Bridging the In­die­Web Ge­ne­ra­ti­on Gap

A week or two ago Ke­vin Marks poin­ted the IWC chan­nel to a must-read talk cal­led In­es­sen­ti­al Weird­ness in Open Source gi­ven by Sum­a­na Ha­ri­ha­res­wa at OSCON this year. Weird­nes­ses are quirks of your pro­ject, com­mu­ni­ty, or cul­tu­re that might in­ti­mi­da­te/dis­cou­ra­ge new­co­mers. Es­sen­ti­al weird­nes­ses are foun­da­tio­nal; wi­t­hout them, you'd be do­ing a dif­fe­rent thing. In­es­sen­ti­al weird­nes­ses are ever­y­thing else, lo­sing them might slow you down or make it less fun, but it would­n't ch­an­ge any fun­da­men­tal aspect of the pro­ject. She makes a point of say­ing that in­es­sen­ti­al does­n't mean un­im­portant or bad - your weird tools (ahem, git) help you get stuff done; jar­gon is useful short­hand; in-jo­kes are part of a group's cul­tu­re.