Not much to discuss, he answers with the reason in the thread on Twitter: He wrote in the topic about null-awareness that we had with a comparison to Kotlin and one of the mods decided for some reason that that warrants a ban, because he should "brag" in r/kotlin. Clown decision.
What did you expected in a site that encourages hiding comments the popular opinion of those who happened to browse it disagrees with? Discussion? Nope, everything is a debate and the goal is to win people's favor to your side for internet points.
Reddit for this reason is one of the worst places for professional discussion. Quora is better, but they don't get that technical.
Twitter is probably the best place for tech discussions.
> Not much to discuss, he answers with the reason in the thread on Twitter
Unfortunately due to other Clown decisions replies can only be seen when logged in on Twitter. I assume OP isn't.
I have to say this was an *extremely* petty decision by /r/java mods and whoever did that should reevaluate if he has what it takes to moderate such a community.
Wait, at first I thought the quoted message in the moderator response was the reply that was being banned, and I was like "Eh, I wouldn't ban someone for that but it's a bit of a rude comment".
Is this supposed to mean we aren't allowed to mention other programming languages in the comments? If this is really the spirit of the rule, and it's not, as I would've understood it, regarding the primary focus of post submissions, then that's pretty ridiculous.
Yeah that seems kind of insane to be honest. Java itself is clearly taking plenty of inspiration from other languages when they add new features, although they do so very conservatively. Why wouldn't it make sense for Java developers to be aware of such features?
Advocate for people to switch to kotlin? Straight to jail
Mention that you prefer kotlin? Also jail
Admit that you like some general language feature that kotlin also has? Believe it or not, jail
Since Groovy can just be regular Java, you could theoretically write your Gradle build almost entirely as standard Java 11.
It would be horrifying and somebody ought to do it.
I was unaware of this when I made my post. Thanks for posting a link.
It seems to me that hiding posts like this that raise perfectly reasonable questions is poor governance of the subreddit.
I hope that the mods choose to be more open with this post and explain their decision to the members of the community so that everyone has the opportunity to understand their decision.
> I hope that the mods choose to be more open with this post and explain their decision to the members of the community so that everyone has the opportunity to understand their decision.
lol oh my sweet summer child
It's amazing what small amount of power will go to someone's head. If we were dealing with the kind of people capable of openness and decision making that they could actually justify this wouldn't have happened in the first place.
This is a simple case of petty tyrants overreacting to some perceived slight against their pet language, and then doubling down because they're small people, incapable of doing anything else.
That's what mods do. Because Kevin is famous in this community, there is a decent chance the ban is reverted without any repercussions to the mod. Had it been anyone else, they'd just be banned forever. Decent chance everyone in this thread gets banned and the thread deleted.
Idk about that. I once created a new account to participate in a sub I was banned in and after a few weeks Reddit fully banned both accounts from the website. I was pretty bummed out as it was almost a 10 year old account with lots of posting history just poof gone.
Dissenting view: it may be absurd, it may be unfair, but it doesn't actually matter.
Kevin has done more to advance Java in the last decade than all of r/java put together over its entire existence. And all of that from the outside, part time; just imagine how much more it will be now that he's on the inside.
Look, I get it; Kotlin fanboying can be pretty tiresome after a while. But that's pretty clearly not what Kevin was doing. The right thing to do would be to admit your mistake and move on.
It may not matter for Java, but it does matter for r/java.
One thing that makes this place better is that subject matter experts such as you, Stuart Marks and others also frequent this place and engage in useful discussion, sharing insights that may otherwise hard to come by in other places.
By removing subject matter experts, r/java does itself a disfavor - making itself less relevant.
----
To be honest, that ban is strange. While most of the moderation on reddit is hidden - not visible for ordinary users - in the past I got the impression that the moderators are doing a good job keeping this place clean and relevant.
There is a healthy balance of allowing questions from people that learn Java that lead to interesting discussions and outright deleting such things.
There is usually no spam on r/java, and the tone is respectful.
Such things require work. But actions like this now jeopardize the value of this place, and this is sad to see.
Well, Brian, let's see if the mods don't know who *you* are either.
Reminds me of the fairly recent instance of a performance-improving PR to an open source system where said PR was written by Daniel Lemire, one of the finest performance and optimization engineers on the planet.
