Five Unspoken Rules of Contributing to Open Source Software

19 minute readI made a lot of mistakes going from developing closed-source to open-source software, and want to share the unspoken rules I discovered in the process.This post is intended for readers with programming experience (especially with WordPress), but who are new to contributing to open source projects. My First Pull Request Disaster Customizing BuddyPress Docs for […]

What I like about my Work

4 minute readMy last post was kinda a complaint about how tasks have sometimes been assigned to me at work. (Of course at church, where I’m currently serving as “elders quorum president” I’m kinda in the position of assigning tasks, and frankly I kinda stink at it. I’m so conscientious that I might offend someone somehow that […]

Things to Consider Before Assigning Me a Task

7 minute readI do computer programming for work (php and python nowadays). It sometimes frustrates me, and I’m sure my employers too, how long seemingly simple jobs take. Eg want to change a website’s font size? Seems like it should just take changing one setting somewhere from 10 to 11, right? Yeah that’s it… but don’t forget […]

Two kinds of Infinity

2 minute readAt the recent WordCamp I attended, one of the speakers mentioned how when you’re working on your own website or software, you’re never “done.” There’s always some way to improve it (also, there’s always some new bug you never noticed before, and some integration that makes a change that breaks it.) And that sounds about […]

Where's the Empirical Evidence for Open Source Superiority?

< 1 minute readEric Raymond, in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar,” proclaims the wonders of open source development. But where is the evidence for its superiority? Where is the empirical evidence? Linux is successful, but closed source Windows and Macintosh are far more successful! Why has closed source software won in these two cases? Because most users don’t […]