At the end of last year, some of us found ourselves in a small meeting room, presenting for the December TriadJS meetup. Usually the last meetup of the year's attendance is dwarfed due to the impending holidays. This though was a whole other beast. The room was small but, packed with folks from all over the Triad. Someone must have missed the notice about Christmas.
I sat, cramped in the front of the room talking about how folks should get into open source in 2019. With some time off coming it just felt right. People could escape their weird in laws and maybe get in a few issue triages or small pull requests. At least some documentation updates if all else failed. This presentation was intended to envigorate folks but, ultimately it was me putting a stake in the ground and admitting to myself it was time to get back to open source. And here we are. Half way through 2019 and there has been no concerted effort in that realm.
Here's another story.
Back in October of last year I moved away from working on ecom at Glossier.com. This ended up being a hard transition. One, it was from one language that had been like home for the past 6 years, to something that I wasn't a super fan of. Two, it was with a small team for an unknown amount of time. Don't get me wrong, if there is something in this world that I thrive on more than uncertanty... I want it caught and shot immediatly.
Ultimatly the project, like all exploratory phases, began to take over all of our lives. Some team members were rushing to better define requirements, others picking apart small pieces of architecture that maybe misbehaving. We all fell quickly into the excitement of building something new. Until we didn't...
Exploration based projects are certainly not for everyone. They need a lot of focus and time to gain any type of steam in an organization. They also tend to attract people who think they need to leave 'a mark' (on something). All of this can lead to hasty and extreme burn out. No worries though! Any quality engineer can see burn out a mile off and course-correct accordingly.
That's what this is all about. The project has been a wild ride so far and there is so much more to do. This is the exciting part and the reason I still 'go to' the office every day. However, this is me putting that stake back in the ground. That one that was advocated for way back in December of last year! With that, if anyone has some great open source projects that they have given back to, shoot me a tweet. And if not, Rails commit bit here we come!