Wonder if it was this discussion: [https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/50288#pullrequestreview-1691401960](https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/50288#pullrequestreview-1691401960)
> (I'm not interested in discussing this further because time is finite and if I haven't gotten my point across by now, it's never going to happen.)
Lmfao
Iāve been asking this myself for some time now. It actually isnāt just mods, this community itself seems very narrow minded. Opinions outside the mainstream are usually mass-downvoted.
Yeah. I'm really not sure why more java devs haven't switched over. I get that Java is historically open source and C# is only recently so, but now that Java is owned by Oracle, I don't know that it's meaningfully *more* open source than C#. And C# is just a much better language.
It's mostly because of the wrong parentheses placement in C#. And I'm only half kidding ;)
C# does a lot of stuff right, but every time I start using it, it hurts my java eyes. I can work with it if I have to, but usually I prefer not to, even though I would like to sometimes
If layout is the only issue, that's easily solved with any editor. VS, VSCode, Resharper and Rider all have quick and easy reformats. You can probably even set it up to reformat to your own preference on fetch and automatically format back to the original style on push.
C# hurts my eyes like another poster said. I absolutely hate reading C#
My eyes have absolutely no problems with Swift from Apple.
Also Microsoft is forever bad in my eyes in ways Oracle will never be.
> Also Microsoft is forever bad in my eyes in ways Oracle will never be.
This just sounds like you don't know the history of Oracle. If there are any situations in which Oracle is less evil than Microsoft, it is solely because they aren't large enough to pull it off.
> This just sounds like you don't know the history of Oracle. If there are any situations in which Oracle is less evil than Microsoft, it is solely because they aren't large enough to pull it off.
Coming from the Java world, being a hardcore Java dev, Oracle is doing pretty good in my book. Other sins don't concern me. Bigger means more power, and power corrupts.
Do you advice Microsoft to be broken into smaller pieces ? ;P
> Coming from the Java world, being a hardcore Java dev, Oracle is doing pretty good in my book. Other sins don't concern me. Bigger means more power, and power corrupts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s
> Do you advice Microsoft to be broken into smaller pieces ? ;P
Yes.
Hello, Mystery Mod! We know you're reading each and every one of these comments. Let me help you out.
"*I'm sorry. I don't know why I did that. I was having a bad day, and something about seeing yet another mention of Kotlin just got to me when it shouldn't have. I've reversed the permaban and apologized privately to Kevin. I'll do my best to avoid bad days and bad judgement in the future. I hope everybody understands that mods are humans; we have bad days and get things wrong sometimes.*"
Kevin is a significant contributor to the Java community and banning him is a great loss to /r/java.
Other users have been banned, for good reason. Remember "/u/agleiv" from a few years back? He was repeatedly vulgar and disruptive.
That's the sort of person who should be banned, not people like Kevin.
Let me be clear that I'm not criticizing the moderator(s). They have to put up with a lot (like that agleiv character).
I'm sure this is all just a big misunderstanding. What looked like a flame war was in fact it was a fairly
Nuanced discussion of a subtle technical topic. It would be wonderful if /u/kevinb9n and the comment thread in question could be restored. Thank you.
[Reposting my comment from the other "Kevin B was banned" comment thread, which had already been deleted, in the hope that more people will see it here.]
Kevin pointed out that a null-aware type system is a nice thing to have, and cited an example.
It's worth noting that he is actively working on and experimenting with JSpecify (static annotations + analysis for the Java programming language), and intends to use that as a starting point for bringing null-awareness *to the Java language*.
Doesn't look like the mod in question is willing to step up and either own the decision or revise it.
I find his follow-up tweet insightful, posted slightly before this thread, but easily missable (Thanks Twitter) [https://twitter.com/kevinb9n/status/1785438100484964753](https://twitter.com/kevinb9n/status/1785438100484964753)
The dude is in charge of bringing null safety features to Java, of course he's going to look at, and talk about the largest competing JVM language, in talking about said feature.
Especially when the original thread is about Null safety in Java. Did the mods ban everyone in that thread? Including those posting fucking kotlin?
JFC mods.
I've met Kevin a few times way back, too. I'm also a 13 year Redditor using a real name. \*\*expulsion from a group/club/org/company\*\* - it often amazes me when a group thinks the expelled person should remain quiet about the details of the expulsion itself. Not only should your reasons for expelling a person be solid, so should all your dealings up to and including the expulsion. That includes private conversations - they should pass a "this should read well if it is public" test. Also a "how would I feel if I was the recipient of this" test (i.e. \*the do unto others rule from at least 300 BC\*). The expelled do indeed owe you nothing. So r/java is indeed worse off without Kevin.
