[HN Gopher] It Doesn't Work ___________________________________________________________________ It Doesn't Work Author : jedisct1 Score : 31 points Date : 2021-03-26 11:52 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (00f.net) (TXT) w3m dump (00f.net) | h2odragon wrote: | 20 years ago, when I shared some code with the world, because it | worked for me and i hoped others might benefit from it; that was | all i was doing. Today, it seems, there's implied | responsibilities to your users in that situation. | | Not only must the code be well organized, run perfectly, and | handle all users needs; I myself must be of proper moral | character, never have publicly uttered words that could be | considered objectionable, and fully willing to endorse the | fashionable fascism of the day. | | ... I don't buy it. I think that "hey this solves my problem" is | viable and code doesn't carry the stain of its creators. We don't | need to know or care who wrote our favorite text editor, they | might be wonderful people or they might be gnarly gnomes dripping | ichor; "here's the tool, it works" is sufficient knowledge to | judge the tool. | Wowfunhappy wrote: | About six months ago, I stumbled across a Github repository | called Chromium Legacy (https://github.com/blueboxd/chromium- | legacy). A seemingly unknown Github account had singlehandledly | backported Chromium to work on very old versions of OS X. Due to | my interests, I was _delighted!_ | | The port had some major bugs, but I opened Github issues, and | they've been fixed by the developer, one by one. In a couple of | cases, I helped track down the offending code, but he's done the | vast majority of the work. | | At this point, I have definitely opened more issues on Chromium | Legacy than anyone else. I opened two more just hours ago, and I | was going to open a third... but then I didn't, because I was | feeling guilty. He's always thankful for the reports, but then he | usually _apologizes_ to me (!), which makes me feel like I 'm | creating all this work for him... | bombcar wrote: | Be polite and unexpecting of any fix and do all you can in the | report to make it easy to fix and you'll be appreciated (even | if just by others who find your report). | | People underestimate how valuable a good bug report is - with | details, minimum examples, and workarounds. Especially | workarounds - as you may be the only useful response people | find. | akavel wrote: | Hm; and yes, and no... in my case at least, I personally remember | having more of those others - and for which I'm super grateful, | they mean _A LOT_ to me - i.e. the likes of, literally: | | - The unforgeable _" WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE"_ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18295453 - my all time | favourite comment that I don't stop mentioning when telling the | story of my project, and that always makes my heart go warm. | | - The pure _" Just wanted to give you a thumbs up!"_ 'issue' - no | strings attached, no "but [could you do this or this for me]"... | https://github.com/akavel/up/issues/14 - plus, for some bonus | love, a few follow-ups from other wonderful people... not even | counting the people expressing their appreciation via the | emoticons... | | - A person came back a couple years later and said, they use and | like my tool so much, they decided in act of gratitude to give me | not one but three logo sketches that I could choose from; then | they had enough patience to bear my pickiness until I fortunately | finally came back to senses and took the first one of the | sketches, which was IMO the best one from the beginning. | https://github.com/akavel/up/issues/48 | | I still would say "yes, and no..." by which I mean, I'm still | tired of this project enough that I can't muster strength to get | back to it... sure, there were bug reports, and honestly, I | understand and appreciate... I would open them too, and I treat | them with respect... as I feel treated too (though also I have | the fortune to be able to ignore or shut down occasional | stupidity or demands). Yet _I am still tired and drained of | energy for now for this project_. I sometimes muster a bit of it | and improve some small parts. Sometimes. Maybe some day I 'll get | enough energy to again put more work in it. To finish some | neglected PRs in need of love. So, as much as random demands can | be part of the stress, and certainly don't make things easier, | especially for some creators; as much as this, I think there must | be also other psychological factors at play. | gwilikers wrote: | "It doesn't work" issues are bad for all the reasons described in | the article, but the ones that really boggle the mind are the | _demands_ people think they can make of maintainers they have | zero leverage over. | | My favorite in recent history was a developer (who had never made | any contributions to the repo, nor even filed the original issue) | saying something to the effect of "if this issue is not resolved | shortly, we will move our company to use a different software." | Talk about threatening the maintainers with a good time. | duxup wrote: | It shouldn't, but it amazes me that developers will do this to | other developers. | | I was talking generally about JavaScript and another dev who | likes to surf the web without JS enabled (more power to him) | mentioned how in a given case there's no reason to use JS. I | mentioned a side project that I felt kinda fit that use case | (in a way). This is an entirely a casual project that has no | intent to do much other than explore something myself and uses | JavaScript, if folks like it, that's cool, it's free. | | I got litany of reasons that person would NEVER use my product | that sounded a lot like an angry customer rant. | | Entirely free service, and I got a rant for it ;) | bombcar wrote: | Many people use the same methods for commercial software and | open source -- and think threatening to move their non-existent | purchases elsewhere will light a fire under someone. | | (It often doesn't work for either.) | nibsfive wrote: | I have generally always liked letting customers leave. | Ultimatums can easily be two way. If they threaten to quit, I | can always fire them :) | H8crilA wrote: | Very real, also within corporations in proprietary code. | | One thing helps a lot: you don't owe "them" anything, also when | working on proprietary code inside corporations. Don't feel like | looking at it? Just ignore the bug report. Literally - don't even | read the report. | | (If you haven't shuffled through hundreds of poorly formulated | issues you may not realize just how much effort that is). | yaml-ops-guy wrote: | _Don 't feel like looking at it? Just ignore the bug report. | Literally - don't even read the report._ | | Presumably this is what product management is supposed to | function and give attention to, isn't it-at least to an extent? | Or have I misunderstood what those staffers do? | | Seems lately I've seen developers frustrated about this because | they want to be developers, but the company wants them to be | everything and anything more (sometimes, maybe often-times | because of poor resource allocation/chronic understaffing on | the part of the business) from triaging feature builds to | project managing entire releases. | | Maybe I've worked at shitty companies. | | In fact...now that I think about it....... | setpatchaddress wrote: | More broadly: always set boundaries for yourself. You may not | have a choice to ignore the bug in a corporate setting, but you | need to be willing to kick issues back to the originator for | lack of information and /or lack of willingness on their part | to help isolate a way to reproduce the problem. | deathanatos wrote: | > _Very real, also within corporations in proprietary code._ | | Yeah, I've fielded quite a few internal bug reports that amount | to "it doesn't work". My stock response is becoming "what is | the symptom you're actually experiencing when you say 'it | doesn't work'?"; that _usually_ gets more information. | | (The internal ones are perhaps worse, as you are beholden to | respond to them, since it's from a coworker.) | marcosdumay wrote: | We lost something when we centralized collaborative development | and made it look like a social network (with even gamified | activities). | | People used to glance over codes of conduct (as in RTFM first, | post on such channel, and other practical stuff like that, not | like the ones projects are creating today) before contributing, | and did so with the intention of interacting for a while. | | Projects always tried to remove barriers for casual | collaboration, but nobody managed to remove the long-term nature | of it before. Now, well, too much of a good thing stops being | good. Github finally fully succeeded, and this may be the main | reason to abandon the platform. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-28 23:00 UTC)