For context, there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes when it comes to lemmy admin stuff especially in the matrix channels. There is a significant frustration and lack of confidence in the lemmy developers at this point. Even those who try to contribute to the project get eventually feeling pushed out.
That sucks. As a 3rd party Lemmy app developer, I’ve only had positive interactions with the Lemmy devs. They’re even being proactive in communications.
Try submitting a pull request for something in one of the core repos.
They behave as if every line of code in your commit is a sentence proclaiming “Why yes, your wife is a whore, your dog doesn’t love you, AND your baby is ugly.”
I’m not kidding, there’s no hyperbole in that statement. Go read some of their declined pull requests threads for some entertainment.
Even those who try to contribute to the project get eventually feeling pushed out.
Submitting a pull request to one of their repos on Github was really an experience, and I can tell you that I will never submit another one to the Lemmy project while they’re still the lead devs based on that experience.
That’s kind of the impression I got but thought maybe I was just mistaken because I haven’t actually been hands-on with this project. That’s unfortunate to hear.
Better to publish such issues on a public website than let it get buried in matrix. People other than devs & instance admins need to be aware of the risks that they’re taking when using Lemmy.
Based on what I’ve seen on the public facing part of the developer side, I get the feeling this isn’t the kind of group that can build the kind of organization required to make this sustainable in the long run.
I’m just waiting for when Beehaw releases that they’ve given up on Lemmy and have created a new tech stack.
In terms of new tech stack currently theres sublinks being made by devs/admins of a bunch of instances (discuss.online, lemmy.world, programming.dev, etc.)
Not really a substantial opinion, but I have little hope that replacing a fairly well established Rust codebase with a brand new Java one will do much in terms of increasing contribution.
I wouldn’t shortchange how much making the barrier to entry lower can help. You have to fight Rust a lot to build anything complex, and that can have a chilling effect on contributions. This is not a dig at Rust; it has to force you to build things in a particular way because it has to guarantee memory safety at compile time. That isn’t to say that Rust’s approach is the only way to be sure your code is safe, mind you, just that Rust’s insistence on memory safety at compile time is constraining.
To be frank, this isn’t necessary most of the time, and Rust will force you to spend ages worrying about problems that may not apply to your project. Java gets a bad rap but it’s second only to Python in ease-of-use. When you’re working on an API-driven webapp, you really don’t need Rust’s efficiency as much as you need a well-defined architecture that people can easily contribute to.
I doubt it’ll magically fix everything on its own, but a combo of good contribution policies and a more approachable codebase might.
You have to fight Rust a lot to build anything complex
nutomic, one of the main Lemmy devs, didn’t know Rust before he started working on Lemmy. He just started working on Lemmy and learned Rust in the process. The difficulty of Rust is exaggerated.
For context, there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes when it comes to lemmy admin stuff especially in the matrix channels. There is a significant frustration and lack of confidence in the lemmy developers at this point. Even those who try to contribute to the project get eventually feeling pushed out.
That sucks. As a 3rd party Lemmy app developer, I’ve only had positive interactions with the Lemmy devs. They’re even being proactive in communications.
Are they open to these discussions?
Try submitting a pull request for something in one of the core repos.
They behave as if every line of code in your commit is a sentence proclaiming “Why yes, your wife is a whore, your dog doesn’t love you, AND your baby is ugly.”
I’m not kidding, there’s no hyperbole in that statement. Go read some of their declined pull requests threads for some entertainment.
Submitting a pull request to one of their repos on Github was really an experience, and I can tell you that I will never submit another one to the Lemmy project while they’re still the lead devs based on that experience.
That’s kind of the impression I got but thought maybe I was just mistaken because I haven’t actually been hands-on with this project. That’s unfortunate to hear.
What about kbin, isn’t that entirely different software that can be developed to phase out Lemmy?
From what I heard Kbin’s developer is very inactive, so people started a fork called Mbin. Mbin might be alright?
Perhaps there’s starting to be a Lemmy clone/alternative? I think it’s named Sublinks
Better to publish such issues on a public website than let it get buried in matrix. People other than devs & instance admins need to be aware of the risks that they’re taking when using Lemmy.
Based on what I’ve seen on the public facing part of the developer side, I get the feeling this isn’t the kind of group that can build the kind of organization required to make this sustainable in the long run.
I’m just waiting for when Beehaw releases that they’ve given up on Lemmy and have created a new tech stack.
In terms of new tech stack currently theres sublinks being made by devs/admins of a bunch of instances (discuss.online, lemmy.world, programming.dev, etc.)
Anything public yet and are they sticking to Rust?
Java spring for backend, Go for federation, Next.js for frontend
demo.sublinks.org has the backend with the lemmy-ui frontend to show api compatibility
Task list and progress is public on the github org https://github.com/orgs/sublinks/projects/1
Matrix space where all the devs talk is also public and you can see progress talked about in them
Not really a substantial opinion, but I have little hope that replacing a fairly well established Rust codebase with a brand new Java one will do much in terms of increasing contribution.
I wouldn’t shortchange how much making the barrier to entry lower can help. You have to fight Rust a lot to build anything complex, and that can have a chilling effect on contributions. This is not a dig at Rust; it has to force you to build things in a particular way because it has to guarantee memory safety at compile time. That isn’t to say that Rust’s approach is the only way to be sure your code is safe, mind you, just that Rust’s insistence on memory safety at compile time is constraining.
To be frank, this isn’t necessary most of the time, and Rust will force you to spend ages worrying about problems that may not apply to your project. Java gets a bad rap but it’s second only to Python in ease-of-use. When you’re working on an API-driven webapp, you really don’t need Rust’s efficiency as much as you need a well-defined architecture that people can easily contribute to.
I doubt it’ll magically fix everything on its own, but a combo of good contribution policies and a more approachable codebase might.
nutomic, one of the main Lemmy devs, didn’t know Rust before he started working on Lemmy. He just started working on Lemmy and learned Rust in the process. The difficulty of Rust is exaggerated.