[bramhaag]

> e.g. IIRC his answer to "How do I set up tmux with kitty?" was something like "Don't, tmux is dumb" and closing it. Eventually I gave up.

Heh, I switched from Kitty to Wezterm due to the exact same types of comments from the maintainer. It's his project of course, and he's a great programmer, but some humility wouldn't hurt.

[godelski]

  > the exact same types of comments from the maintainer.

Kovid really bugs me and is a reason I turned away from kitty too. I saw his character when looking up tmux issues. He's brash like Linus, but at least while Linus is calling you an idiot he'll tell you a better way to solve your problem. Kovid seems to think tmux is really about splitting panes and peoples' main draw to it isn't about persistence...

Oh, and kitty phones home

If you want drama:

tmux:

  - https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/391

Phone Home:

  - https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/pull/3544
  - https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/2481

On a side note: I really don't trust devs who reply to issues and close them. I get wanting to remove the issue from the task list, but just set up an action for stale issues (which has an added advantage of pinging the user who may have just lost the message). Otherwise let the user close because they might have follow-up questions. It's just disrespectful and always a red flag. I know lots of users are dumb (I literally just got an issue on a research project with someone asking how they fine tune our model...), but noobs are wizards in training. You don't have to be nice, but don't be mean either. Plus, you'll just piss off people who could end up helping you. And if you don't want help, I expect your project to decay when you get bored. Definitely not what I want from a terminal

[_xiaz]

This one is the straw that broke the camels back for me: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/issues/4965

"Are you sure you want to close this window", meant to only trigger in interactive scenarios like ssh or htop, triggered on the regular shell sometimes. Not even consistently

[godelski]

  > It breaks nothing.

OOFFF yeah, that is out of touch.

Reminds me of something Linus said

  > The gcc people have a BAD attitude. When the meaning of "inline" changed (from a "inline this" to "hey, it's a hint"), the gcc people never EVER said "sorry". They effectively said "screw you".

  > Comparing it to the kernel is ludicrous. We care about user-space interfaces to an insane degree. We go to extreme lengths to maintain even badly designed or unintentional interfaces. Breaking user programs simply isn't acceptable. We're _not_ like the gcc developers. We know that people use old binaries for years and years, and that making a new release doesn't mean that you can just throw that out. You can trust us.

Which I think is an important lesson here. About how when you build tools, people build around you and what they have to work with. But I'm surprised this attitude is not more common, because I don't know a single person who is unfazed when changes happen that break their programs/workflow. It's reasonable for someone to be upset. And not a single person is ever like "no worries, I'll go read the commits first, no need for documentation." (Don't get me started on "my code is so clear it doesn't need documentation" people...).

I think one big issue with all this is that costs are outsourced either to time or someone who isn't you, and this naively makes people believe that there is no cost (and sometimes fight to reject claims of cost. There is always a cost. There's a cost to everything). I wonder how much time and money would be saved if we recognized this. I just don't know how to motivate solving this, as it's non-obvious.

https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gcc_vs_kernel_stability.html

[da39a3ee]

To be fair the Alacritty author is also really abrasive and unsympathetic to users.

[godelski]

I've migrated to Wez already. I actually had issues with them too but wasn't as bad as Kovid. More like what you said "Not our problem, it's X's problem." (Brew devs love to do this too) Leaves a bad taste in my mouth but dismissal is better than dismissal + gaslighting + insulting.

Plus, Alacritty just hasn't been a great editor. (I wish foot would build a cross platform version[0]. But I'm not entitled enough to expect someone write code for me, though I might ask)

[0] https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot

[Arnavion]

>and he's a great programmer

The people who had to deal with the Calibre setuid binaries fiasco in 2011 would probably disagree :) ( https://lwn.net/Articles/465311/ )

[Aeolun]

I think that's far enough ago that we can't really draw any conclusions from that to today.

It's like someone deciding my current skill based on how good I was when I left university.

[godelski]

While I mostly agree, it looks like the fair amount of the article is about his attitude.

   Something that was a bit surprising was the combative tone that Calibre's lead developer Kovid Goyal took in the comments on the bug. Rather than working with Donenfeld to see what the problems were, he dismissed most of the bugs as invalid. Even after Donenfeld tried to further point out the problems, Goyal was rather sarcastic in response:
    You mean that a program designed to let an unprivileged user mount/unmount/eject anything he wants has a security flaw because it allows him to mount/unmount/eject anything he wants? I'm shocked. 

This does not appear to have changed if you look at his responses to issues. I linked the tmux stuff in a different comment (same root).

Both skills and personality can chance a lot over a decade and I'm glad you're not quick to jump the gun. We need more people like that. But given brash comments over the past few years, it does not seem like this part has changed. He's been working on kitty for 8 years and has only accepted minor PRs and is dismissive of user issues.

[_xiaz]

As would anyone that has ever had the displeasure of interacting with him

[hodapp]

My story is about the same as yours. Kovid's arrogance pushed me away.

[twidxuga]

+1 on the point about humility (or lack thereof), exactly my experience looking at past issues in Kitty.