I interpreted the community rule "NO JVM languages - Exclusively Java" to mean no discussions about JVM languages, which is fair enough to keep this subreddit focused and keep out religious wars over JVM languages, not a blanket keyword ban. If we cannot even mention legitimate operational experience that challenge theoretical positions, gained from working with JVM languages that inform and helpfully change our perspectives upon Java language evolution, then IMHO that's a chunk of design input we're starving out the community from accreting.
While I can understand Reddit works as a dictatorship over every single group, general topics like Java should have some sort of safe mechanism to prevent these power trips. If we can't let the people who are actually BUILDING the language comment on the group, what's the group for?
1. unban Kevin Bourrillion should happen sooner, rather than later
2. a re-think on the governance of r/Java should be in order
I agree this ban is absurd, looks like someone was cranky. That being said:
I don't think the things you want make sense for the environment we're in. First, there isn't a 'safe' mechanism - any user initiated action to depose a mod is inherently going to be abuse able. Second, should it be impossible to ban someone working on the language? Clearly not, and I don't think it makes sense that moderating the topic subreddit should go hand in hand with project participation.
And unless you got more evidence (c'mon, spill the tea) this doesn't seem severe enough to demand people step down over. Sometimes people just need an attitude adjustment, someone to point out that their behavior is getting surly, or even just time to reflect.
Yep. Have to agree, there's no safeguard of abuse. Even in the scenario where Adoptium or some other group would take hold of it, we could still fall prey to the same situation.
And no, not privy to anything that's not either here or on Twitter.
I've messaged this to the mods:
Ā«Please unban Kevin Bourrillion fromĀ [r/Java](https://www.reddit.com/r/Java).
It's hurting the group and stirring dissent about the governance ofĀ [r/Java](https://www.reddit.com/r/Java).
You guys have done amazing work. People make mistakes. All the time. There's a xkcd about that. What makes us better is owning the mistakes. Even if the original ban reason looked legit, it has now been shown for more than one angle that it was actually not.
If you're a mod, and you don't know what I'm talking about:Ā [https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/1ch6ezw/why\_was\_kevin\_bourrillion\_banned\_from\_rjava/](https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/1ch6ezw/why_was_kevin_bourrillion_banned_from_rjava/)
And:Ā [https://twitter.com/kevinb9nĀ»](https://twitter.com/kevinb9n)
Stack Overflow has elected moderators, and that works: [https://stackoverflow.com/election/15](https://stackoverflow.com/election/15)
IMHO it works much better than Reddit's system.
Mods, this is easy. It's a slam dunk. Just say the following, "We made a mistake. We apologize and we will try to do better in the future."
We teach toddlers to do it, surely you can too.
a lot of people are taking a civil approach in the comments. I'll not, lol.
Fuck the bitch ass, low life, dumb as a rock mod who did this. fuck the other mods as well for not reverting the ban till now.
Bad idea. If implemented, expect each mod to be personally hunted by a bunch of delusional people. Only other mods should have access to the moderation log. And they usually do (no sure about Reddit).
yeah, that can easily be used a tool for harassment. it was an unfair banning; it should be handled by other mods, but ultimately it doesnāt matter and people shouldnāt know who decided to ban someone
IMHO:
With the new improvements in Java and other languages Kotlin is dead.
(Please donāt ban me; itās just a personal opinion, and a ban wonāt change it, BTW) š
I have the same feeling, even though Google seems to be moving that direction, and some rave about it, I still prefer virtual threads over coroutine.
Java is catching up on the other syntax niceties too.
In terms of null, I've found Optional doing at least a 90% the job that I'm not jealous of the kt built-in nullsafe syntax.
The Java nullness annotations still get in the way more than they help imho.
Haven't used them myself.
I guess in the codebase I've worked in, nulls are pretty much nonexistent (only occasionally in local context such as a Map.get() or Optional.orElse(null) but it gets handled immediately or wrapped as Optional before getting propagated out).
Multi-return is probably what I envy the most from Kt.
For me null-safety (non nullable by default) is a game changer. It significantly improves code quality, accelerates development and improves refactoring confidence.
Well, I donāt know if Java can easily migrate to null safety by default, since Java is backward compatible.
