Something that I'm disproportionately proud of is that my contributions to open source software are a few minor documentation improvements. One of those times, the docs were wrong and it took me ages to figure out how to do the thing I was trying to do. After I solved it, I was annoyed at the documentation being wrong, and fixed it before submitting a pull request.

I've not yet made any code contributions to open source, but there have been a few people on Lemmy who helped me to realise I shouldn't diminish my contribution because good documentation is essential, but often neglected.

[–] mad_lentil@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago

The fact that documentation and comments can't "fail" if the underlying code changes is a real problem. I've even worked at places which dictated that comments had to go directly above or even beside (inline) with the code they were explaining, so they would show up in any patches changing the code.

What do you think happened? Yup, people would change code and leave the outdated (and wrong) comment untouched, directly to the right of the code they just changed.

Hell, I was one of those people, so I get how it can happen.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Code was written before git was invented.

[–] pyrflie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago

Tell that to Linus.

Shit needs syntax and documentation.

Anything submitted needs to be reviewed before merge/push. Syntax and Documentation rejections don't result in errors. Get your shit right first. You are trading on someone else's rep with this.

If you want to push your own code do it with a separate pull. If you want it merged that carries responsibility to the person carrying it.

[–] Little8Lost@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git
Initial release 7 April 2005; 20 years ago
Oh oh

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

There was sccs (1973) and cvs (1986) before git.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah but you merged as you wanted, usually anyway.

[–] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 5 points 6 days ago

Oh merging was a total crap shoot with sccs. It was better with cvs, until it wasn't and then it was very very bad.