I was surprised this morning during my ritual with Google News, reading a tech bit about React. In case you don’t know, it’s a hugely popular Javascript library (tool) engineered and used by Facebook and adopted by countless developers, as a tool to create “reactive” apps and websites, in many cases, replacing older similar libraries like JQuery. Now you know.
What’s going on?
Racisms is being exposed within the React community. A series of events occured before and since, but in the last few days, this boiled over.
And here we are, reading the same type of toxic stupidity usually found on Facebook where there exists no real penalty for expressing “dumb” opinions; where you’ll never run into an RTFM style comment.
I’m ol’ school…
Since my computer experience began in the early 80s, most notably when I upgraded from a VIC-20 to a Commodore 64 and dove right into the world of phone freakin’ and BBSs and cracking games, I’ve been assuming that the same sharing culture we had back then, as computer enthusiasts, was the norm today. Look how open source software took over the world! But I’m wrong.
People at computer terminals forget that other people are real and have real lives, not just users at the end of a node. Social media creates noise (fake news, conspiracies etc.), non-tech and tech users are dumbed down or act like sheep in order to avoid being singled out, feelings are hurt, reputations destroyed.
All I see is time and bandwidth wasted.
And this, is kinda too late.
I think Dan Abramov’s tweet is on point and clarifies that hate should NOT be tolerated in the React community. I argue that it has no place anywhere.
Anyway, it’s to late. Personally I was disappointed , I always thought that my safe haven from a world of continuous discrimination. bias and particularly ignorance was technology, computers, the internet, places where knowledge is the currency.
Not alone!
There is plenty of reactions in the “community”, illustrating the variety of opinions people have. But just like most mass social media, you have to filter the crap to find reasonable thinking.
It didn’t even cross my mind, the idea of a boycott towards React. But now that the cat is out the bag, coinciding with my discovery of a new “framework” , makes for perfect timing to drop React, and Angular.
How can you see a “conspiracy” when it doesn’t affect you? You are part of the majority.
And yes, it’s sad that the community should be associated by the hateful behavior of a few —since silence is equally complicit…
And just when I discovered Svelte.
Take a break and deviate from the main subject, go check out Svelte, the “cybernetically enhanced web apps” tool I’ve been so enthusiastic about for the last 6 months, since watching Richard Harris’s Rethinking Reactivity.
And then there’s Sapper, a Node.js application framework. Adios React!
More importantly.
Back to the discrimination issue that Tatiana Mac pointed out. The news story will burn for a few days, perhaps weeks and dissipate.
Just remember that if today you deny Black and Latinos or other minorities out of technology, you deprive them of an economy future. The definition of institutionalized racism.
Back in my day, the only question people asked was A/S/L and what you can do with computers. Good programmers are born with passion and curiosity and the need to share.
Let’s be good folks.
Read more about #reactGate:
Factual account with timestamps and links:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g4oh2GGZOsucZfT1YJ5wjDUSk3ntbM3RNAxVs528-NM/edit
In the News:
https://hub.packtpub.com/react-forces-leaders-to-confront-community-toxic-culture/
https://www.businessinsider.com/reactgate-react-facebook-code-of-conduct-twitter-2019-8
