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0 pointsgavinray3y ago0 comments

  > What exactly are you imagining?

Submit a PR to whatever tool it is you use that fixes the bug so it stops bothering you

Build some small tool to automate a task that you have in your daily life

Write a program based around one of your hobbies that caters to something niche so there's no good tools for it already

Anything of this sort, I guess.

I do a lot of open-source work but it's selfish -- I submit those PR's because they are things I wanted/needed and it would be silly for me to have a fork and try to keep it up to date with master.

Maybe it's different for other people but I constantly run into bugs/missing features in tools I use for both job and personal stuff. If I didn't do this there would be so much I'd have to hack around or flat-out wouldn't be able to do.

0 comments

vmception3y ago

Submitting a PR runs into the most random etiquette expectations from a gatekeeping project maintainer that arbitrarily chooses to not merge

It requires a lot more effort and back and forth than you are describing and its disingenuous. I’m glad you’ve had a good experience with it though.

Writing an automation tool often has nothing to do with the experience and acumen required for a job, it could be a mouse motion recording to a bash script. It requires pure happenstance or contrived altruism to do it in a worse language for the task just to say “see look what I did” for a future employer

I think this requires more empathy, not in an “emotional intelligence” sense just in the concept of putting yourself in other people’s shoes and imagining what they encounter instead thinking what you encounter is normal

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