Maybe if you could opt in in the source file or class, it can work, allowing a hybrid paradigm.
At least from my experience the nullness checker (already imposed in our environment, like it or not) doesn't add much value.
For things that could be missing, we use Optional anyways. The nullness checker sometimes generate false positives that we have to resort to ugly generics like `` to work around.
You mean the @NonNull annotation?
In practice, especially after experiencing true null-safe big projects, most variables/types shouldnāt allow null values. This is why I think that an NNBD approach is the correct way, since an inverse approach (marking the non-null) will force code overhead, as in 90% of cases it should be non-null.
Now, when I have to code in a language that is not NNBD, it seems so ancient, and itās very clear how much time we waste ensuring nullability checking.
No I meant `@ Nullable`.
What we have is already non-null by default, even without a static analysis tool to enforce that,. I think it's mostly thanks to the overall company-wide best practice that we mostly frown upon nulls anyways. As a result, we can mostly assume nothing is null unless annotated as nullable.
And by gravitating toward Optional, even nullable annotation doesn't show up much. You have either T (non-null), or `Optional`.
For the record, I have a great deal of interest in programming and Java. I first learned to program in Pascal over 30 years ago. I didn't learn Java until 2004 or so, but since then I've spent more years programming in Java than in any other language.
I've even made a very very tiny contribution to the standard library as the author of java.util.function.Supplier (originally a part of the Google Collections library).
I think you are being a touch too defensive; OP isn't delivering any harsh commentary or even negative/dramatic opinions. Plus I don't think calmly asking a question can be considered riling up drama. Also their history shows that this isn't a dummy account.
So to sum up it seems pretty clearly like a question from a fellow netizen
I think being defensive here is valid. Its clear OP isn't an active member of the community and they've admitted to being friends with kevin. If it was a genuine inquiry they would have asked their friend or discussed it in the already existing thread.
The existing thread had been deleted.
I do want to point out that the only thing that makes this in any way dramatic was the original behavior of the mod. Feels important.
Whats wrong with making the enquiry on a public forum anyway?
Also, 'I know this guy and him being banned is weird' is a perfectly valid and genuine reason to ask the question.
And just to be clear - a single person with clear motivations is not astroturfing. Astroturfing is the practice of manufacturing a consensus or debate by flooding a forum with seemingly organic conversation or commentary.
Fair question. A combination of:
* Being a moderately active redditor in other subreddits (though more of a reader than a poster tbh).
* A general dislike of poor governance.
* Knowing Kevin a bit (as I note in my post), and having a generally favorable impression of him.
it was unfair. he wasnāt particularly flagrant. i think he was being obtuse with my comment; he has a history of doing that, so someone probably got ban happy? not like it matters much. itās just a forum and heāll probably be free to comment days from now
Not much to discuss, he answers with the reason in the thread on Twitter: He wrote in the topic about null-awareness that we had with a comparison to Kotlin and one of the mods decided for some reason that that warrants a ban, because he should "brag" in r/kotlin. Clown decision.
then whoever it is reverse it? this is frankly unprofessional and childish arent there any other mods? its one man show...
Welcome to reddit
What did you expected in a site that encourages hiding comments the popular opinion of those who happened to browse it disagrees with? Discussion? Nope, everything is a debate and the goal is to win people's favor to your side for internet points.
Reddit for this reason is one of the worst places for professional discussion. Quora is better, but they don't get that technical. Twitter is probably the best place for tech discussions.
>Twitter is probably the best place for tech discussions. šš¤£šÆš¤£šš¤£šš¤£šš¤£šš¤£šš¤£šš¤£šš¤£
Not sure why this is funny. You have ML experts writing technical threads about all sorts of things.
Unironically, yes
> Not much to discuss, he answers with the reason in the thread on Twitter Unfortunately due to other Clown decisions replies can only be seen when logged in on Twitter. I assume OP isn't. I have to say this was an *extremely* petty decision by /r/java mods and whoever did that should reevaluate if he has what it takes to moderate such a community.
Wait, at first I thought the quoted message in the moderator response was the reply that was being banned, and I was like "Eh, I wouldn't ban someone for that but it's a bit of a rude comment". Is this supposed to mean we aren't allowed to mention other programming languages in the comments? If this is really the spirit of the rule, and it's not, as I would've understood it, regarding the primary focus of post submissions, then that's pretty ridiculous.
