A Lemmy community for the game Factorio made by Wube Software.
Does anyone have a reasonably objective article on this topic? It's the first I've heard of it. The sources linked and comments so far all seem to be opinionated and/or have an agenda.
It's too late, for me, anyway. I've bought Space Age and had Factorio before that, so I'm going to continue to play it. But if there's substance to this, or a rebuttle, I'd like to know.
Just found this Interview with Dev after this incident.
https://nichegamer.com/factorio-founder-kovarex-interview-cancel-culture-and-secret-support/
Don't know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ how true is this article though. Already bought the game.
Interesting. Thanks.
I don't see the justification for the title; it seems to be trying to equate koravex with Bob Martin, because the former quoted the latter, and then got into a fight on Reddit over it.
Has anyone made accusations of experiencing sexism, racism, or misogyny at the hands of koravex? Anything? Groping or undesired innuendo at a conference? Is the "history" entirely contained in quoting Bob Martin on a topic entirely unrelated to any political position, an then getting in a fight about whether people can have technical merit divorced of their political positions?
koravex should stay off reddit and X. They're toxic, combative, and tend to bring out the worst in people.
I might add for a bit of context... "Uncle Bob" is pretty famous in the software industry as an advocate for TDD (test driven development)... his conservative Trump bullshit is a relatively recent revelation. I've personally spoken positively of him in the past and heard the same from people I deeply respect.
Not everyone is aware of his political leanings and some of his technical lessons are still valuable so his name still gets spoken of highly by people ignorant of his politics.
I went into details in another comment but I think it's really important to understand what life was like behind the iron curtain and how dissidents were canceled by secret police - that's the world Kovarex and most Czechs alive today grew up in. Kovarex is on record disapproving of the canceling of some pretty shit people but, outside of knee-jerk comments, he hasn't ever publicly endorsed sexism, racism, or misogyny. Also, he's a developer, not a public speaker.
I might add for a bit of context...
Thank you for this. I was hesitant to say anything.
"Uncle Bob" is pretty famous in the software industry as an advocate for TDD (test driven development)... his conservative Trump bullshit is a relatively recent revelation. I've personally spoken positively of him in the past and heard the same from people I deeply respect.
I first met him at adevelopers conference in the late 90's, and have one of his books on software architecture. He's been influential in the field, and some of the things I've learned from him have had a huge impact on how I think of composition; I only became aware of his controversial positions in the last couple of years.
I admit to sympathizing with koravex's reaction here, because I too feel like I can't quote Martin, or refer to his theories, without being dirtied by association. It's like that German saying: what do you get if you sit at a table with 9 Nazis? A table with 10 Nazis. I feel the frustration. It's a if someone came out tomorrow and accused Linus Torvalds of a rape back in the 90's. You couldn't advocate Linux anymore without being accused of defending or supporting a rapist.
Not everyone is aware of his political leanings and some of his technical lessons are still valuable so his name still gets spoken of highly by people ignorant of his politics.
This is how I read koravex's position at the start of the argument: that he either didn't know of, and certainly didn't care about, Martin's political positions. Then he got angry about being attacked and that's where things went pear-shaped. But this is the first I'm hearing about all this, and honestly the source article reads more like a hit piece than an exposé.
I went into details in another comment but I think it's really important to understand what life was like behind the iron curtain and how dissidents were canceled by secret police
Yup, I read that in the interview. We're in the middle of a contentious culture war in the US, with some pretty high stakes. Korovex has, unfortunately, used the wording of one side of that war, and there's not a lot of gray area. For both sides, it's either you're with us, or against us, and both sides want to line the other side up against a wall.
For me, if Factorio is shown to be funneling money to Conservative causes, I'll stop buying their products. Otherwise, I'm not going to stop buying a game because the lead developer quotes Bob Martin's technical sayings.
well put. I admit that I've only been made aware of ONE cause Wube supports - Ukraine - and it matches my feelings.
koravex should stay off reddit and X. They're toxic, combative, and tend to bring out the worst in people.
