The moral of the story is, rabbit holes are crucial
This is so, so important. Always dig into your problems and dig deep. If you don’t know how something works in a dependency find out the code is right there.
Absolutely, and it doesn’t just apply to Open Source. I have too many anecdotes of “huh, that’s odd… It doesn’t bother me right now and it’s not a part I’m working on right now, but let’s look into it…” leading to crucial insights, bug fixes or even design decisions that saved me or my employer tons of time and money. And whenever I’m too busy to do this kind of work, I can feel how everything around me gets inefficient, unreliable and brittle. It’s an essential part of good software development.
What a great post! Really touches on the essence of becoming better at a skill. Don’t just stop on the surface :D All roads lead to learning.
Now for a little tangent: doesn’t “successful open source developer” feel wrong to say? It does to me. Open source to me is an ethos of freedom, self-empowerment, and fun. There are no “unsuccessful open source developers”… You either write and publish source code for free or you don’t. When I read things like this it immediately strikes me that people really mean “making money with open source software” which translates to “making money working for yourself”. At the end of the day you’re a developer and to virtue signal you’re specifically “an open source developer” just hits weird for me.
I would like to respectfully raise a voice of concern about this practice.
I think we should be careful about promoting “grinding through” as a way to achieve something. It can be a powerful mental trap to be caught in. “I just need to solve a couple of issues and I will be acknowledged”, “If I debug this bug faster than everyone else, I will get to write a PR for it”, “I will develop this library and it will be used by others and I will get recognition” - these can have a powerful spell on a person and make them forget about other things in life.
Some people find it sustainable. Some people will find it extremely frustrating and mentally draining.
If you go that way, it is important to listen to yourself and have flexibility to adjust instead of grinding through and causing damage to your mental state.
Looking forward to the sequel, “Open Source Burnout Explained”
The joy of making something other people use against the agony of obligation to their issues and desires!
As the original author of clap, but the article shows (correctly) epage as the current maintainer this comment hits hard.
This is so, so important. Always dig into your problems and dig deep. If you don’t know how something works in a dependency find out the code is right there.
Absolutely, and it doesn’t just apply to Open Source. I have too many anecdotes of “huh, that’s odd… It doesn’t bother me right now and it’s not a part I’m working on right now, but let’s look into it…” leading to crucial insights, bug fixes or even design decisions that saved me or my employer tons of time and money. And whenever I’m too busy to do this kind of work, I can feel how everything around me gets inefficient, unreliable and brittle. It’s an essential part of good software development.
I would say that around 90% of the paid open-source work that I’ve done has been working on things that I learned about going down rabbit holes.
Wait, people use “grindset” seriously? I thought people only used it to make fun of that entire mindset (see “sigma male” and other such memes).
yes they do. Lot of people hate themselves. I came here thinking I would find a post on self-care and instead it was unironical.
“Destroy mental health for more tippy tappy on the keyboard good”
Yeah I’m not sure the author realized that the Urban Dictionary definition they used was intended to be sarcastic.
Excellent article and conclusions, though.
What a great post! Really touches on the essence of becoming better at a skill. Don’t just stop on the surface :D All roads lead to learning.
Now for a little tangent: doesn’t “successful open source developer” feel wrong to say? It does to me. Open source to me is an ethos of freedom, self-empowerment, and fun. There are no “unsuccessful open source developers”… You either write and publish source code for free or you don’t. When I read things like this it immediately strikes me that people really mean “making money with open source software” which translates to “making money working for yourself”. At the end of the day you’re a developer and to virtue signal you’re specifically “an open source developer” just hits weird for me.
I feel there’s a major gap growing caused by “enterprise open source”, skewing further what free software was and is about.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html is probably good further reading.
Thank you for your comment. It reveals that I need to do more thinking on this :)
I would like to respectfully raise a voice of concern about this practice.
I think we should be careful about promoting “grinding through” as a way to achieve something. It can be a powerful mental trap to be caught in. “I just need to solve a couple of issues and I will be acknowledged”, “If I debug this bug faster than everyone else, I will get to write a PR for it”, “I will develop this library and it will be used by others and I will get recognition” - these can have a powerful spell on a person and make them forget about other things in life.
Some people find it sustainable. Some people will find it extremely frustrating and mentally draining.
If you go that way, it is important to listen to yourself and have flexibility to adjust instead of grinding through and causing damage to your mental state.
Yes, it is a very important point. I was thinking of mentioning these risk in the sequel. Thanks for bringing it up!