Language Evangelism Is Annoying

9 points by amano-kenji 14 hours ago

A rust evangelist, who has a clojure job with some rust coding on the side, came to clojure community and couldn't stop mentioning Rust to me in clojure community.

I told him to stop, but he couldn't stop mentioning it. I got annoyed and snapped.

Evangelism is very annoying. Don't do this. If you don't like clojure, then get a new job that doesn't involve clojure, but don't come to clojure community and keep telling people to consider Rust or any other language.

If a clojure programmer disgruntled with a Rust job went to a rust community and kept telling people to maybe ditch Rust and consider clojure, would it not be annoying as hell?

I think your programming language is inferior to mine. You think my language is inferior to yours. No one is going to agree because it's a matter of opinion and taste.

Just let people use their languages according to their personal preferences. Let them write cobol, fortran, C, clojure, C++, Rust, Haskell, or whatever. Don't bother programmers with other languages.

Leave people alone. If you want to evangelize your language, publish contents. Don't bother people.

Evangelism is as annoying as an ugly guy stalking a beautiful princess. No means no. Respect personal boundaries.

cwnyth 13 hours ago

Well...as the Master says:

  The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth to the assembler.
  
  The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand languages.
  
  Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within the Tao.
  
  But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.

amano-kenji 12 hours ago

Still, I wouldn't tell COBOL programmers to maybe ditch COBOL and write another language. They chose it over other languages for their own reasons.
It's okay to mention rust or any other language when it's a particularly good fit for a business or a project. But, shoving languages in people's faces repetitively is not okay.
In my experiences, directly telling people to do things differently never works. You have to wait for other people to ask you for advices, or you end up bothering other people.

speedgoose 8 hours ago

> Evangelism is as annoying as an ugly guy stalking a beautiful princess.

Hi ChatGPT.

andyjohnson0 9 hours ago

What are you asking HN? Or is this just a rant?

amano-kenji 7 hours ago

> What are you asking HN?
Leave people alone. Don't nag people to use other languages.
- dcminter 7 hours ago
  
  Did you tell the guy that annoyed you that? Why tell us?
  You'll probably enjoy this ancient one though; it makes good points: https://www.perl.com/pub/2000/12/advocacy.html/
  - AnimalMuppet 4 hours ago
    
    > I told him to stop, but he couldn't stop mentioning it. I got annoyed and snapped.
    So, yes, he did.
    
    dcminter 4 hours ago
    
    I meant the full angry diatribe, not just "stop"
    Seems to me the evangelist is just being rude here, there are times and places where evangelism is fine, no?