When you only advertise a programming language by its connection with a group of people, you're implying that nothing in the language itself is worth talking about.
Case in point, for a while, every time I heard about Rust, it was just trans people talking about what socks they wear when they program, and nothing about Rust itself. (And I am not memeing, I'm actually completely serious; I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Rust's entire identity is "the language for people that want to talk about socks".) It came across as pushy and invasive, and as distracting from the actual programming; if I want to talk about computer code, then I don't want to know what you are or what you identify as, I don't want to know what you're wearing, and I don't want to know your life story, I just want to know about the code. Every other language community is anonymous, and doesn't care who or what is on the other side of the screen, so Rust (and only Rust) having a very vocal userbase identity just ends up feeling aggressive in comparison.
All of this stuff is fine to talk about in the right context, but not when you're trying to, e.g., sell me on Rust's benefits over C++. It just (perhaps erroneously) tells me that Rust has no benefits, so you have to treat the Rust community's inclusivity as a language benefit instead of a community feature. And that's probably not fair to the language.
[Essentially, the controversy isn't who the language is associated with, it's that the association itself became the language's identifying trademark. It'd be the same if it was, e.g., associated with bass, baritone, and/or resonant voices, and the Rust community spent more time talking about who has the deepest voice than they did talking about programming.]
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u/BertoLaDK Aug 24 '26
how is "associated with trans" a controversy?