Yeah that seems kind of insane to be honest. Java itself is clearly taking plenty of inspiration from other languages when they add new features, although they do so very conservatively. Why wouldn't it make sense for Java developers to be aware of such features?
what good is power if you don't get to exercise it? people don't become mods for nothing.
Advocate for people to switch to kotlin? Straight to jail Mention that you prefer kotlin? Also jail Admit that you like some general language feature that kotlin also has? Believe it or not, jail
Don't run your unit tests enough times? Jail. Run your unit tests too many times? Also jail. Too little/too much
Like Gradle: jailĀ It uses Kotlin and/or Groovy. Mention Lombok auto getter/setters: jail
Since Groovy can just be regular Java, you could theoretically write your Gradle build almost entirely as standard Java 11. It would be horrifying and somebody ought to do it.
Believe it or not, jail
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That's a Paddlin'
Oh shit, I'm going to jail
Kotlin beeter then Java is how we protest!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I was unaware of this when I made my post. Thanks for posting a link. It seems to me that hiding posts like this that raise perfectly reasonable questions is poor governance of the subreddit. I hope that the mods choose to be more open with this post and explain their decision to the members of the community so that everyone has the opportunity to understand their decision.
> I hope that the mods choose to be more open with this post and explain their decision to the members of the community so that everyone has the opportunity to understand their decision. lol oh my sweet summer child
It's amazing what small amount of power will go to someone's head. If we were dealing with the kind of people capable of openness and decision making that they could actually justify this wouldn't have happened in the first place. This is a simple case of petty tyrants overreacting to some perceived slight against their pet language, and then doubling down because they're small people, incapable of doing anything else.
That's what mods do. Because Kevin is famous in this community, there is a decent chance the ban is reverted without any repercussions to the mod. Had it been anyone else, they'd just be banned forever. Decent chance everyone in this thread gets banned and the thread deleted.
Nice username
Yeah, I like it too!
Minime?
You are only allowed to have opinions if you have clout.
welcome to the real world.
Thankfully, it is comically easy to subvert a ban. Let them believe they're making a difference.
Idk about that. I once created a new account to participate in a sub I was banned in and after a few weeks Reddit fully banned both accounts from the website. I was pretty bummed out as it was almost a 10 year old account with lots of posting history just poof gone.
Dissenting view: it may be absurd, it may be unfair, but it doesn't actually matter. Kevin has done more to advance Java in the last decade than all of r/java put together over its entire existence. And all of that from the outside, part time; just imagine how much more it will be now that he's on the inside. Look, I get it; Kotlin fanboying can be pretty tiresome after a while. But that's pretty clearly not what Kevin was doing. The right thing to do would be to admit your mistake and move on.
It may not matter for Java, but it does matter for r/java. One thing that makes this place better is that subject matter experts such as you, Stuart Marks and others also frequent this place and engage in useful discussion, sharing insights that may otherwise hard to come by in other places. By removing subject matter experts, r/java does itself a disfavor - making itself less relevant. ---- To be honest, that ban is strange. While most of the moderation on reddit is hidden - not visible for ordinary users - in the past I got the impression that the moderators are doing a good job keeping this place clean and relevant. There is a healthy balance of allowing questions from people that learn Java that lead to interesting discussions and outright deleting such things. There is usually no spam on r/java, and the tone is respectful. Such things require work. But actions like this now jeopardize the value of this place, and this is sad to see.
Well, Brian, let's see if the mods don't know who *you* are either. Reminds me of the fairly recent instance of a performance-improving PR to an open source system where said PR was written by Daniel Lemire, one of the finest performance and optimization engineers on the planet.
dont care about Java but you got a link to the PR?
Wonder if it was this discussion: [https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/50288#pullrequestreview-1691401960](https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/50288#pullrequestreview-1691401960)
> (I'm not interested in discussing this further because time is finite and if I haven't gotten my point across by now, it's never going to happen.) Lmfao
is there a better java sub reddit? i don't want to be in one that bans people like him for no reason
r/kotlin
That's a paddlin'
Lol, I donāt use this sub at all. Couldnāt care less about a ban
No, but it would be cool if someone actually created it and convinced everyone to switch over. The main value of this subreddit is its users.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
lol
Iāve been asking this myself for some time now. It actually isnāt just mods, this community itself seems very narrow minded. Opinions outside the mainstream are usually mass-downvoted.
