The Rust project has a burnout problem
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Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem
#2maybe software doesn’t need to move so fast
Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem
#3This is a good description of what life is like working on almost any significant open source project. The only thing not included was the comments from overly entitled users that saps whatever morale and energy you have left. Probably best he did not include that though as that is what all discussion would be about.
I am not sure what to do about the burnout problem. The way he described it is very on point though. Since everyone working on the project is overloaded there is a great feeling of things only get done if you do them.
Most of my open source work was in the pre-GitHub days when we used mailing lists, not pull requests, to build community. I do think there was something better about that for the project itself as it encouraged a lot more discussion and community building. PR's and Issues become silos and are not great for general discussion. I think they also encourage drive-by contributions which honestly are intoxicating initially but once you see people are not coming back become defeating.
Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem
#4> the best way to help the project is to keep contributing for it for years. to do that, you have to avoid burning out, which means you have to treat yourself well.
When I was a schoolteacher, the way I expressed this is that you have to do the job in such a way today that you're capable of doing it again tomorrow. This did not go down well and I am no longer a teacher.
Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem
#5It seems a bit far fetched.
Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem
#6Turns out there are some resource management problems even rustc can’t solve.
Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem
#7> new contributors make PRs. they make silly simple mistakes due to lack of experience; you point them out and they get fixed. this can be fun, for a time. what it’s teaching you is that you personally are responsible for catching mistakes.
Every team I've worked with that was feeling exhausted about code contributions actually needed to focus on better documenting guidelines but most importantly, improve CI. Catching silly mistakes is the textbook definition where automating stuff can help the most. This should improve reviewer's peace of mind and speed things up because people will work by themselves to fix things before asking for a review.
I don't know what's the CI situation in the Rust project but if it's anything like what I'm used to, it probably needs improvement. Adding more human-hours to reviewing things isn't sustainable.
Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem
#8This is a good description of what life is like working on almost any significant open source project. The only thing not included was the comments from overly entitled users that saps whatever morale and energy you have left. Probably best he did not include that though as that is what all discussion would be about. I am not sure what to do about the burnout problem. The way he described it is very on point though.…
Not only open source. Also anyone taking ownership in companies end up like that. The difference is: The person gets paid and is ideally not emotional involved.
Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem
#9I see a trend in blogging to stop using capital letters - it makes it much harder to read. It's not even like they don't know how they work:
> rotate responsibilities. don’t have the same person assigned to the majority of PRs.
Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem
#10Do other people react as strongly as I did to the lack of capitalisation at the start of sentences? The post is generally "well" written with good grammar and punctuation so I find it strange - it feels like a style choice. But the style choice just instinctively makes part of my brain feel like it's written by a child.