

Things Every Programmer Should Know - Edited Contributions - edw519
http://programmer.97things.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Edited_Contributions

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puredemo
Too... many... good... articles...

 _Head explodes_

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ludwig
Woah, you weren't exaggerating.

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puredemo
I was actually exaggerating a little bit. My head didn't really explode.

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jasonkester
I got stuck on the first one and couldn't make it further down the list to
where the (presumably) good advice lives.

"Fulfill Your Ambitions with Open Source" is just such terrible advice that
it's hard to even articulate _why_. If you're stuck writing meaningless
accounting code for some giant company, the _last_ thing that will distinguish
you would be to write some meaningless device driver code for a giant open
source project.

How about, instead, you register a domain name and build an interesting
product to put there in your spare time. Charge people to use it, make money,
make a name for yourself, possibly even get yourself out of the Actuarial
Tedium Developer role permanently.

Fulfill your Ambitions by Fulfilling your Ambitions. Not by giving away your
time on somebody else's thing.

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astine
_some meaningless device driver code for a giant open source project._

Oh FUD. Don't write the bloody device driver. The whole point the article was
making was that you can choose what you contribute and to what you contribute
with open source. If you'd rather write something else, write something else.
If you're trying to make a name for yourself write something that will get
noticed. It's certainly a lot more amenable to some people's preferences than
your 'spare time start up' idea.

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jasonkester
That term stands for "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt", right? As such, I don't
see how it applies to my point.

If you're looking to do something noticeable, do something noticeable. Open
source has nothing to do with the issue. I mean sure, you could conceivably do
something noticeable in an open source project, but then you could also
conceivably do something noticeable working at your cube farm.

Startups are by definition noticeable, otherwise they go away immediately.

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julsonl
You sir, just showed me a buffet. Gotta start devouring these.

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rudd
There's so much interesting stuff here to read that on an HN story voted up
over 100 times, there's less than 10 comments. Everyone's too busy reading.
Speaking of which, _goes to read_.

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edw519
Tons of stuff I never saw before. I better be careful or I'll lose the whole
day.

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donaq
Whoa, just the link texts are already informative.

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s3b
thanks !!!

