The first one always takes way longer than the code itself deserves. Most of the work is figuring out the unwritten rules, not writing the patch.
This is a big problem in open source that seems taboo to discuss.
In my opinion, unwritten rules are for gatekeeping. And if a new person follows all the unwritten rules, magically there's no one willing to review.
I think this is how large BFDL-style open source projects slowly become less and less relevant over the next few decades.
Agreed. The level of aggressive gatekeepers is just crazy, take Linux ARM mailing list for example. I found the Central and Eastern Europeans particularly aggressive there and I'm saying this as on myself. They sure do like to feel special there, with very little soft skills.
This will likely be alleviated when Ai first projects take over as important OSS projects.
Fir these projects everything "tribal" has to be explicitly codified.
On a more general note: this is likely going to have a rather big impact on software in general - the "engineer to company can not afford to loose" is likely loosing their moat entirely.
{"deleted":true,"id":47475895,"parent":47475746,"time":1774172817,"type":"comment"}
loading story #47481062
Can confirm that it also happens in other complex systems! Still a lot of good time and the novelty factor helps with pushing through
Sand that after so many years these rules are still not written down.