This is *even better* than "nothing about us without us."
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This is *even better* than "nothing about us without us." It's not just insisting that someone else "gather your requirements" before producing a tool that you will rely on and require. This is *you*, producing that tool for *yourself*, which means that you might be able to embed features and affordances into it that you can't even articulate, let alone defend. There something undeniably great about scratching your own itch and hitting exactly the right spot.
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This is *even better* than "nothing about us without us." It's not just insisting that someone else "gather your requirements" before producing a tool that you will rely on and require. This is *you*, producing that tool for *yourself*, which means that you might be able to embed features and affordances into it that you can't even articulate, let alone defend. There something undeniably great about scratching your own itch and hitting exactly the right spot.
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Even so: the experience of working through your requirements with someone else is clarifying and disciplining, because while *you* are the domain expert on *your* needs, that doesn't mean you're the domain expert on how to *address* those needs. You have the worm's eye view of your life and your needs, while an expert can have the bird's eye view that comes from working with *many* people, exposing them to *many* ways of solving problems, including ones you've never thought of.
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Even so: the experience of working through your requirements with someone else is clarifying and disciplining, because while *you* are the domain expert on *your* needs, that doesn't mean you're the domain expert on how to *address* those needs. You have the worm's eye view of your life and your needs, while an expert can have the bird's eye view that comes from working with *many* people, exposing them to *many* ways of solving problems, including ones you've never thought of.
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Darren, the contractor who put in our new kitchen a couple years ago, had ideas for cabinet- and appliance-placement that had been refined by seeing, demolishing, building and revising orders of magnitude more kitchens than we had ever cooked in, and moreover, he *clearly* cared about our long-term happiness in our own home. The kitchen is great.
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Darren, the contractor who put in our new kitchen a couple years ago, had ideas for cabinet- and appliance-placement that had been refined by seeing, demolishing, building and revising orders of magnitude more kitchens than we had ever cooked in, and moreover, he *clearly* cared about our long-term happiness in our own home. The kitchen is great.
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That care makes all the difference. Skilled craftspeople can bring expertise to the project that doesn't trump your needs, but can be co-equal with them. Scratching your own itch is great, having your itch scratched by someone who cares enough about you to know where your itch is, that's even better. But best of all is for that person to find the itch you didn't even know you had and scratch that, *too*.
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That care makes all the difference. Skilled craftspeople can bring expertise to the project that doesn't trump your needs, but can be co-equal with them. Scratching your own itch is great, having your itch scratched by someone who cares enough about you to know where your itch is, that's even better. But best of all is for that person to find the itch you didn't even know you had and scratch that, *too*.
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That's something that relies on the human connection that the best free/open source projects embody, the co-creation and community between developers and users.
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That's something that relies on the human connection that the best free/open source projects embody, the co-creation and community between developers and users.
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If you've ever filed a bug against a free/open project and worked through the testing the devs need to squash it, you've experienced that co-creation. The devs *want* their code to work, because they care about the users, and you as a user can help other users and the devs by reciprocating that care through conscientious, patient, attentive bug reporting and testing.
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If you've ever filed a bug against a free/open project and worked through the testing the devs need to squash it, you've experienced that co-creation. The devs *want* their code to work, because they care about the users, and you as a user can help other users and the devs by reciprocating that care through conscientious, patient, attentive bug reporting and testing.
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I think that so much of the outrage about slop code - floods of garbagey pull requests and bug reports - is the result of the collapse of this dynamic. Slop's not merely annoying or time-wasting: it's a betrayal of the love and care that goes into writing and maintaining code for others. Your cat can scratch any part of its body, but it wants *you* to scratch it, and it will hiss at you and even claw at you if you scratch it the wrong way.
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I think that so much of the outrage about slop code - floods of garbagey pull requests and bug reports - is the result of the collapse of this dynamic. Slop's not merely annoying or time-wasting: it's a betrayal of the love and care that goes into writing and maintaining code for others. Your cat can scratch any part of its body, but it wants *you* to scratch it, and it will hiss at you and even claw at you if you scratch it the wrong way.
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Image:
Orrling and Tomer S (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Itch.jpgCC BY-SA 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.eneof/
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@pluralistic
Yes! This is a big deal. I have several friends who like to tinker but never got into coding, but "vide coding" has helped them to do things that makes them really happy. -
@pluralistic For someone who doesn't know how to code, that sounds so smart and efficient!
