Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming

by Peter Seibel

Then send out patches along the way. I find that's the best way to start a conversation. If you get on a mailing list and you're like, “Hey, I want to add a feature X,” the maintainer is probably going to be like, “Oh fuck, I'm so busy. Go away. I hate feature X.” But if you come to them and you're like, “I want to add feature X. I was thinking something like the attached patch,” which is totally wrong but you say, “But I think it's totally wrong. I'm thinking the right way might be to do X,” which is some more complex way, generally they'll be like, “Holy crap, they tried, and look, they totally did it the wrong way.” Maybe that pains the maintainer. They're like, “Oh man, I can't believe they went through all that effort to do it. It's so easy to do it the right way.” Or, “Oh, wow, they did all this work in the wrong direction. I hope they don't go in that direction any more.” And then they reply.