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If someone told me they're striving to achieve 100 days in a row of contributing, my first thoughts would be "egocentrism" and "dishonesty". Helping isn't about
by wwilim 4y ago
If someone told me they're striving to achieve 100 days in a row of contributing, my first thoughts would be "egocentrism" and "dishonesty". Helping isn't about you helping. And if you're aiming for 100 days in a row, I'm pretty sure you're pushing changes you could've pushed during the week on Saturday and Sunday to keep up the streak. Somebody could've reviewed it two days earlier, but you kept them waiting until Monday, just for style points.
- tomrod 4y agoThe article discusses gamification, but really a lot of the general incentives for open source are to bolster the resume of the developer by showing they work on important, credible things. Gamification transforms that generally open-ended benefit into KPIs of various sorts -- rather than present overall value as a contributor, you get badges for _how_ you develop. Dark times.
- noodlesUK 4y agoI’m not really sure that that’s true for most FOSS contributions. I think (anecdotally) most maintainers of even smaller FOSS projects are driven by solving a particular problem they’re facing, not because it generates status. I think most developers who are contributing to FOSS projects because it makes them seem credible are not usually contributing much to those projects (as they’re rarely core maintainers).
- tomrod 4y agoTo clarify, and not by way of disagreement: you're speaking to what motivates folks and claiming it is altruism. I agree. I was talking about the incentive structure as it is, which is much less about altruism and more "what is the benefit folks involved."
- saagarjha 4y ago
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoI think the point the OPs was making is you cannot store up miles on Monday that you can then release Wednesday. You can with commits / stashes. And that distorts behaviour
- saagarjha 4y agoYou can definitely avoid going on longer runs with the intention that you’ll have an easier time tomorrow.
- aliqot 4y agoI don't think people actually do that though. Who'd do that? Who would you even be lying to, yourself?
- jfabre 4y agoAssuming your question wasn't sarcasm. Literally everyone lie to themselves about one thing or another... Including me, and probably including you.
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoSee House M.D. for details :-)
- aliqot 4y agoI don't understand how it is possible to lie to myself. It requires you to suspend disbelief and say to yourself that something did or didn't happen, that's something I cannot fathom.
- Avicebron 4y agoLying to yourself doesn't necessarily require suspension of belief entirely, but convincing yourself whatever you are doing is worth you doing it. Since it's hard (probably impossible) to know the object truth of if something is " right" or not. Then it becomes fairly easy to justify anything, im sure you've done this even if you don't know exactly how to admit it or don't think you're doing it consciouly.
- sheerun 4y agoYet everyone undestands why apps that help develop routines exist
- chrisweekly 4y agoI hear you, and don't disagree re: potentially questionable weekend commits, but also know from experience (and having read many books on productivity and motivation) that tracking behavior and using "don't break the streak" as a motivator can be effective.
- btown 4y agoThe key here is whether it's "contributing" or "contributing to ___." If someone's goal is, say, to ensure that every day they make at least a few lines of incremental progress on their [game/book/project/set of open source projects they want to contribute to] etc., and even/especially if they publicize that goal to create some external accountability, that can be a really powerful tool - as long as it doesn't get ahead of one's well-being, etc. But having a streak just for having a streak's sake is unhealthy at best.