Robot Has No Heart

Xavier Shay blogs here

A robot that does not have a heart

Code for Christmas

Developers don’t have enough time.

We’re all too busy working our day job, or looking after our better half, to give our pet projects the attention they deserve.

That makes time the most valuable thing we can give. This year for Christmas, why not give a fellow developer some?

Ticking off an amazon wishlist never really resonated with me, so this year here is what we are all doing instead:

  1. Find someone’s pet open source project – I’d start at github
  2. Contribute! It doesn’t have to be much – a spec or two, some documentation, or even just a “hey it works on my box”. Fork, commit, pull request.
  3. Wish them a Merry Christmas!

That shouldn’t take you more than an hour. It’s a total win all around – you get to hone your chops, they get some love on their project, and the open source ecosphere is improved. If you’re feeling generous, or don’t have any friends, there’s no shortage of projects that I’m sure would welcome some support.

My wishlist is any of the ruby midi projects out there.

  1. Daryl says:

    Personally, I was planning on contributing some code to enki as soon as I clear some time from the things I'm working on right this minute... =] Just gotta port over from simplelog for example...

  2. David says:

    Hi Xavier,

    You're totally right about this one, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. I was planning on sharing more in 2009 and time is what I was planning on sharing.

    Your blog is a really good read. Keep up the good work and have a happy holliday!

  3. jared says:

    hi xavier. this is jared, your moshi predecessor. just wanted to drop a line and say that i've read through some of your blog and am very impressed. this one in particular caught my interest. i'm glad you're helping out at amani. it looks like they're lucky to have you around. tell everybody i said hi, esp. rama.

Post a comment


(lesstile enabled - surround code blocks with ---)

A pretty flower Another pretty flower