> Parts of the Rust community are toxic indeed, but I've been around long enough to recognize the same pattern in communities of other hot programming languages or frameworks in their up-and-coming phase.
I would say that in general, this type of attitude permeates a lot of software engineering, and even engineering and science as a whole. When I speak with people in other fields, particularly more creative ones, the discussions are so much more improvisational and flowing. Discussions with software developers, engineers, and scientists have this very jerky, start and stop "flow" to them as you meet resistance at each step. I honest to god have had people telling me no or shaking their head no before I ever finished my question or statement, much less before they even understood it.
> There's something about the new hot language/framework/paradigm that always attracts the type of people who wrap their identity up in the hot new thing. They take any criticisms of their new favorite thing as criticisms against themselves, and respond defensively.
You're spot on about the coupling of someone's identity with it. Rust especially seems to also have this never-ending gold rush to be the next framework and library everyone uses, which creates a very competitive landscape. And it seems most frameworks and libraries get 80% of the way and then fizzle out once people realize Rust isn't a magical language that solves all your problems.
Conversations that people have in science and engineering are more analytical and pessimistic, where they try to clarify and set the boundaries.
This is the opposite of creative and optimistic conversation, where you break boundaries between things to create something new.
The attitude to be analytical in conversations comes from the fact, that software engineers usually do creative part of their work alone, and use communication for analytical part (code review, requirement clarification, etc). For some creative people it's natural to do creative work together, especially in music, so it's easier for them to adopt a creative attitude in conversations.
There are many different ways to solve problems. Having tunnel vision will exclude most of them. Critical thought has its place in any field, but many scientists and engineers will hide behind so called analytical thought when in reality, the ideas are more biased than they'd like to admit.
I think problem solving has analytical and creative parts too. Like in Polya's 'How to Solve It' you have clear analytical steps in the beginning (what's known, what's unknown, etc), then 'Boom! Heuristic!', then again analytical steps for reflecting back on the solution (corner cases, did you use all the inputs, etc).
I would say that in general, this type of attitude permeates a lot of software engineering, and even engineering and science as a whole. When I speak with people in other fields, particularly more creative ones, the discussions are so much more improvisational and flowing. Discussions with software developers, engineers, and scientists have this very jerky, start and stop "flow" to them as you meet resistance at each step. I honest to god have had people telling me no or shaking their head no before I ever finished my question or statement, much less before they even understood it.
> There's something about the new hot language/framework/paradigm that always attracts the type of people who wrap their identity up in the hot new thing. They take any criticisms of their new favorite thing as criticisms against themselves, and respond defensively.
You're spot on about the coupling of someone's identity with it. Rust especially seems to also have this never-ending gold rush to be the next framework and library everyone uses, which creates a very competitive landscape. And it seems most frameworks and libraries get 80% of the way and then fizzle out once people realize Rust isn't a magical language that solves all your problems.