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Comment by sarciszewski | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to do nothing this year, neither for startups nor for open source software, because it's hard to draw water out of a dry well. And I feel shittier about that after reading this post.

I hope 2016 is better.

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Please don't feel bad about this. The challenge wasn't to do something; it was to think about what you can do. If the answer is "I can't do anything to help right now", that's a perfectly legitimate answer.

Yeah, but it's the same answer I would have had if you posted this last year too. That's what makes me feel shitty.

The only thing I've been able to do this year was find vulnerabilities in popular PHP projects and get them fixed. But that's par for the course and nothing special, really.

You may think this is par for the course, but I think it's a very valuable contribution. Think about the problems startups would run into if those vulnerabilities didn't get fixed but instead were exploited.

Heh. I literally search for and report vulnerabilities in my downtime to recharge between development cycles. It doesn't feel like contributing, especially since most of the problems I find can be found via grep. :/

To paraphrase Charles Steinmetz, doing the grep is only 0.01% of the work. The rest is knowing what to grep for.

You have been immensely kind this thread. Thank you for your kind, encouraging words.

I've had a difficult 2015 as well and your words were definitely encouraging to me! :)

Here is an experimental project that aims to solve the "knowing what to grep for" problem.

https://packages.debian.org/check-all-the-things

A pull request or filing and following up on an issue with an existing project in Github is just as valuable (maybe more so) then writing something of your own/new and releasing it out there.

And with PHP, it isn't a sexy language, but a lot of the web still uses it despite the hype on more popular languages and tools.

I hope 2016 is cheerier for you. Fwiw, when I've been burnt out, what's gotten me excited again has more often tended to be finding new interesting people to work with, rather than finding interesting projects. I think both can work, but the latter can be harder when you're struggling for motivation.

One of the advantages you have that can lead to success is your unique combination of ideas and insights that no one else has in your niche. Don't ever sell short your abilities and value, especially over the long term.

You feel shitty in your current state, but what would constitute an endstate for you that brings fulfillment and elation? I felt like you did until I decided what I wanted for my endstate. That helped guide me to make some changes. Now I don't feel shitty about my situation and I'm taking 30 mins here and there every day to eventually hit my goals.

Having the patience, the talent, and the willingness to go through someone else's code looking for ways to make it better /is/ doing something. You're working with people, helping to make their product all the better. That's a lot more than a lot of people do. Keep chugging, you're doing all right for yourself.

> The only thing I've been able to do this year was find vulnerabilities in popular PHP projects and get them fixed. But that's par for the course and nothing special, really.

I wish I could reach through the screen, grab you by the shoulders, and shout: "THAT IS NOT PAR FOR THE COURSE! THAT IS A CONTRIBUTION! YOU HAVE DONE GOOD! FEEL GOOD FOR DOING GOOD!"

You are blinding yourself to the value of what you have done. Please, let yourself feel happy about it.

It's kind of hard to feel happy about something that:

    - Takes very little time or energy
    - Makes you no income
    - Doesn't usually lead to friendships
    - Doesn't require much intelligence, to be truthful

There's no self-actuation, no challenge, no engagement, and ultimately no reward.

It's just become routine, something I do to pass the time when not writing code for a client or when I need to unwind after a long day.

I'm aware that it's a contribution and it does matter to some people, but I'll never capture any of those $ of value anyway so it's hard to get worked up over it.

I think the most valuable thing I've done for open source in the past year was send the guy who runs dotdeb one of the items on his Amazon wish list as a thanks for making the release candidates for PHP 7 available on Debian Jessie.

In the grand scheme of things, the needle remains unmoved.

and yet, your action prevented multiple someones from encountering a bug and took a little entropy out of the system...

Thanks for preventing others from experiencing a bit of pain.

You also run a blog it seems, as well as tirelessly telling people that Telegram isn't secure here and possibly on other forums.

Do what you can when you can and have the understanding that sometimes you cannot and that's ok. Sometimes the only thing you can do is put one foot in front of the other and move on down the road.

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