My FOSS Story (2020)
blog.burntsushi.net
blog.burntsushi.net
There are many people in the computing field (alive and dead) with many accomplishments to their name but utter devoid of empathy and social skills. Despite that, many of these figures are idolised by other developers, or their behaviour tolerated.
It's not just a lack of empathy towards fellow developers, lack of empathy is even more marked when applied to "non-technical" users who are often patronisingly viewed as clueless idiots.
So yes, my anecdotal experience of developers (online and working in person with colleagues) is that lack of empathy towards other developers and users runs through this profession.
I guess that's natural, isn't it? We value people by their feats, not by how well or bad they treated their fellows. I've seen this interesting discussion happen several times with other fields, such as music or arts: lots of people might almost worship someone, e.g. a famous singer, not even knowing (or caring, to be honest) about how they were violent with their spouse or were racist or something like that.
Practical example: Pablo Picasso. One of the most renowned Spanish artists. His work praised everywhere and every time. Now go have a look at his personal life...
So it's not a problem in our profession. It's more general: a defining characteristic of how we humans generally tend to appreciate other people's work.
We all have been the newbie. We all have been stuck with a program that does weird things. We do not all have years of exp on some particular tech under our belts. Not everyone is interested in the same things. Not everything is perfect the first time, sometimes something is better than nothing.
My moment where I learned this was when I showed someone how to use the tool 'wc'. It took something where they were manually counting a file to mere seconds. I was able to help them and saved them days of work. They just did not know. I helped them and did not even realize it until someone pointed it out. I thought they were being silly not to use it, but then realized they just did not know. They did not even know enough to ask the right question.
Documenting bugs so they can be fixed: now that is probably no different from a commercial software setting, where I worked. I have mixed experiences with that, so some (probably) intensely controversial observations:
If the user just reports "it broke when I did X" and you do X and it doesn't break, is that the end of the story? What if lots of people report similar-sounding bugs?
Too many developers and PMs are happy to stamp it "not reproducible" and move on. I think the dev should take it as an opportunity to insert more diagnostics to catch it next time. If it's an online service, then you will have the logs available.
If it's client software, you have to ask the user to save them for you (but if they're so entitled that they refuse, you have every right to write them off). Some people will get into the adventure and try to help you out, and you can be glad you gave them a good experience!
Columbo should be the role model. Someone got murdered and I'm going to solve the crime, no matter how long it takes. Obviously you can't do this for every random bug that comes in, but if you never do it, you're in the wrong profession.
All the time in one job at Google, Drive and Docs would f&ck up (and we all used them all day). No one I worked with would ever report them, because "Why bother? They're just going to stamp it 'not reproducible' anyway."
I had one memorable exchange where I suggested upping the log level so they could diagnose it. The PM said that was impossible -- the logs would be too big. Maybe they could up the level just when I'm the user? Nah, too much trouble.
Does Github have an issue type for praise? Do you attempt to get the authors email address and contact them directly? Do you star the repo? I'd like a quick way to show my appreciation throughout the day as I `yarn add` various packages...
Otherwise it devolves to faceless testimonies and product reviews of questionable validity, which hold no inherent credibility to others.
I must say that in one of my favorite responses ever, seen in some FOSS discussion with an entitled user, the author replied "Please, go read the License". Or "sorry, but this project is released under the Apache license". Something like that.
This was confusing, and had no bearing to the technical complaints of the user. Until someone pointed out that "the softwate is provided AS-IS without any guarantees". I laughed at that, seemed the right amount of snarkyness to give as reply to a snarky user!
> I had never realized how much Americans like to should you to death.
Yep, as an American in Germany this is something I don't miss. Germans certainly do this but it's always framed as a suggestion, or as an option. I talk to a few American friends back home and even on the small things they never fail to chime in about how to run my life.
I have noticed, however, that it's not only Americans. Our counterparts from "across the pond" (in the UK and neighbors) also like to do this, though to a much lesser degree.
Great read. I see the same thing on Github and over the 10 years I've been there it's only gotten much, much worse.
"Is that how you serve your customers?" - some say, despite never having paid a single cent. - "you are too immature to run a business"
If the app is on Google play or Appstore, it gets even worse: the users there can rate your app from 1 to 5, and on this basis demand premium service. Sigh.