> The takeaway for me is that the Zig project is led by people who are extremely immature and toxic.

immature and toxic : welcome to every big tech , you don't want part of them either, right ?

if they call their employees monkeys, certainly. I think every big tech company is well aware of lawsuits regarding a hostile work environment, work place bullying, etc.. they all have company wide training on these topics.

Having been in that situation before, if I even get a hint that I would be treated this way, I'm backing out of any interview. I won't say for no amount, but for no amount they would consider reasonable compensation would I think it's worth it. People commit suicides over this stuff. This isn't a joke. Life is too short. I mean just seeing other people treated this way is horrible on its own. I can't believe people defend this stuff. People need to learn to be ashamed again.

> if they call their employees monkeys, certainly.

It seems to have decreased in the last 10 years but calling us code-monkeys was a common derogatory reference to the software department. I didn't like being compared to a monkey randomly bashing a typewriter but that's how things were.

It was better than what everyone called HR.

"code-monkey" is a bit different, I've seen people use it to call themselves that in a positive way. Maybe Andrew meant "code-monkey" in a more positive way instead of "monkey"? But i just re-read it and to me it sounds like an insult to their intelligence, to mean as if it was one of those studies where they train a monkey to hit keys to see what happens? Like they were so dumb it was the equivalent of monkeys hitting keyboards and accidentally creating something that works?

Either way, can we at least agree that it is an insult to those people at a personal level, it attacks who they are instead of what they did?

Like i mentioned, I've had myself/coworkers compared to monkeys in the same way. I didn't think much of it at first, but coworkers were really demoralized and kept mentioning it, and it coincided with all sorts of other hosilities from people in power.

My whole goal here wasn't to demonstrate some internet rage, but to do my part in making sure other people don't get treated like crap, especially in their work place. If this was at my work, I'd probably just quietly look for other places to work at, because I'd be afraid for my job. In this case it's not like Microsoft employees can publicly respond in like to Andrew and not lose their jobs either. I see someone with some level of authority and a public figure abusing that to harass others.

There is no asshole-badge that is granted to people when they achieve positions of authority, a louder voice or great success in life. Those of us who can implement some sort of an adverse response to this behavior, must.

He also called employees "losers"

> I simply don't trust any decision these people make

Do you have an example or two of poor decisions that push you away so strongly?

Clearly, my distrust is based on Andrew's publicly displayed character, not an analysis of historical behavior. When you see a Chef not wash his hands after using a restroom, you should avoid eating at their restaurant, even if you have no proof they don't wash their hands in the kitchen prior to cooking.

The important observation for me is that he didn't know where to draw the line, and this is regarding people he doesn't work with, unknown/random Microsoft employees. Will he cross the line if someone he does know and trust does something he disagrees with? I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but the bar is high when it comes to trusted software like programming language compilers.

I wish Zig all the success, but only if it's community and the tech community as a whole can hold it's leadership accountable instead of making excuses and defending him like this. It's ok to tell people you admire and respect they screwed up.

Your logic doesn't really pan out here, as Zig is a fully open source project (so any backdoor would be out there for eyes to see) and so far there have been primarily good things said about it. Similarly Linus Torvalds was pretty "toxic" for years, and it never affected the quality of the Linux project negatively. And Linux essentially runs the world of tech.

Backdoors can be called bugs. They could introduce a backdoor and fix it a CVE in the next release and no one would the wiser.

I don't defend Linus either, but I don't consider him calling someone a monkey or dehumanizing people either. If he has, please send me the lkml archives, I've been on the fence with going full on Apple anyways :)

I really don't understand what any of this has to do with "trust", especially of the project or code. If anything people who want to gain undeserved trust would be incentivized to appear to follow a higher standard of norms publically. The public comments would be nice and polite and gregarious and professional, and the behaviour that didn't meet that standard would be private.

FWIW I've never programmed a line of code in zig and I don't know who this developer is.

All I got from it was "seems like GitHub is starting to deteriorate pretty hard and this guy's fed up and moving his project and leaving some snark behind".

Yes, calling people monkeys is a bad decision.

>If you called Netanyahu a monkey because of his Gaza genocide, most people who are pro-palestine will try to cancel you! Not because they think highly of him, but because it hurts the cause more than it helps.

Your reading of the current political climate is very different to mine.

I don't know about that. in my view, you can call him a murderer, genocidal, sociopath, anything related to his actions. But calling him an epithet, comparing him to an animal is a different thing. Even physical violence is more tolerable. of course people can say whatever they want in private, i'm talking about public discourse. terms like "monkey" and "dog" have been used across cultures to mean really nasty things. It's dehumanizing (literally!), it says as much about the speaker as it does about the subject.

> comparing him to an animal

homo sapiens is an animal species.

Tomatoes belong in fruit salad, and the cause of every plane crash is gravity.

when humans say "an animal" in the English language, they're referring to "non-human animals". Being called an animal in itself isn't insulting either before you go there. Hardly anyone would be insulted at being called a lion. I think everyone who can read understands exactly the implication being drawn and the dehumanizing being done. Everyone from slave traders, colonialists, nazis,etc.. have used "monkey" to dehumanize people. Same with "dog" , "snake" ,etc.. in different contexts.

Based on this rationale nobody should use Linux either =))

Linus losing is temper over a contributor messing up is not the same as calling people who maintain a free service (github - unless Zig was paying) monkeys. Correct me by all means, but did Linus call someone a personally denigrating name like that?

Either way, I like linux but I've avoided operating systems like freebsd and openbsd for less, so I agree. I've said plenty enough against Linus when he did lose his temper and started cussing at people.

And to be clear, I consider people who defend him (and in this case Andrew) far worse of an individual than the original offenders. People mess up, they're led astray by being put in positions of leadership and authority. That I get, and that's why i'm calling him out here. If he was random person, I wouldn't have bothered. But the enablers and defenders are the real problem. I hope you're not one of them. If you are, I consider you people responsible for every single work place bullying and toxic environment out there. People do great things without being classless uncivilized bullies.

Calling the Github clowns monkeys is being charitable.

microsoft employee detected. lol to all ms employees, keep downvoting...

I wish :)

> I've heard people call other people "monkeys" before in a work setting. it's never good.

Is this blog post in a work setting? Oh my. You should probably run to HR and report unprofessional behavior!

Oh wait.

I think people like you don't understand these things well. you can be civilized and deal with things in a professional way, or we can do things in a very uncivilized way. You can't be uncivilized and then whine about someone running to HR. I'd like to see you or Andrew call someone that to their face outside of a work setting with no authority to run to when there are consequences.

If Andrew considers Zig a professional software to be used in production environments, then this is a indeed a professional setting. If not, then it is a hobby project run by immature/whiny people like you, so let's just ignore it and talk about more serious people/projects.