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It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

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Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#201

Post by ashtonkem »

andrewstuart wrote: post #19
ashtonkem wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a hiring manager, I have never done that.

Do you ask to look at their github? If yes, then what's the point if you're not trying to see the quality of the code and the tests?

I do not ask to see candidates GitHub profiles, no.

Whenever you evaluate a candidate on any axis, you have to be very careful about whether or not you’re judging them on something related to work performance or not. In the case of GitHub profiles, you’re also evaluating someone based on whether or not they have the post-work time to contribute to open source work, which is unrelated to their ability to contribute during working hours.

I’ve hired enough amazing engineers who didn’t have time for open source contributions that I’ve decided that open source work is not a meaningful metric for evaluating a potential hire.

Also, my GitHub profile is not impressive; it would be deeply hypocritical for me to hold candidates to a standard I couldn’t meet.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#202

Post by pfdietz »

random32840 wrote: post #139
pfdietz wrote: post #63

If you find an open source library that could be better, and you are using it, make it better yourself.

This is naive. If it's a bad library full of bugs, it's going to be garbage code. I'm not going to spend inordinate amounts of time & effort wrestling with shitty code to earn the right to say the library is bad. IMO that's not a good standard.

I wasn't saying you couldn't call it bad. But I will say demanding it not be bad would be stepping over a line.

If money ever changes hands with the author of that code, that's a different story. But if it's something free you just found, and you have never paid the author anything, then at most you can warn others to not waste their time. You are in no moral or legal position to demand anything.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#203

Post by altitudinous »

Yes, it is OK. Any software is allowed to be shitty as long as it works. But then people always go out of their way to tell you how shitty it is. The type of immature dev people who hang about here on Hacker News TBH. I ignore the mails, the terrible opinions because there are people who love what I do, although underneath it is not perfect.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#204

Post by growse »

sgillen wrote: post #191
growse wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just that if you put lot of effort into isolating a bug for someone for free, it can feels bad to have it rejected without explanation. Where does that bad feeling come from? Does it come from the fact that you feel like you're owed a response? Do you get the same feeling when you email strangers and they don't respond? > Also if it's a real issue that you won't fix you should at least leave the issue open so…

> Where does that bad feeling come from? Does it come from the fact that you feel like you're owed a response? Do you get the same feeling when you email strangers and they don't respond? It's just the time spent for me, I mean if for some reason I put like an hour of my time composing an email to a stranger and they didn't respond I would unhappy. It would be my fault but I would still be unhappy. I agree that no on…

I can understand this. I think once I realised that there was significant value to me in putting the bug report together in the first place, I felt happier if it just got closed or ignored.

There's something about putting time and effort into writhing a good bug report that forces you to truly try and understand what's happening.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#205

Post by ExtremisAndy »

I have never contributed to open source because I have always been so impressed with the source code I’ve seen in these projects. It intimidates me! I’m a self-taught programmer, and while I’ve certainly written thousands of lines of useful code (useful to me, in any case), I know it isn’t “correct” (as in, idiomatic or ideally what you should write). If I could ever get to the place where I trusted my own work, I’d love to contribute to open source because I do have a few projects in mind (mainly useful to folks in the humanities) that I know I can make, but I’m just too embarrassed at the low quality/ugliness of my code.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#206

Post by Haga »

mattlondon wrote: post #155
yuribro wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you feel bad? The whole point of open source is they could have done it themselves, if they wanted some integration they needed and you didn't. And then they could either contribute it back, fork your project or just keep it to themselves, if the license allows it. At any rate, you already helped them...

People often act very entitled about open source I've found. You'll often get angry irate emails/issues raised demanding you help them or add a new feature or whatever. Some people are just clueless and need help, others are just dicks. It is often not worth the hassle in my opinion, but then everyone's circumstances and motivations are different and I am glad that a lot of people do think it is worth it.

Because the open source model is to lie about the state of the project. And to hope that the flood of fools like me fix it..

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#207

Post by dunkelheit »

saurik wrote: post #8

I agree: it is OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty. However, it also can simultaneously be not OK for you to publish it in a package directory with a generic name and a description talking about how awesome it is as a trap for other people to run into, and that is really the core problem: it isn't that you didn't spend an unreasonable amount of time and money to make a good product that no one paid for…

Agreed. People who demand free labor from open-source maintainers get a lot of deserved flak lately, but it is not that project authors are always blameless. Everyone who publishes some code for others to use faces a dilemma: they want their project to be popular (because being associated with a popular project is prestigious), but popularity means that the project demands additional effort to polish it, deal with bug reports and pull requests etc. So there is a temptation to convey the appearance of maturity without putting in the required effort.

So yeah, it is totally OK for your open source library to be shitty, but please state this clearly in README to save everyone's time.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#208

Post by pantalaimon »

ExtremisAndy wrote: post #205

I have never contributed to open source because I have always been so impressed with the source code I’ve seen in these projects. It intimidates me! I’m a self-taught programmer, and while I’ve certainly written thousands of lines of useful code (useful to me, in any case), I know it isn’t “correct” (as in, idiomatic or ideally what you should write). If I could ever get to the place where I trusted my own work, I’d…

> I know it isn’t “correct” (as in, idiomatic or ideally what you should write).

That's why there are maintainers who will tell you what you should change in order for your patch to be accepted upstream. This happens all the time, just go and read the mailing list or active Pull Requests of the project. (This is a good idea anyway, as reading through pull requests and comments will give you a good idea how 'things are done' in that project)

And don't worry, most maintainers are usually very friendly to newcomers. :)

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#209

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

dunkelheit wrote: post #207
saurik wrote: post #8

I agree: it is OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty. However, it also can simultaneously be not OK for you to publish it in a package directory with a generic name and a description talking about how awesome it is as a trap for other people to run into, and that is really the core problem: it isn't that you didn't spend an unreasonable amount of time and money to make a good product that no one paid for…

Agreed. People who demand free labor from open-source maintainers get a lot of deserved flak lately, but it is not that project authors are always blameless. Everyone who publishes some code for others to use faces a dilemma: they want their project to be popular (because being associated with a popular project is prestigious), but popularity means that the project demands additional effort to polish it, deal with bu…

I agree. If you are actively marketing a project, you are declaring yourself open to criticism. You don't get to play the "what do you want for free?" card and say "my thing is totally awesome and you should use it!" at the same time.

Re: It’s OK for your open source library to be a bit shitty (2015)

#210

Post by CalRobert »

Justsignedup wrote: post #89

I once wrote a library in backbone.js to have a data-synchronized list. It allowed me to provide an array, and it'll keep that array sync'd up to what I saw. I had a kid and a fulltime job and going through a divorce. I happened to use it at my job, but everyone kept asking for me to integrate it into new up and coming repos which I didn't have time for. Honestly I felt bad about not caring, but the reality is that I…

Unfortunately, DINKs are hard to compete with professionally. Old boss used to loudly thank my colleague for doing tickets on the weekends, and too often people seem to assume I want to spend my weekend "brushing up" on some implementation detail for a project I don't care about. Even "why doesn't he come to after work drinks?" Is hard to answer with "because my spouse is _also_ an exhausted wreck at the end of the day and I already barely have any time for them, much less my real friends, much less you lot".
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