Re:I’ve become worse at programming
by TheOtherHobbes on Tuesday May 23, 2017 @06:21PM
(#14405901)
Maybe there's a simpler explanation: FOSS projects can easily turn into unpaid work, and devs tend to burn out.
Projects that start as fun programming exercises eventually take on all the aspects of a full-time job with "customer" support, project planning, maintenance, bug fixing, and so on.
It can become very draining, and if the project isn't unusually popular or high profile and/or there's no other dev support and/or the team isn't solid and mutually supportive it can be understandably difficult to stay motivated.
One of the insidious things about FOSS is the way that devs can make themselves feel as if they ought to be doing all of these things, sometimes in addition to a full-time job.
The problem isn't that they're not up to the task, it's that the expectation isn't very realistic.
Then don't do it. If no one is paying you, you owe no one anything. You have no obligation. Walk away. Our society and economy have lots and lots of money. If the way system works can't justify paying you for your work, then you should not be doing that work. At least that's the way I see it. At this point FOSS is big business, if you are not getting paid, then you should not be bothering with it.
Get someone with money to pay you for it or don't do it. The end.
That is all true but I don't think the n-dimensions analogy applies to the particular essay the author wrote.
He didn't look back on his accumulation of learning and suddenly notice that it was smaller part of a larger knowledge space. (E.g., programmer stumbles across "monads" and suddenly he realizes that's just the tip of the iceberg in a never-ending horizon of category theory.)
Instead, his essay is lamenting the all-too-common "joy vs drudgery" in projects. It's a similar sentiment that aspiring writers who don't finish their "great novel" have. He then grades himself on his lack of motivation (words like "lazy") to stay on top of programming tasks that are not pure intellectual fun. On his idiosyncratic standard of "programming competence", he wonders if he is a "worse programmer".
Of course, he can choose whatever "success metrics" he wishes to apply to his personal projects but some of us might think that staying on top of documentation (that nobody will read) or adding features to Lily (that a large population of programmers haven't adopted) can bring undue self-criticism.
If we are to plow ahead into boring unpleasant tasks, there usually has to be a compelling motivation -- e.g. we think the personal project is the basis of a great business startup... or the code is part of a PhD paper due next Friday, etc.