Hot on the heals of my last one-line change to a random Github project, I now have contributed net-negative lines of code to an open source project that people might actually benefit from!

The change was pretty simple, but notable for two reasons.

1. I had to read and comprehend enough of the source code to make sure what I was doing was correct and wouldn’t break anything else, which led me to realize that reading code is both a) important and b) something I don’t do enough, working on my own projects.

2. Making this change made me realize that I still have a serious issue with impostor syndrome.

Regarding #2, I almost didn’t even try to fix this issue, because I didn’t think I could do it. And when I did, I kept (irrationally, I know) thinking that I’d be made fun of and told how my code was stupid and I was doing everything wrong and wasting the maintainer’s time and yadda yadda yadda.

As I write this I know it sounds dumb, but it’s really what was going through my head at the time. But of course in reality, the maintainer was nice and just happy to get a PR, and although he did have one suggestion (which immediately caused thoughts inadequacy) I fixed it and left this comment:

Updated. Pretty new to rust, not sure how idiomatic it is to return a Map directly like I’m doing, or if there’s a better way entirely.

To which the maintainer replied:

That’s a totally reasonable way to go about it!

And then he merged my PR. It’s hard to describe the rush of relief and elation I felt when saw his comment, without sounding like I’m exaggerating.

It was a great feeling, but I’m also trying to take it to heart as a warning sign. I really do need to build my self-confidence, because it is at critically low levels. I’m looking for a job right now, and if I were hired tomorrow I know I’d be stepping into an environment that I have difficulty, on an emotional level, handling.

Luckily, I already know how to build my confidence: just do more open source work! To this end, I’ve started compiling a list of libraries and software that I use that I’m interested enough in to contribute to.

I’ve been doing a good job over the past few months of working diligently on my own projects, so I’m going to shift gears a bit and dedicate some time to fixing bugs in other people’s projects.

I know it’s going to be hard for me, because I’m far too easily discouraged when things aren’t obvious, but thanks to the combined power of Adderall and the Pomodoro time-management method, I think this is a nut I’m capable of cracking.