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Ego Trippin’

ruby / picky

During the last year, I started noticing a surge in ego tripping in the Ruby community.

Some open source projects come with a big ego attached. And if a project is released that fills a niche next to that project, that ego feels threatened.

I get that a project can be like one’s baby. And you may cherish it. But you are not your baby.

If you feel personally attacked by someone releasing a project similar to yours, that’s a signal to take it easy for a few days. Yes, your project will lose some users. But they might come back. Despite all the early hype and enthusiasm: In the long run, people use what’s good.

And what’s good usually went at least through some pressure and inspiration from other projects. 1

Conversely, I noticed that, instead of contributing to existing projects, some egos needed to have their own.

Yes, “I saw that the core method didn’t work the way I wanted” etc., but did you really try and discuss it with the owner, or send a pull request?

Now, this is not about not having a voice of one’s own. This is not about you wanting a bit of recognition for your hard learned skills. This is simply a call for a bit of humility and respect for the work of others. And a call to learn from what others might do better in their projects, and what you can learn from it. And also a call to try to teach and improve someone else’s project.

Discuss the thing, and not the egos.

Since in the end, giving (and receiving) the gift of knowledge and respect is one of the greatest you can give.

So try to be humble.

 

I wanted to thank two guys especially who recently gave and are giving me great feedback on Picky: http://github.com/rogerbraun and http://github.com/clintkrollwood. They, like all contributors, continue to give great feedback and code. All these people are the real, unsung heroes. So, thanks!

 

Some good further reads:

 

1 Picky got positive pressure from Tire. Very thankful for that.

Next Migrating to Picky 3.0 (from 2.7)

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