I have a problem with React and spend a lot of time talking to my therapist
sonniesedge.net> So, Reactgate has become a thing. What's been fomenting for a while blew up last week, with two prominent White Men In Tech having little tantrum Twitter breaks, and a wonderful woman of colour working as a dev/designer feeling she is no longer welcome in our industry and planning to leave as soon as it's financially possible.
God. Its so creepy casually stereotyping people by their race and gender in this manner.
Ironically it’s always from so called social justice moralists.
It reminds me of the Stephen fry quote about the church and sex.
> It’s the strangest thing about this church - it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we, with our permissive society and rude jokes, are obsessed. No. We have a healthy attitude. We like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly; because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It’s a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell.
These blog authors seem to have an analogous obsession with gender and race.
While I agree with you that it's problematic, a minority woman stereotyping a white man is not quite the same as in reverse if you see relative social positioning as a first class factor. The reasoning for why it's different is something like the reasoning for why it's generally fine for employees to get together and casually bond over being annoyed by their bosses but the same thing going the other way would be obviously inappropriate. A lot of people experience being of minority race, gender, and culture as constructs that basically equate to having been born holding the short end of an implicit employee-boss relationship. As such, it's something that's naturally at the forefront of their minds.
Someone wrongly accused a well known React dev of being a white supremacist for things that didn't happen.
Now people are, rightfully, angered about the false accusations, but the accusers use this to say "see, we said you are toxic!"
Guess we gonna have fallout from this bullshit a long time...
I don't understand anything at all. It seems some dev used an OK HAND emoji in some slides during some talk, and it was misinterpreted as the White Supremacist symbol or whatever.
Someone felt attacked personally, criticized it on Twitter and now everything is going downhill...
This is the first time I've heard about this emoji being in some way connected to white suppremacy... is this a thing?
Edit: relevant wikipedia article [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture#As_a_white_power_sy...
It seems online culture is so plastic that we can quickly see a move from irony/trolling to sincere usage. How is a person not at the fronts of where hateful groups and their opponents meet supposed to navigate a battlefield of memes and conventions that see distinct transitions in cultural symbols (like a phase change almost) from benign to harmful within weeks?
Probably referring to this crap:
https://twitter.com/tatianatmac/status/1164912554876891137
part of this breakdown: https://dev.to/aryanjnyc/ken-wheeler-and-dan-abramov-deactiv...
I think people with such obsessions, bringing their baggage of politics everywhere should be thrown out of tech communities discussing tech. They can form whatever meta-community they like for that.
I have seen absolutely zero ..."white supremacism" in React community leaders, and the whole idea is too bizarro to begin with.
If someone is both a white supremacist and a React developer (which I find implausible, but ok) that's bad, but it's not like it's any sizable part of React devs, or characterizes the tone of the community, or affects anything or whatever...
Yeah it’s just a ridiculous situation. I had to unfollow all React related things on Twitter the moment I saw people lambasting Dan Abramov as “selfish” for disabling his Twitter for the sake of his sanity. It’s one thing to promote diversity, it’s another to create massive problems for the innocent over nothing.. especially the innocent that have been nothing _but_ genuinely supportive of your cause.
It seems that the cancel-cult left has really taken hold, at least in the loud places on social media.
Quite some years ago I think that symbol was used among youngsters so that if you looked at the hand making the OK symbol people would make laugh of you. Not because of some white supremacism ideology, but because of young people's stupid jokes. Politics were not involved as far as I know.
Basically, a symbol for you to look at and the other person saying "Hah, you're an idiot!".
Yes it's some plausible deniability crap of the racists.
Yes, and he didn't know either and stopped using it after told so.
The problem here was that someone said he did it again, which he didn't.
It seems like the well known React developer has a somewhat more ... illustrous ... history of questionable behavior, so while he may not be an actually white supremacist, he does seem to fit a certain toxic mold.
On the other hand, the mentioned female developer has probably had quite a lot of such experiences with direct and indirect racism, perceived or actual, but either she kept quiet or it didn't blow up that much.
Are you referring to the behaviour described here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g4oh2GGZOsucZfT1YJ5wjDUS... (for instance using the words "guys", "stupid" and "crazy") or something else?
The word “guys” means something bad in the U.S.?
Sorry, English is not my native language, and I’m genuinely interested because I’ve been using this word quite often and didn’t know it’s offensive.
>The word “guys” means something bad in the U.S.?
Only among people who think just because everybody should change how they talk to accommodate their (frequently updated) ideologies...
Depends on context. If you are a female developer and get constantly referred to as "guy" or to be part of "guys", it's at best annoying.
Just as "guys" don't like to get called "girls".
I see! I didn’t know this was the case in the US. I’ve checked my English dictionary and it says:
>guys: Informal Persons of either sex.
I guess it’s one of those differences between British and American English. Good to know, because it seems like one could easily get in trouble for using it incorrectly (in the British sense) in the US!
Thanks!
Yes, this is country specific, and girls who take offense are primarily in the USA or have learned American English.
The problem doesn't seem to be that it is male in some places and neutral in others, but that it's considered neutral even tho' it's clearly male.
