This talk by @wolf4earth was posted in a thread about pull requests, but it warrants a thread of its own
As Sascha highlights, being compassionate can sometimes make all the difference. Life is hard enough as it is, and if you can do something to make it a little less shitty for someone whoâs going through a rough time, or go that little bit further and help them forget or overcome their woes, then youâll be making an impact on someoneâs life that could have very real and profound effects.
Iâm adding the sticky and diversity tags to this thread so it shows and is pinned in our Diversity portal because compassion is where it all begins, without it, we wouldnât have seen the strides towards equality that we see today.
Thank you Sascha (and everyone else who thinks similarly) for being kind, decent human beings and a positive force in the life of others
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Itâs a nice talk!
I remember when I was new to coding, I genuinely wanted to contribute to an open source project I used and liked. My first pull request made little sense. Maybe that was the reason, or maybe the maintainer was actually that rude, but his response was always rude after that. Several times I tried to contribute and every time he closed the request saying nothing or after adding a rude comment like, âThis is wrongâ, without explaining further.
After some failed attempts I worked harder and twice made some meaningful changes, but both of the times he commented that those changes made sense but this version will only accept security fixes.
He could pull those changes just to make that newcomer (me) happy, because those pull requests were adding two small new features and werenât breaking anything existing.
Looking back at it, it doesnât make much sense now, but back then it meant the world to me to contribute to an open source project I actively used.
Throughout my career I mentored many students and juniors, rarely refused students or juniors asking for help with learning something or fixing broken code, but never tried to contribute to some open source project after that, except fixing some typos.
Iâm sorry to hear you had such a bad experience DG (you should definitely add your story to @finnerâs thread too!) but you know what? Sometimes itâs the negative things that can lead to the most positive outcomes - because they give you a unique understanding and perspective; our experiences shape us into the people we become, and generally the âbadâ are often a catalyst for good - either in us directly or through us for others
