Published 2026-10-20
tag(s): #emacs #random-thoughts #programming
A week ago I received in my inbox a few patches, from two different users,
for confluence-reader.
My first thought was Aha! Turns out you don't need to be on GitHub for people to find your
project!!! That will show the naysayers of leaving it!
Then I remembered that this is one of the last (maybe the last?) package I
"announced" in the Emacs subreddit. 👀
I didn't ask to confirm, but it is very likely that these people found out about it from that
post...
Why didn't I announce other packages I wrote later?
One reason is that everything I built lately is a bit half-assed, as I
discussed in the Butler
post.
The other reason is that I feel lazy about using reddit, to the point that I am about to close
my account. I stopped trying to be proactively helpful on r/emacs, just because I
don't want to comment. Someone else will post the answer, the code, the link to the
documentation...or they won't. I find the interaction quality there is so much lower now than
a few years ago. Or maybe my perception of them changed. Not sure.
After I realized that this was an "announced" package, I started pondering on the
intersection of the topics of reddit announcement posts and package discoverability.
What if no one else found my packages? Well, I wrote them for my own usage. Of course I find
it satisfying that others benefit from them. I am honored and more than happy that others
cared enough to send me patches.
But, if no one ever contacted me about any of them, would it make a difference on whether the
code is public or not? Not really. If it won't make a difference to me, then why do I even
make the repositories public? And I thought, it is not unlike these posts. I don't know who
reads them or when, yet I still feel compelled to write.
That reminded me of a blog post I read quite a while ago (can't recall where) that talked
about why have a blog[1]. It discussed that yes, you write because you
feel like it, and it is good for you in XYZ ways. But you could get the same benefit from a
journal, why the need to make your rants or inner thoughts public?
And the point of that post was to acknowledge that there's an component of "I want to be
seen", of ego, from the whole thing. Which by the way is the same thing that fuels social
media usage. I am very detached from that now, but around 2010 or so I was really active on
Twitter, and it would be silly to deny that I wanted to receive acknoledgement in the form of
stars/hearts. Not unlike getting you repository starred in GitHub.
(I am not sure what changed for me between then and now, honestly. Something to ponder on
later. And then write a blog post about it. =P)
On the topic of discoverability, the conclusion I reached is that when people acknowledge that
they want their code in GitHub because they want to reach a wider audience, of course there is
some ego involved. But the very act of publishing your code, even if it is in a small forge no
one uses, is not 100% altruistic.
Just like writing these lines and publishing them has a component of "here I
am!!!".
Let's all be honest about our intentions and drivers. Less judgy and more understanding.