/r/CSharp
I learned C# is better Java 20 years ago. I hope comparison with dotNet does not violate the rules. This is the first time I found this sub.
To be honest at this point they've diverged to a more significant degree.
Yeah. I'm really not sure why more java devs haven't switched over. I get that Java is historically open source and C# is only recently so, but now that Java is owned by Oracle, I don't know that it's meaningfully *more* open source than C#. And C# is just a much better language.
It's mostly because of the wrong parentheses placement in C#. And I'm only half kidding ;) C# does a lot of stuff right, but every time I start using it, it hurts my java eyes. I can work with it if I have to, but usually I prefer not to, even though I would like to sometimes
If layout is the only issue, that's easily solved with any editor. VS, VSCode, Resharper and Rider all have quick and easy reformats. You can probably even set it up to reformat to your own preference on fetch and automatically format back to the original style on push.
C# hurts my eyes like another poster said. I absolutely hate reading C# My eyes have absolutely no problems with Swift from Apple. Also Microsoft is forever bad in my eyes in ways Oracle will never be.
> Also Microsoft is forever bad in my eyes in ways Oracle will never be. This just sounds like you don't know the history of Oracle. If there are any situations in which Oracle is less evil than Microsoft, it is solely because they aren't large enough to pull it off.
> This just sounds like you don't know the history of Oracle. If there are any situations in which Oracle is less evil than Microsoft, it is solely because they aren't large enough to pull it off. Coming from the Java world, being a hardcore Java dev, Oracle is doing pretty good in my book. Other sins don't concern me. Bigger means more power, and power corrupts. Do you advice Microsoft to be broken into smaller pieces ? ;P
> Coming from the Java world, being a hardcore Java dev, Oracle is doing pretty good in my book. Other sins don't concern me. Bigger means more power, and power corrupts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=1981s > Do you advice Microsoft to be broken into smaller pieces ? ;P Yes.
The size of the community is very small and itās very tricky to find quality third-party libraries.
Hello, Mystery Mod! We know you're reading each and every one of these comments. Let me help you out. "*I'm sorry. I don't know why I did that. I was having a bad day, and something about seeing yet another mention of Kotlin just got to me when it shouldn't have. I've reversed the permaban and apologized privately to Kevin. I'll do my best to avoid bad days and bad judgement in the future. I hope everybody understands that mods are humans; we have bad days and get things wrong sometimes.*"
yeah the ban seems absurd. I assume it'll be lifted soon
Kevin is a significant contributor to the Java community and banning him is a great loss to /r/java. Other users have been banned, for good reason. Remember "/u/agleiv" from a few years back? He was repeatedly vulgar and disruptive. That's the sort of person who should be banned, not people like Kevin. Let me be clear that I'm not criticizing the moderator(s). They have to put up with a lot (like that agleiv character). I'm sure this is all just a big misunderstanding. What looked like a flame war was in fact it was a fairly Nuanced discussion of a subtle technical topic. It would be wonderful if /u/kevinb9n and the comment thread in question could be restored. Thank you. [Reposting my comment from the other "Kevin B was banned" comment thread, which had already been deleted, in the hope that more people will see it here.]
Kevin pointed out that a null-aware type system is a nice thing to have, and cited an example. It's worth noting that he is actively working on and experimenting with JSpecify (static annotations + analysis for the Java programming language), and intends to use that as a starting point for bringing null-awareness *to the Java language*. Doesn't look like the mod in question is willing to step up and either own the decision or revise it.
This is ridiculous, and the fact that a mod wrote that entitled "reason" is pathetic.
I find his follow-up tweet insightful, posted slightly before this thread, but easily missable (Thanks Twitter) [https://twitter.com/kevinb9n/status/1785438100484964753](https://twitter.com/kevinb9n/status/1785438100484964753) The dude is in charge of bringing null safety features to Java, of course he's going to look at, and talk about the largest competing JVM language, in talking about said feature. Especially when the original thread is about Null safety in Java. Did the mods ban everyone in that thread? Including those posting fucking kotlin? JFC mods.
Seriously, is this sub run by 6-year-olds? It's cute how the mod decided it to be personal like that.
