It's funny. It really took me committing something to some open project to realize that all those programmers out there are actually all people like me.
When I first committed something to an OSS project, I got an amazing response full of gratitude and warmth. For me, this took a lot of anxiety out of the whole experience! Since then, I have contributed several small things to several projects. That is the way it should be!
Funny enough, my first commit to an OSS project felt very similar to my first post to a message board, my first post to a foreign message board, my first post to Hacker News, hell, in some ways even to all those first awkward sentences you exchange with any human being!
Which just proves that the Internet as a whole is actually just a bunch of people. And most of the active contributors are really nice, too!
> It's funny. It really took me committing something to some open project to realize that all those programmers out there are actually all people like me.
My experience has been very similar. It's like I knew this intellectually, but it took me actually contributing to really internalise, get over the apprehension and realise that we are all just people.
Your comment also makes me think about all those years ago when I started commenting on online forums and how intimidating yet exciting it was for me to do so, even under a pseudonym. Putting one's self out there to strangers online as so many routinely do nowadays was not something that came naturally to me. It certainly seems to be coming more naturally to many of the younger generations now though.
When I first committed something to an OSS project, I got an amazing response full of gratitude and warmth. For me, this took a lot of anxiety out of the whole experience! Since then, I have contributed several small things to several projects. That is the way it should be!
Funny enough, my first commit to an OSS project felt very similar to my first post to a message board, my first post to a foreign message board, my first post to Hacker News, hell, in some ways even to all those first awkward sentences you exchange with any human being!
Which just proves that the Internet as a whole is actually just a bunch of people. And most of the active contributors are really nice, too!