks, if you like PHP, there's kbin or many other AP projects. Pick, use, and contribute to the project(s) that use languages and tech that you get excited about. Noone is forcing you to use someone written in Rust. No need to piss on other peoples' parades over language choice (it's not like they're using C# or Perl - kidding there, nothing wrong with Perl :P ).
No I'm criticising the Developers complaint that there's only a few active developers for Lemmy, and the rest of you freeloaders don't contribute and code.
The number of people who understand Rust, can code in it, know of Lemmy and want to contribute is very few. There would be More developers contributing to Lemmy if it weren't written in Rust.
I'm not sure that it's a complaint from them, so much as an explanation. It's important to realize that developers are human beings with human needs, wants, and feelings. The popularity of Lemmy is not their "fault" and the language choice is rather fundamental to the project itself. Would it be nice if some features were taken up more quickly or implemented in other ways? Yes. But others needs, wants, and feelings are not more important than those of the devs. They need to eat, sleep, provide shelter for themselves, and, importantly, do things that are not coding (for physical, social, and mental health).
And there would be more developers if more people wanted to learn Rust. The low number is just a fact to accept. If one can't accept it, there are plenty of other platforms.
Would you be criticizing them equally if, instead of Rust, they created the project using FORTRAN and made a point of mentioning explicitly that using FORTRAN was the main intent? It's just a weird criticism to me - Lemmy is fundamentally a project started so that the devs could work with Rust. You are criticizing them for their project not fundamentally being a different project. Maybe another comparison would be criticizing specialty water-based paint manufacturing for using a water rather than a VOC-solvent for water-based paint - they're not trying to make other types so, the criticism doesn't make logical sense.
Thanks for the insight and well thought out response. I'll think on it.