437: Contributing to Open Source in the Midst of Daily Work with Steve Polito

The Bike Shed

Are you passionate about open source but struggling to find time amidst your daily work? Today on the podcast, Joël Quenneville sits down with Steve Polito to discuss practical strategies for making meaningful contributions to the open-source community, even when your schedule is packed. Steve is a developer with extensive experience in the open-source world seamlessly. He’s known for his ability to integrate open-source contributions into his daily workflow, all while maintaining high productivity in his professional role. In our conversation, we explore balancing professional responsibilities with open-source contributions. Steve walks us through his process, from the importance of keeping notes to leveraging Rails issue templates. Discover strategies for contributing to open-source work during work hours, the benefits of utilizing existing processes, and why extending the success of your work to the larger developer community is essential. Join us to hear recommendations for handling pull requests with Ruby on Rails, tips for using reproduction scripts, why you should release reports early and often, and much more. Tune in and learn how to seamlessly integrate open-source contributions into your daily workflow with Steve Polito!

Key Points From This Episode:

Joël and Steve catch up and share what they are currently working on.
Transitioning synchronous processing in a web request to the background.
An update on Steve’s “building in public” approach and its reception at thoughtbot.
How Steve chooses to document and track his development process.
Find out how he uses templates to enhance and increase productivity.
Why open-source work does not need to be done during your free time.
Ways you can contribute to open-source projects during normal work hours.
The benefits of sharing troubleshooting solutions with the open-source community.
Pull request lessons from his time working with Ruby on Rails.
Reasons why issues have a lower barrier to entry with Ruby on Rails.
His unique approach of using issues, pull requests, and suspenders.
Identifying aspects of everyday work that are suitable for open-source projects.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

• Steve Polito
• Steve Polito on X
• Episode 351: Learning in Public
• Rails issue templates
• Suspenders
• Mermaid
• Ruby on Rails
• WorkOS
• thoughtbot
• Joel Quenneville on LinkedIn

Support The Bike Shed