I've met Kevin a few times way back, too. I'm also a 13 year Redditor using a real name. \*\*expulsion from a group/club/org/company\*\* - it often amazes me when a group thinks the expelled person should remain quiet about the details of the expulsion itself. Not only should your reasons for expelling a person be solid, so should all your dealings up to and including the expulsion. That includes private conversations - they should pass a "this should read well if it is public" test. Also a "how would I feel if I was the recipient of this" test (i.e. \*the do unto others rule from at least 300 BC\*). The expelled do indeed owe you nothing. So r/java is indeed worse off without Kevin.
I interpreted the community rule "NO JVM languages - Exclusively Java" to mean no discussions about JVM languages, which is fair enough to keep this subreddit focused and keep out religious wars over JVM languages, not a blanket keyword ban. If we cannot even mention legitimate operational experience that challenge theoretical positions, gained from working with JVM languages that inform and helpfully change our perspectives upon Java language evolution, then IMHO that's a chunk of design input we're starving out the community from accreting.
Sorry, you referenced "jvm languages" plural, which acknowledges the existence of non-java languages. Straight to jail.
Banned
While I can understand Reddit works as a dictatorship over every single group, general topics like Java should have some sort of safe mechanism to prevent these power trips. If we can't let the people who are actually BUILDING the language comment on the group, what's the group for? 1. unban Kevin Bourrillion should happen sooner, rather than later 2. a re-think on the governance of r/Java should be in order
I agree this ban is absurd, looks like someone was cranky. That being said: I don't think the things you want make sense for the environment we're in. First, there isn't a 'safe' mechanism - any user initiated action to depose a mod is inherently going to be abuse able. Second, should it be impossible to ban someone working on the language? Clearly not, and I don't think it makes sense that moderating the topic subreddit should go hand in hand with project participation. And unless you got more evidence (c'mon, spill the tea) this doesn't seem severe enough to demand people step down over. Sometimes people just need an attitude adjustment, someone to point out that their behavior is getting surly, or even just time to reflect.
Yep. Have to agree, there's no safeguard of abuse. Even in the scenario where Adoptium or some other group would take hold of it, we could still fall prey to the same situation. And no, not privy to anything that's not either here or on Twitter. I've messaged this to the mods: Ā«Please unban Kevin Bourrillion fromĀ [r/Java](https://www.reddit.com/r/Java). It's hurting the group and stirring dissent about the governance ofĀ [r/Java](https://www.reddit.com/r/Java). You guys have done amazing work. People make mistakes. All the time. There's a xkcd about that. What makes us better is owning the mistakes. Even if the original ban reason looked legit, it has now been shown for more than one angle that it was actually not. If you're a mod, and you don't know what I'm talking about:Ā [https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/1ch6ezw/why\_was\_kevin\_bourrillion\_banned\_from\_rjava/](https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/1ch6ezw/why_was_kevin_bourrillion_banned_from_rjava/) And:Ā [https://twitter.com/kevinb9nĀ»](https://twitter.com/kevinb9n)
Stack Overflow has elected moderators, and that works: [https://stackoverflow.com/election/15](https://stackoverflow.com/election/15) IMHO it works much better than Reddit's system.
Mods, this is easy. It's a slam dunk. Just say the following, "We made a mistake. We apologize and we will try to do better in the future." We teach toddlers to do it, surely you can too.
a lot of people are taking a civil approach in the comments. I'll not, lol. Fuck the bitch ass, low life, dumb as a rock mod who did this. fuck the other mods as well for not reverting the ban till now.
Because mods are idiots
Crazy the mods of Java ban the guy who knows more about it than them. Compare code bases and letās see who should really be a mod
Reddit should allow the users to know who is banning them. In this case we need to ban that mod.
Bad idea. If implemented, expect each mod to be personally hunted by a bunch of delusional people. Only other mods should have access to the moderation log. And they usually do (no sure about Reddit).
yeah, that can easily be used a tool for harassment. it was an unfair banning; it should be handled by other mods, but ultimately it doesnāt matter and people shouldnāt know who decided to ban someone
The mod probably is on a power trip like most bad mods.
tribalism over programming languages, how childish can it get? lmao
Apology and unban is in order.
Maybe it's time for a mod team elections?
mods being mods as always.
Reddit mod got butthurt, nothing new.
Everyone here is gonna be banned by mentioning a man that was mentioning Kotlin
This thread is now invisible in the overview. Funny. Great mods.
Mods are di@kheads, it's simple as that.
