It's been a while

I'd guess that the majority of personal blogs in existence have a final post that talks about apologizing for not posting in a while and then promises that this will change and they'll stat posting again soon...

Yes, I've been quiet for a while. 

At the start of the year, I made plans to leave the project I was working on to spend some time reassessing what was important and what I wanted to do in the future. That time was interrupted by me rupturing the Achilles tendon in my right leg and being forced into 3 months of virtual immobility. This not only ruined my summer plans (and those for the rest of the year) but also kept me away from my desk and my computer(s). There were positives and negatives to this.

But now I'm back. As I start to get back into things I'm planning on working through the many, many draft blog posts I have and finishing and publishing them where appropriate.

If the next few posts seem very random and unrelated, that'll be why.

Developers like us pledge to support open-source

I was recently previously contributing to a project when something broke on the CI builds due to an issue with how a referenced library was misconfigured.

I didn't realize the library was being used. It was configured in a way that meant it didn't show up inside Visual Studio when working with the solution.

I also knew this library had a special (moral) license. This "required" those using it to support the project financially, but the business wasn't.

I wasn't using the functionality of the library, but when I discovered this, I did two things:

1. I made a personal financial contribution to the project.

2. I highlighted this to the business and indicated that they should be financially supporting the project if they wished to keep using the library. (The person who originally added the library pleaded ignorance--"But, it's open source, so we don't need to pay.")

People like us (developers like us):

• Support the people writing open-source software. Financially if possible (and requested).
• Respect the spirit of open-source licenses. Not just the minimum, enforceable legal requirements.

This incident raises other, bigger questions, but I'll discuss them at another time—maybe.

However, I mention this because I recently heard about the Open Source Pledge. An initiative to help encourage companies to "Do the right thing, support Open Source".

No, it's not going to solve the problem of funding and support for open source maintainers, but it will help.

My unique value

Having been ill most of this week, I'm feeling unmotivated and disappointed that I haven't achieved much in the last few days.

 One thing that has cheered me up a bit is the idea that:

Other people may know or be able to communicate individual ideas better than me, but I'm the only one who can put these disparate ideas together this way to produce this unique and valuable result.

I think this applies to coding, writing, events, and more... :)

Specific or vague answers to specific and vague questions

If the question is vague, is a specific or vague answer more helpful?

Actually, is either helpful?
Would clarifying the question (or scoping it) be a better response?

If the question is specific, a specific answer can be helpful, but a vague answer may help see the broader picture or help expand the view of the question.

Both can help or be useful in different contexts.

This feels like the opposite to the way to treat data. 

With data, we want to try and accept a broad range of options and return something specific or at least consistently formatted.

With questions, we want the question to be narrow (if not specific) and a potentially broad range of answers.

Now, how do I stop bringing all my thoughts back to software development? Or, more specifically, do I need to consider whether this matters?

Is it really a "workaround"?

Not using something is not a workaround.

A workaround is an alternative solution to the problem. Normally, slower, longer, or more convoluted than the desired solution (that has an issue.)

I think words matter.

I want to help people get past their problems. Even if that means doing the work of fixing things.

Some people seem more interested in arguing that a reported problem isn't something they need to do anything about than actually addressing whatever is making something hard to use.

Sometimes, I wonder if there's a gap in the market for customer service training for developers who respond to public issues and discussions on GitHub.