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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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