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I've seen that post as well, and often wondered if it was fair characterization of overall Julia community (maybe it is), or is the result of a single bad apple at the top that overshadowed an otherwise pleasant community.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take much negative energy to spoil a community, even if it comes from just one person. That it was a language co-creator is troubling but not necessarily a reason to avoid the language if the rest of the community is nice (which maybe it is, maybe it isn't).

However one thing I have noticed is that most language communities do tend to follow an attitude set by the language creator(s). This seems to have played out quite a bit for Clojure, Python, Elm, Elixir, and other languages where, at least to me, the overall shared perspective of the community is closely aligned to the personal attitudes and opinions of the language author(s).




I don't feel at all that it's a fair characterization of the overall community. I'm sure I've been the target of more of what Dan Luu experienced than anyone else in the Julia community, from the same source, but I haven't let that stop me from contributing as best I can to the community, by answering questions (on Gitter and Discourse), helping with code, and by contributing my own packages to help out in areas where I felt Julia needed some extra attention. I also think that most of the community is more aligned with the example set by Jeff and Viral. Both show great civility, patience, and a willingness to listen to others, in my experience. Finally, with regards to the person that both Dan and I have had problems with (and I have no personal knowledge of that feud, that happened before I had discovered Julia), I respect him a lot (even if he feels I "attack" him when I try to bring up technical issues with code / designs that he's been involved with), I will always be grateful for his role in creating Julia, I think he's a great promoter of Julia, at conferences, etc., and he often has quite a lot of good, well-thought out things to say on GitHub and Discourse.


Don't you ever wonder how many excellent contributions to Julia were not made, because that person overstepping boundaries?


Hopefully I can clarify some of the "maybe it is, maybe it isn't" in this post - I've found the Julia community to be almost universally full of helpful and friendly folks, mostly scientists and/or people with a language nerd bent.

I'm not sure if there's a fair way to quantify drama in a community, but it hasn't been a big issue for me relative to all the positive interactions I've had with other julians.




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