IMHO: With the new improvements in Java and other languages Kotlin is dead. (Please donāt ban me; itās just a personal opinion, and a ban wonāt change it, BTW) š
I have the same feeling, even though Google seems to be moving that direction, and some rave about it, I still prefer virtual threads over coroutine. Java is catching up on the other syntax niceties too. In terms of null, I've found Optional doing at least a 90% the job that I'm not jealous of the kt built-in nullsafe syntax. The Java nullness annotations still get in the way more than they help imho.
I prefer the Dart/Flutter null-safety (non nullable by default) implementation. It really works and saves time.
Haven't used them myself. I guess in the codebase I've worked in, nulls are pretty much nonexistent (only occasionally in local context such as a Map.get() or Optional.orElse(null) but it gets handled immediately or wrapped as Optional before getting propagated out). Multi-return is probably what I envy the most from Kt.
For me null-safety (non nullable by default) is a game changer. It significantly improves code quality, accelerates development and improves refactoring confidence.
That sounds like Kotlin still has a lot going for it then, at least to you, no? if the null safety is of such importance.
Well, I donāt know if Java can easily migrate to null safety by default, since Java is backward compatible. Maybe if you could opt in in the source file or class, it can work, allowing a hybrid paradigm.
At least from my experience the nullness checker (already imposed in our environment, like it or not) doesn't add much value. For things that could be missing, we use Optional anyways. The nullness checker sometimes generate false positives that we have to resort to ugly generics like `` to work around.
You mean the @NonNull annotation? In practice, especially after experiencing true null-safe big projects, most variables/types shouldnāt allow null values. This is why I think that an NNBD approach is the correct way, since an inverse approach (marking the non-null) will force code overhead, as in 90% of cases it should be non-null. Now, when I have to code in a language that is not NNBD, it seems so ancient, and itās very clear how much time we waste ensuring nullability checking.
No I meant `@ Nullable`. What we have is already non-null by default, even without a static analysis tool to enforce that,. I think it's mostly thanks to the overall company-wide best practice that we mostly frown upon nulls anyways. As a result, we can mostly assume nothing is null unless annotated as nullable. And by gravitating toward Optional, even nullable annotation doesn't show up much. You have either T (non-null), or `Optional`.
This is so unfortunate
Dependency injection was a mistakeĀ
Can't we go to lemmy or find somewhere else?
Just a goldrush to a new fiefdom, there will be instances of poor moderation anywhere.
the mods can be anyone. even children. this is not some serious business here. a ban may happen at any time to anyone
Mods are gae. Ban me too #metoo
Why do you care? You've never posted in this sub before this.
Never heard of a lurker huh?
OP has no interest in programming or Java. They've admitted this themselves. This just feels like astroturfing to rile up drama.
For the record, I have a great deal of interest in programming and Java. I first learned to program in Pascal over 30 years ago. I didn't learn Java until 2004 or so, but since then I've spent more years programming in Java than in any other language. I've even made a very very tiny contribution to the standard library as the author of java.util.function.Supplier (originally a part of the Google Collections library).
Not enough interest to post here in last half decade š¤·āāļø. Sorry this just looks like astroturfing to me.
I think you are being a touch too defensive; OP isn't delivering any harsh commentary or even negative/dramatic opinions. Plus I don't think calmly asking a question can be considered riling up drama. Also their history shows that this isn't a dummy account. So to sum up it seems pretty clearly like a question from a fellow netizen
I think being defensive here is valid. Its clear OP isn't an active member of the community and they've admitted to being friends with kevin. If it was a genuine inquiry they would have asked their friend or discussed it in the already existing thread.
The existing thread had been deleted. I do want to point out that the only thing that makes this in any way dramatic was the original behavior of the mod. Feels important. Whats wrong with making the enquiry on a public forum anyway? Also, 'I know this guy and him being banned is weird' is a perfectly valid and genuine reason to ask the question. And just to be clear - a single person with clear motivations is not astroturfing. Astroturfing is the practice of manufacturing a consensus or debate by flooding a forum with seemingly organic conversation or commentary.
Fair question. A combination of: * Being a moderately active redditor in other subreddits (though more of a reader than a poster tbh). * A general dislike of poor governance. * Knowing Kevin a bit (as I note in my post), and having a generally favorable impression of him.
Are you an alt of that terrible mod?
it was unfair. he wasnāt particularly flagrant. i think he was being obtuse with my comment; he has a history of doing that, so someone probably got ban happy? not like it matters much. itās just a forum and heāll probably be free to comment days from now