The 10 Stages of Open Source Project Hacking
- Discovery: Overjoyed that you don’t have to write it yourself.
- Usage: Happy that it works, even if not perfectly.
- Reading the source: Impressed by the author’s brilliant code that you don’t fully understand.
- Hacking the source: Satisfied you could get your tweaks to work.
- Reading the source again: Unsatisfied with some design decisions from the original authors.
- Patching the source: Annoyed at having to fix the stupid author’s mistakes.
- Reimplementing the project (but better): Humbled upon realizing some “mistakes” were there for a reason.
- Acceptance: Slightly frustrated but relieved by the realization that it’s easier to keep using the original version.
- Usage: Happy that it works, even if not perfectly.
- Discovery: Overjoyed that you don’t have to maintain it yourself.
Published