Yep, you right even Hexbear is better than Reddit LOL.
even Hexbear is better than Reddit LOL
Shit, that's going pretty far, man. But, yeah, you're probably right. If only barely.
This article is creatively interpreting everything to be evil, then calling it evil.
Literal claim from the article: "Then Kovarex defended that women shouldn't be software engineers"
..and shows a message screenshot as proof where the first fucking sentence is Kovarex saying "I am not defending that women shouldn't be software engineers".
This type of extremely dishonest outrage farming is just another form of cyberbullying.
why are you cherry picking examples from the article? The next word in Kovarex' statement about women being software engineers is but Also, what about all the other stupid shit he said? Are we supposed to ignore that?
That’s literally not what the article even said.
“After it was pointed out that Uncle Bob said that women shouldn't be software engineers, kovarex defended him. After all, Uncle Bob might have some valid arguments as to why women shouldn't be software engineers and it would be unfair to label him a bigot:”
If you read deeper Kovarex has a really deep seated dislike of what he perceives as cancel culture after growing up in a society that disappeared dissidents. I think he needs to work on that but he hasn't defended what Uncle Bob said (contrary to what the article states) but disapproves of canceling anyone for what they say.
There are valid reasons to be mad at Kovarex because some heinous people really should STFU and he opposes that but not because he endorses what they're saying - just that they should be free to say it.
I honestly think if someone sat down and carefully explained what modern cancel culture is and how it differs from secret police disappearing professors in the middle of the night then, in time, he'd likely change his tune.
Maybe the opinion that cancel culture is a terrible social construct and limits peoples' ability to reason and reach full conclusions is actually apparent here.
Cancel culture promotes trigger-happy boycotts too often. And is not conducive to societal improvement of parties since now they are more isolated and more polarized.
It's from resetera. It's nothing more rage bait so SJWs will target individuals and why my earlier comment was removed. They already tried to cancel factorio and wube by flaming them on reddit in the past and a review bomb that ended up with close to 10x more positive reviews than negative once news got out about the bomb.
Article for the sake of stirring up drama. Uncle Ben is a bad person, but that doesn't mean he can't have an opinion that someone likes (for example the development video mentioned in the FFF).
I also understand he is not a native English speaker and some words might get lost in translation. He is Czech, as I am, and I don't really see anything wrong with what he wrote.
This is "mildly interesting" at most.
This entire exercise is an example of cancel culture, and the weaponization of wrong think. This is exactly the problem that the factorio developer identified.
If guilt by association, and abandonment of good work of bad people are the rule of the day, you better not fly an airplanes, or use any satellites....
Notch back in the day, now this dude who I had immense respect and admiration for. At least we still have Kyzrati (please no jinx). And I swear to God if Tarn or Zach ever fall from grace...
This article is written with a very serious slant - the situation is more complex than it lays it out. There are more neutral sources that have written in depth on Uncle Bob's comments and Kovarex's response. I think it's always wise to query a few different view points on such heated topics.
Edit to Add: sag linked a pretty good article above, I'll relink it here: https://nichegamer.com/factorio-founder-kovarex-interview-cancel-culture-and-secret-support/
The political views of a recommended lecturer, and even his own views on cancel culture aren't the issue in my mind. In fact I agree with some of the nuances there.
The notion of rejecting a software lecture for the views of the presenter is kinda dumb. I don't know the content of the lectures, to be fair, but I assume any irrelevant personal views aren't part of it. Lashing out at Kovarex for the recommendation is dumb too, arguably more so.
It's the statutory rape comment that I don't like, which affects the benefit of the doubt as far as his other stances go. Still, I don't think Factorio, or even Kovarex necessarily, should be "cancelled" here. Any backlash for his own comments is fair though.
I see now my comment didn't reflect that as I only meant to convey my own disappointment, which is also nuanced.