OSS is a Humbling and Character Building Experience
May 17, 2025
Carl Sagan said astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. I think it is very apt for open-source contributions too. Software building is as much about the human society we live in, as it is about the engineering of it.
Giving back – even in its tiniest form – reaps happiness, fulfillment and on some level, a connection with people who share our tiny slice of Earth’s unending history.
A long time ago, I wrote a small utility, very specific for my (very niche) use case. I had no expectation of anyone even hearing about it, let alone use it. The idea was simple - a mechanism to concurrently redefine a function in Clojure. There was only one intended user: me. But for some inexplicable reason, in 2019, I put it out in the open as a Github gist.
I recall Matthew Davidson reaching out to me to extract it into a library, which Matthew also mentioned in a blog post in 2022. Today, the original gist has 29 chats and the library has been downloaded 509 times and with 19 stars on Github.
It’s not a lot, but to me, it means the world: 19 people found the idea interesting, which is 19 more than what I had anticipated. If you would like to contribute, you will forever have my gratitude, as do the authors of all the open source libraries I use every day.
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