It doesn't really matter what it "clearly" is. Equally clearly there are women who feel offended by it.
Also please be aware that many comments here are complaining about complaints of a minority (among developers) they don't belong to.
It's really not a big surprise that white male developers don't quite get why black female developers feel offended. Maybe something to think about...
And even if you don't agree that something is offense-worthy, please just acknowledge that some people genuinely do feel that way and that most of them are actually silent on the issue, exactly because of the reactions on display here.
Guy is only clearly male in American English. Guy Fawkes was male of course, but the term “some anonymous guy” does not refer to anyone in particular. The word has clearly evolved differently in the states than it did in the UK which originated it.
That's a big "only" when we are talking about American developers at an American Conference.
I got into trouble with this word and American people enough that I just never use it and say 'folks' instead..
It's mostly people who look for reasons to be offended to validate themselves...
What's the source of that document?
I found a page[0] with more info and link references to multiple sources that seems to explain everything in detail.
[0]: https://dev.to/aryanjnyc/ken-wheeler-and-dan-abramov-deactiv...
The last Tweet in the article you link
Interesting that the Vue devs are the source of this.
>so while he may not be an actually white supremacist, he does seem to fit a certain toxic mold.
E.g. person who doesn't agree with my favorite ideology on all its points?
Serious, not intended to flame bait question: Why is race/gender featured so prominently in this technical post? Would it be appropriate to open a post with “black men in tech had a twitter meltdown”?
I was wondering that as well. However I am not sure I would call it a technical post. To me it reads more like the rant of a person who hates react because it was written by facebook.
Another issue is that there is a much more serious and extensive history of value judgements about "black" people, rather than about "white" people.
At least in the US there never was widespread slavery of white people because they are white, or widespread ideas of white skin color being associated with lesser intelligence, culture or whatever.
It is, however, very important not to get hung up in racist terminology. For example it only serves the racists' cause to argue who is actually black or who is actually white, or how much of each.
It's not like the average heckler on the street asks somebody where he is from, his religion, what he is doing for a living or what his ancestral gene mixture is!
> For example it only serves the racists' cause to argue who is actually black or who is actually white, or how much of each.
When you're treated better the lighter/whiter you are, then it makes sense why people would argue about it
It makes sense for people who think they can benefit from that racism, therefor serving the racist cause.
How about this: value judgements based on race are bad. Full Stop.
I will never understand this mindset that racism is only a problem if there is some nasty history involved.
Nasty history is quite often the difference between a racist value judgement and a relatively innocent statement about people.
Racists can often behind ignoring that distinction. It's called a dog-whistle.
> Nasty history is quite often the difference between a racist value judgement and a relatively innocent statement about people.
One shouldn't use history to justify their own racism.
> Racists can often behind ignoring that distinction. It's called a dog-whistle.
That's simply not what a dog-whistle is.
Please don't explain what you mean by "their own racism". I don't accept reverse racism BS...
And yes, ignoring nasty history is dog-whistling. You can say certain things, which are clearly perceived as racist by racists and the offended, and then avoid responsibility by claiming "it's only because the history".
Example: It's not antisemitic to blame George Soros (a jew) for political influence through his money, except that there is a broad and infamous history of such conspiracy theories. Same for "dual loyalty".
It's not racist or insensitive to use black-face as a disguise, except for the long history of mistrel-acts of making fun of Afro-American (slaves) for being lazy, uncultured and stupid.
It's not necessarily racist to suspect a Muslim of being a terrorist. Hey, there may actually be valid and objective reasons for such a suspicion. But especially because of the context and the history of Muslims being accosted as such and being targeted all the time, such claims better have substantial proof.
There is, however, a phenomenon called "reverse racism" where privileged members of a majority try to complain about things like affirmative action or diversity outreach.
The idea that there is a discrimination against white people in "traditionally white" countries is absolutely ridiculous. Ethnically motivated violence, for example in the US, is also quite one-sided.
Reverse racism doesn't exist. Racism is racism.
Because it's fashionable and scores you some points...
If the inverse became fashionable in 10 years, the same kind of people (if not the same people) would do a 180o.
The nature of progress is movement relative to the position currently being held. I bet you're right that a lot of people are just thoughtlessly bandwagoning, but I bet the blanket dismissal of progressive attitudes also misses a lot of people who are thoughtfully deciding where to go from here.
My point though was not about the progressive attitudes, as much as about the ridiculous excess ("guys" being offensive, etc). In a decade or so these would be viewed the same way most people viewed hippies after the 70s...
One difference is that "black men in tech" are a minority with a lot of discriminatory experiences. Criticizing a minority you don't belong to for complaining too much is something different than criticizing the majority you do belong to for the same thing.
I don't know about "react-gate" yet, but I'm sure to find out in a few minutes.
I don't find anything inflammatory about what you said and yet your comment is very grey.
Certain people know that if they voiced their opinions, they would get an immensely negative reaction.
Downvotes, however, are not moderated...
Because for some, race/gender is a primary factor in how they experience being a developer. I believe that is the fundamental point the article is making -- that the reasons why React is what it is today are not necessarily objective and totally sound but rather significantly influenced by what ideas and interests were already in the population at the cost of other ideas that may require more of a leap from the mainstream to fully understand but may also be better overall.
