Hynek SchlawackMar 8

I’ve found myself feeling unmoored by the current crop of FOSS contributions. I genuinely don’t know how to proceed.

Of course there’s the slop where the PR checklist gets deleted & almost all items violated. The truly annoying part about this is that I always try to be kind & not a stickler about policies. I guess I don’t owe kindness to a bot, but it’s a bad look to be assertive in public. (1/5)

Show threadHynek SchlawackMar 8

I do not enjoy being a jerk—I want to keep my projects a friendly place that people enjoy to be in because FOSS is about people! Some people appreciate the opportunity of having the license to be assholes but that's not me. The idea of lashing out at someone by mistake horrifies me.

An even more complicated situation is well-intentioned-but-bad-ideas implemented well. There’s no time to think ideas through anymore. (2/5)

Show threadHynek SchlawackMar 8

Anyone can tell some LLM to implement their first best idea, but the first thing that comes to mind is rarely the best solution to anything.

LLMs are great to prototype real fast, but dropping a diff hundreds of lines long—no matter how clean the code—on someone’s porch puts them in an uncomfortable position. (3/5)

Show threadMorten
@hynek Why are people making these? A bug fix shouldn't be that long. If it's a feature that's on the road map / backlog that sounds good. If it's a feature they need where they are using your software then they should be able to work around it. That's the whole point of code and software. We can just change it. After their workaround has spent a couple of years in production and some update breaks it they should come to you with a PR. After asking whether they are doing it wrong.
Mar 8 at 3:30pmWeb
Show threadMortenMar 8
@hynek Five why them Hynek.
Show threadJohn McFarlaneMar 9
@drgroftehauge @hynek also, is there an opportunity to say, "this is a big change. Can you break it down into smaller PRs (or at least commits)? Can you separate any refactors off into commits with no test changes?" That kind of thing. (Apologies for my naivety if that's a useless suggestion, but I've had exactly one slop PR and it was small and obviously nonsense.)