[miki_oomiri]

The quality of the github comments: accusing developers of being dictators, being overly emotionally, the hate towards people who actually made the web happen (Smaug, Anne, Emilo, etc…), the "why not just…" or "hire more people" remarks...

For a browser developer, this is depressing. I've worked on Gecko for 10+ years, and we were constantly called names for absolutely any change we would do. Insulted and accused of the worst intentions.

I see it hasn't changed.

[worble]

Personally I've found googles responses to be very rude; they've asked for feedback and people have come back saying "We're still using this, please don't just remove it" and despite that they seem to be completely uncompromising on removing it without any adjustments like shipping the wasm polyfill instead of native code.

It kind of baffles me that they could even consider this, maybe I'm just naiive but the webs greatest strength has always been it's backwards compatibility; I can fire a page up written 30 years ago and it still renders (assuming it wasn't built in flash lol). Breaking the user experience like this and saying "well the owners need to update their site" doesn't work - a lot of these pages won't be actively maintained or under the control of someone who can make changes.

[naniwaduni]

The unwillingness to ship the polyfill as a substitute for the native code really puts the lie to any notion that this is really about security/attack surface angle that some people have latched onto, too.

[account42]

Hiding any negative comment is especially childish.

[dev0001]

> the hate towards people who actually made the web happen (Smaug, Anne, Emilo, etc…)

The vast majority of comments on https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11523 are polite and respectful.

Also, "Smaug, Anne, Emilo" did not "make the web happen." They have influenced how the web has developed, in particular favouring functionality and uses that are dependent on Javascript, and neglecting to ensure parity of opportunity for other approaches to flourish.

[mx7zysuj4xew]

In my own personal experience on dealing with him, Anne is an arrogant douche who quite frankly hasn't been yelled at enough

A lot of the hate is actually justified (with the exception of hixxie)

[account42]

Or you could try having more empathy and being less done deaf yourself.

Users don't like when you take functionality away from them. This is an appropriate response to a proposal to break part of the web just to make things a bit easier for browser developers (who are meanwhile adding a gazillion other things that are much more complex and actively hurt the users interests).

[bawolff]

As someone who is an open source dev (but not for anything this prominent).

Sometimes you have to remove features to make a product good. Its sad, but if your product includes the kitchen sink, its not a good product and drags everything down.

The users yell at me too sometimes.

[geocar]

> I've worked on Gecko for 10+ years, and we were constantly called names for absolutely any change we would do. Insulted and accused of the worst intentions.

I think if Gecko crashed less that'd be great.

I think if Gecko starts selling me a VPN service, and the parent org gets busy doing a bunch of real-estate investments, I wonder if you're making a web browser anymore.

> the hate towards people who actually made the web happen (Smaug, Anne, Emilo, etc…)

I'm sorry I disagree.

I am hearing them say they can't make the web happen, because it's hard and they're not very good at programming, they put so many bugs in their code they just can't fix it, and it's really interfering with their efforts to add another privacy-impacting feature that they can use to sell more ads.

I think if every one of them got hit by a bus tomorrow absolutely nothing would change on the web except maybe we'd keep XSLT for another six months.

I want to appreciate anything you've done for Gecko, but it's hard if you don't realise it's people like me made the web happen too: I've been building web applications since 1994, and my applications have run on billions of devices at this point, and paid for my house, and some twenty years ago I used XSLT.

Do you really think I should bail them out by rewriting my fully working code so they don't have to fix their smelly broken code? You really think I have no standing to be a little bit annoyed by that attitude?

[jongjong]

This usually happens when a lot of people were forced to use a library or tool by their boss as part of a company mandate... They're already frustrated about not having a say about their tools and so when something goes wrong with the mandated tool/library, they just explode with rage.

I've participated in these two kinds of projects so I can see a clear difference in user behaviors.

Coerced users are particularly hateful, especially when the library or tool has serious flaws.

[myaccountonhn]

It sucks, people just doing their job should be treated with respect.

That said I can also feel like the technocratic decision making process make it so some people aren't given any voice nor choice. Its whatever the US tech giants want that decides for the rest of us.

[edent]

Why shouldn't people be overly emotional? Humans are emotional - and that's a good thing.

This change would make people sad because things they like would stop working.

It would cause them stress because they would have to work hard to fix or replace things.

It would cause them anger because some unaccountable people would be making decisions without considering them.

It would make them afraid that those same people might destroy something else which is useful.

These are all valid and useful emotional responses. Telling someone "if you do this it will make me sad" should be useful feedback.

Web developers aren't Vulcans. We have and use emotions.

[haburka]

It’s ok to have emotions, even as an adult, we all have feelings. However, it’s important to be kind to other humans and to treat humans with respect. Even on the internet, even when people are proposing removing features from a browser. Now it can be difficult to voice opposition without coming off as rude but its definitely an important skill for a professional to have.

I think this is especially true on GitHub where people are using their real professional identities. I’m honestly shocked that anyone can just comment on these proposals given how toxic it gets. Imagine if this is your day to day work environment - you’re trying to improve the web, which is already a tremendously difficult thing while all of these keyboard warriors are insulting you and your efforts. I wouldn’t want to wish that on anyone.

[perching_aix]

> Web developers aren't Vulcans. We have and use emotions.

You might find that the people on their end, too, have and use emotions.

Acknowledging and voicing your emotional and mental position is one thing, that alone doesn't make it overly emotional. What does is being so taken by them, that it ends up trampling on others'.

[JimDabell]

> Why shouldn't people be overly emotional?

By definition overly emotional is bad – that’s what separates “overly emotional” from just “emotional”.

Regardless, having emotions is not the problem, lashing out at others because of those emotions is the problem.

> These are all valid and useful emotional responses. Telling someone "if you do this it will make me sad" should be useful feedback.

The person you are responding to said:

> we were constantly called names for absolutely any change we would do. Insulted and accused of the worst intentions.

Why are you misrepresenting this as “it will make me sad”?