Title: Developer Mailing List, a paraphrase from Liar's Poker slug: developer-mailing-list
On braver days you cruised the mailing list to find a senior developer who would take you under his wing, a mentor, better known to us as a rabbi. You also went to the mailing list to learn. Your first impulse was to step into the fray, select a likely teacher, and present yourself for instruction. Unfortunately it wasn't so easy. First, a newbie by definition had nothing of merit to say. And, second, the mailing list was a minefield of large men on short fuses just waiting to explode if you so much as breathed in their direction. You didn't just walk up and say hello. Actually that's not fair. Many, many developers were instinctively polite, and if you said hello they'd just ignore you. But if you happened to step on a mine, then the conversation went something like this:Me: Hello.
Developer: What fucking rock did you crawl out from under? Hey, Joe, hey, Bob, check out this guy's suspenders.
Me (reddening): I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions.
Joe: Who the fuck does he think he is?
Developer: Joe, let's give this guy a little test! How do you declare a program entry point in C?
Me: int main(void).
Developer: Terrific. You get an A. Now I gotta work.
Me: When would you have some time―
Developer: What the fuck do you think this is, a charity? I'm busy.
Me: Can I help in any way?
Developer: Get me a burger. With ketchup.
So I watched my step. There were a million little rules to obey; I knew none of them. Package maintainers, developers, and managers swarmed over the floor, and at first I could not tell them apart. Sure, I knew the basic differences. Package maintainers talked to distro maintainers, developers made code, and managers smoked cigars. But other than that I was lost.
####⁂
As a newbie, a plebe, a young man lying under all that whale shit, I did what every newbie did: I sidled up to some busy bug without saying a word and became the Invisible Man.
That it was perfectly humiliating was, of course, precisely the point. Sometimes I'd wait for a month before my patch was formally acknowledged; other times, a few hours. Even that seemed like forever. Who is watching me in my current debased condition? I'd wonder. Will I ever recover from such total neglect? Will someone please notice that the Invisible Man has arrived? The contrast between me lurking quietly and the developers' frenetic debate made the scene particularly unbearable. It underlined my uselessness. But once I'd sidled up, it was difficult to leave without first being officially recognized. To leave was to admit defeat in this peculiar ritual of making myself known.
####⁂
All the senior people, from the merge master down, stalked the mailing list. It was not a normal project, in which newbies were smiled benevolently upon by middle-aged senior developers because they represented the future of the team. Here, newbies were freeloaders, guilty until proven innocent. With this rap on your head, you were not particularly eager to meet the boss. Sadly you had no choice. The boss was everywhere. He saw you in your red suspenders with gold dollar signs and knew instantly who you were. A cost center.
Even if you shed your red suspenders and adopted protective coloration, you were easily identifiable as a newbie. Newbies were impossibly out of step with the rhythm of the place.