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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)

#321

Post by jhowell »

9000 wrote: post #305
goliatone wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also ends up happening that they work on the wrong thing because no one is around at night or weekends to answer basic questions that may unfortunately not be in the ticket. I know the comment came from a good place and you meant well. The situation you describe of “developers working on the wrong thing” can and sometimes does happen, however, as a manager the effective way to handle those situations is to addre…

I'm sorry, but I don't think that's what they were saying at all. To me, it sounded like they were saying that when a developer works alone at nights or on the weekend, they cannot ask other members of the team, or the person who originally filed the ticket, any questions. Thus, if the ticket is vague, or if they have a question about a part of the codebase they are less familiar with, they have to spend a lot of tim…

> To me, it sounded like they were saying that when a developer works alone at nights or on the weekend, they cannot ask other members of the team, or the person who originally filed the ticket, any questions.

I think in response to the OP, the user identified the "problem." I've worked places where the above was the norm, and other places where if ticket showed up in front of a developer and required additional clarification (from QA or other developers) this would be covered in detail during sprint retrospectives, with the intention of making sure that the team works hard to make sure that this never happens. It can blow estimates not only for the given task, but can have cascading effects as well.

That said, this might not be easily attainable or the best practice for all organizations, but I think I prefer better processes over evening and weekend work.

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

#322

Post by matheusmoreira »

Vinnl wrote: post #145
matheusmoreira wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it also can simultaneously be not OK for you to publish it in a package directory with a generic name and a description Package repositories can be open to all developers or curated by software distribution maintainers. Being able to publish an open source project without dealing with Linux distribution maintainers is a major selling point of programming language package managers. Why even let people publish packag…

> Why even let people publish packages if they're not meant to? I don't think GP even so much as insinuated in their post that people aren't meant to publish packages in general.

The argument was: only packages which are good enough for production use ought to be published on official package repositories. This allows people to assume that all packages on the repository are stable, well maintained, good quality software without manually verifying each dependency.

So why even let random people sign up a developer account and publish packages? Maybe they need a separate curated "serious packages only" repository.

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

#323

Post by bigiain »

wolco wrote: post #311
gpeal wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's exactly the problem because of things like this: https://twitter.com/ZacSweers/status/1259176799235387393?s=1... I am the sole maintainer of airbnb/lottie-android despite the fact that I left the company almost 2 years ago and it is used by tens of thousands of companies including Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Uber, Netflix, and countless others.

Let's say this doesn't get updated I don't see a problem. It will continue to function as it is until it gets outdated and replaceed. Let's say it changes and does something evil, hopefully Google, Microsoft will catch the issue. If they don't someone will and people will stop trusting react or whatever product pulls these changes in. Doing it yourself I would just freeze versions. --------- In this case I find it od…

Lets just say someone at booking.com or tripping.com or some other hungry and less-that-totally-ethical AirBNB competitor works this out, and offers to buy the library or pay Zac $bignum in return for adding in some "additional analytics" aka industrial espionage allowing them to see searches/bookings made by users of apps with the library embedded.

Now Zac probably isn't the sort of person who'd do that, but once you get to a project like React which has 10,000 or so dependancies - surely _some_ of those dependancy authors would do that, for enough pieces of silver...

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

#326

Post by chadlavi »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #244
chadlavi wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Finished software" is a myth.

Though I love a good fatalistic Jamie Zawinski reference, I’ll resist and stay on-topic. I think you mean “for the kind of software I typically get paid to write, software is never finished.” However, if you widen your perspective a bit, you’ll find plenty of examples. I assure you, “space invaders” was finished in 1978, and it will never see any “maintenance”.

I mean yeah, every piece of commercially available software got shipped at some point, and especially before the internet that software was mostly done being changed forever. That doesn't mean it was finished!

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

#328

Post by m463 »

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…

caveat usor

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

#329

Post by hodgesrm »

nicoburns wrote: post #227
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…

I think it's fine to not have time to maintain code you open source. However, if your library ends up gaining a significant user base and you don't have time to maintain it, then I think you have a duty to either: 1. Allow others to step in as maintainers and review/approve new features and bug fixes in your stead. or (if you want to maintain control of your library) 2. Be clear that your library is in maintenance mo…

I really disagree that authors have a general obligation to do anything with their code, at least as far as support is concerned. If somebody signed up formally to be a committer or made some other explicit commitment that's of course a different matter.

If there's an implicit obligation, it seems to me it's on users, not authors. If you really need something changed you should fork/fix it yourself or talk somebody else into doing it. That right is baked into every major OSS license.

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

#330

Post by cerberusss »

CalRobert wrote: post #210
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 d…

Nowadays, I don't feel anymore like I need to compete professionally. I've got a decent savings account, half my house is paid off, my family is healthy, and work is interesting. Why would I need to compete with anyone?
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