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I help maintain some open source projects, and I totally disagree. Filing bugs (or thoughtful feature requests) is absolutely a contribution, and I wish more us

I help maintain some open source projects, and I totally disagree. Filing bugs (or thoughtful feature requests) is absolutely a contribution, and I wish more users would do so. Edit: In fairness, I think some of the ways the author describes it are grandiose ("my extremely important contribution"), but I interpreted them as hyperbole.

capableweb 4y ago
I think this is the part that itches me: > . You can paste source code directly into your Markdown document without any changes, and it will appear as expected in the rendered HTML. That’s my doing. It makes it sound like the author of this blogpost actually did the change, while in reality they suggested the change. Of course it's good to suggest something, and even nicer when whoever you suggest it to implements it. But I'd never claim "that's my doing" after suggesting any features/fixes. A bit like writing an email to Apple suggesting something, then they do that thing and I wrote a blogpost saying "That's my doing, I was there first. And you’re welcome.". It just doesn't taste well.
- btown 4y ago
  If a candidate were to say “that’s my doing” when describing the outcome of a prior team project, and language barriers weren’t a mitigating factor, I would consider that a significant red flag for ego. Not a crime, and a reasonable exaggeration in many circumstances. But I wouldn’t want someone communicating that way in a professional capacity on an engineering team.
  - filmgirlcw 4y ago
    Well it’s a good thing drdrang was just posting a missive on his blog and not in a job interview with you. But I guess if he does ever interview with you, you’ll remember his tongue-in-cheek missive and be dismissive, even if if never comes up in conversation. That’ll show ‘em! Never write tongue-in-cheek blogs or else random weirdos who will never meet you will write you off as a candidate for an engineering team that doesn’t exist and that you don’t want to join in the first place.
  - indymike 4y ago
    > If a candidate were to say “that’s my doing” when describing the outcome of a prior team project, "I made that" is the ultimate statement of pride in work. Taking that away is a really awful anti-pattern in management. Let your people be proud of their contribution, and equally proud of the product of the team. The work of a team is the sum of the contribution of all members. > a reasonable exaggeration in many circumstances I find people who take credit for the work of the team to be a lot worse than people who take pride in their contribution to the team.
    - btown 4y ago
      By no means am I saying that "I made that" is a bad thing when it's true! It's vital to lionize people for the work they individually do, and encourage them to take pride in that work themselves. But if they use the same language to describe the entirety of a team project, not just their contribution, as "my doing" alone, that often crosses a line into toxicity in the ways you mention in your second paragraph.
- actuallyalys 4y ago
  I interpreted that as not being serious, but I can see why that part rubbed people the wrong way.
koheripbal 4y ago
A well described and thought out bug report can make fixes trivial and are worth their weight in gold. Obviously the "it doesn't work" bug reports are worthless.
lawgimenez 4y ago
I found a bug on a tutorial found in raywenderlich.com and sent a fix proposal. But I wasn’t even acknowledged. I wonder how I should proceed about it. Or this is just normal to open source projects.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  Not so normal methinks. Had this one project where I converted it over to python 3 in a fork and they merged the whole thing without a mention of where they got it from. Kind of sucks but ultimately didn’t matter because I was doing it for my own usage. Plus it made my life a little easier because I didn’t have to maintain it separately, just fire and forget a bug fix whenever it came up. If I was doing Resume Driven Development I would probably care a little more though.
  - lawgimenez 4y ago
    I see, it’s just sucks because it took time to debug that fix. Anyway I don’t mind anymore.

capableweb 4y ago

I think this is the part that itches me: > . You can paste source code directly into your Markdown document without any changes, and it will appear as expected in the rendered HTML. That’s my doing. It makes it sound like the author of this blogpost actually did the change, while in reality they suggested the change. Of course it's good to suggest something, and even nicer when whoever you suggest it to implements it. But I'd never claim "that's my doing" after suggesting any features/fixes. A bit like writing an email to Apple suggesting something, then they do that thing and I wrote a blogpost saying "That's my doing, I was there first. And you’re welcome.". It just doesn't taste well.

btown 4y ago
If a candidate were to say “that’s my doing” when describing the outcome of a prior team project, and language barriers weren’t a mitigating factor, I would consider that a significant red flag for ego. Not a crime, and a reasonable exaggeration in many circumstances. But I wouldn’t want someone communicating that way in a professional capacity on an engineering team.
- filmgirlcw 4y ago
  Well it’s a good thing drdrang was just posting a missive on his blog and not in a job interview with you. But I guess if he does ever interview with you, you’ll remember his tongue-in-cheek missive and be dismissive, even if if never comes up in conversation. That’ll show ‘em! Never write tongue-in-cheek blogs or else random weirdos who will never meet you will write you off as a candidate for an engineering team that doesn’t exist and that you don’t want to join in the first place.
- indymike 4y ago
  > If a candidate were to say “that’s my doing” when describing the outcome of a prior team project, "I made that" is the ultimate statement of pride in work. Taking that away is a really awful anti-pattern in management. Let your people be proud of their contribution, and equally proud of the product of the team. The work of a team is the sum of the contribution of all members. > a reasonable exaggeration in many circumstances I find people who take credit for the work of the team to be a lot worse than people who take pride in their contribution to the team.
  - btown 4y ago
    By no means am I saying that "I made that" is a bad thing when it's true! It's vital to lionize people for the work they individually do, and encourage them to take pride in that work themselves. But if they use the same language to describe the entirety of a team project, not just their contribution, as "my doing" alone, that often crosses a line into toxicity in the ways you mention in your second paragraph.
actuallyalys 4y ago
I interpreted that as not being serious, but I can see why that part rubbed people the wrong way.

koheripbal 4y ago

A well described and thought out bug report can make fixes trivial and are worth their weight in gold. Obviously the "it doesn't work" bug reports are worthless.

lawgimenez 4y ago

I found a bug on a tutorial found in raywenderlich.com and sent a fix proposal. But I wasn’t even acknowledged. I wonder how I should proceed about it. Or this is just normal to open source projects.

UncleEntity 4y ago
Not so normal methinks. Had this one project where I converted it over to python 3 in a fork and they merged the whole thing without a mention of where they got it from. Kind of sucks but ultimately didn’t matter because I was doing it for my own usage. Plus it made my life a little easier because I didn’t have to maintain it separately, just fire and forget a bug fix whenever it came up. If I was doing Resume Driven Development I would probably care a little more though.
- lawgimenez 4y ago
  I see, it’s just sucks because it took time to debug that fix. Anyway I don’t mind anymore.