It would not be appropriate to post with the title “black men in tech had a twitter meltdown” but it is at least this okay with white dudes for the same reason why it's fine to make fun of The Mountain if he can't hit a squat in the gym but it's not fine to make fun of your buddy who's trying to make a change in his life. Of course how much better The Mountain is than your buddy at lifting heavy stuff is probably a larger discrepancy than the gap between white men and and minority women's abilities to affect the course of the developer landscape but that's the mechanism.
Just like this whole drama, this attitude (I don’t like my gender and race being the focus of things, therefore I’m going to do it to you) seems counter-productive to the cause of inclusion and diversity.
> Mobile devices simply don't have the CPU and memory to cope well with client-side JS apps.
I think they do, but most client-side JS apps are horribly designed. They load the whole bundle at once, display ads, have setTimeouts and other unnecessary things that add to the bloat.
Native apps aren't great either, I hate the Twitter and Reddit ones, they constantly fail to load stuff, block and restart.
> They load the whole bundle at once [...]
Isn't this a good thing? Genuinely asking.
It depends. If I'm never planning on visiting the "live dashboard" of some website then all the extra code that is loaded for that feature is useless to me. That's why separate bundles exists (with browserify, webpack etc).
What is this madness? Is this a tech article? Is this what good content looks like on the internet? Is React racist? Do people simply spend too much time on twitter?
I have so many questions and hope to never have to answer any of them.
This is not a tech article and shouldn't be listed. I read the summary of twitter remarks and am constantly amazed by how sensitive people appear to be.
... I should have left it alone as soon as I saw the comments about capitalism being shit and intersectionalism being a real thing.
I thought it offered some valid technical criticisms of React: specifically that it's over engineered and it results in a bad user experience, especially on mobile.
I thought the article offered an interesting argument that front end development has suffered from increasing over-engineering in the last decade, and this over-engineering can be explained by cultural factors and the influence of large corporations like Facebook.
That would be fair critic points. Unfortunately the post gets overshadowed by the authors personal opinions
> In classic fashion, the most privileged 1% of developers (as in those with the most free time - young, white, able-bodied men) saw the newly released React and fell over themselves to be in on The Latest Interesting Technology.
I am a brown guy in a 3rd world country who has been using react for long enough to be an early adopter. Reading this suddenly transformed me into a 6.6ft, white skinned, blue eyed Aryan wet dream.
> The concept of "We Live In A Meritocracy" becomes firmly implanted in the community.
> We reach today, where two prominent React community leaders quit Twitter rather than deal with accusations of emerging white nationalism and machismo-fueled poor behavior.
> The popularity of React is fueled by corporate-sponsorship, a tech industry seeking validation by becoming Hard and Masculine, and aggressive Capitalist principles (validation through work, market dominance, a continuous supply of skilled Labor) that result in Things being placed before People.
This is next level satire, right? right? Or at least something generated by an AI bot fuelled by China/Russia/Ghost of USSR. And the comments below the article take the cake. I have seen better comments on threads in /b/
Being brown in a white place is a different experience than being brown in a brown place. There is a lot of friction when different enough groups coexist. If you've ever found yourself in maybe a job or something where you thought differently enough from the people around you to feel like they were more interested in just maintaining their bubble of how they understand the world than discovering the best way to be, it's that same mechanism in action. Just it's blown up to much larger proportions since it's not just you differing with people who share your race, culture, ideas about how society should function, etc.
"React" and "white supremacist" words in a single blog post won't deliver any good kind of discussion imho)
I still think React is a wonderful library and feels like a more natural way to express a dynamic web page. Other frameworks get into your face a lot more.
It does seem like a lot of the grievances in this post are about arbitrary choices by the author or the teams using React as part of their stack.
Maybe I'm not attached enough to React that I can understand the problem.
The last two projects I worked on that used React, it was pretty obvious that there it served no purpose other than to make webdev into “hard” software engineering. Even the tiniest design changes required expensive software devs to implement them. Good for me but it cost the client a fortune.
Can somebody give me a quick rundown on this react-gate?
Someone talked to someone else.
The first person misunderstood the second.
The first person started accusing a well know React dev of being a white supremacist on Twitter because of that misunderstanding.
People who care about social justice rallied to the first persons cause, saying React would protect white supremacists.
React devs didn't know anything about the accused dev being a WS, because he wasn't one.
It got all cleared up that the dev was wrongly accused and the accuser publicly apologized.
React devs got angry that people who care about social justice can run around and ruin peoples lifes with false accusations.
Although there are lots of cases where React is overused, for example in mostly-static pages that don't really benefit from automated state bindings, there are situations when React is nice. I just recently came back to Android development scene, and React Native actually makes it super easy to do simple Android dev. While it couldn't be used in all use-cases, for prototyping and getting simple things done quickly, it seems like a pretty promising technology.
> The popularity of React is fueled by corporate-sponsorship, a tech industry seeking validation by becoming Hard and Masculine, and aggressive Capitalist principles
Uh, huh.
Despite the race / gender notions, the rant is very recognizable.