Thanks to wonderful community
A heartfelt thank you to the open source community and mentors who shaped my software engineering career and made a real difference.
Few days back Scott Hanselman tweeted
Take a moment, right now, and email the organizers of your favorite Open Source project and THANK THEM.
— Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) April 15, 2014And I thought, I should do that. But Twitter is too short and emails are boring, and I don't even have email IDs of a few of my favorite Open Source project managers. But I'm not shying away from thanking. So, I'm writing this entry.
Will try to cover as many people as possible who made an important part in my life; mainly professionally and sometimes personally too. But if I miss someone, that will be completely unintentional and I am extremely sorry for that.
Let me tell you a little story. My life was not much different than every other software engineer. I missed first class by .08% and got out of college in the era of recession, knowing technically nothing but a little bit of C#.
Things were pretty normal. Just like every other software person in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.
All dreams and no way to achieve them. Then, luckily or unluckily, I moved to a company where I needed to work with Asp.Net MVC. The first thing I did was find something on the home site. I don't know if there are still any archives available, but at that time there was a video series by Rob Conery. I didn't even know him back then or his reputation. For me, he was a Microsoft employee and I was working in Microsoft technology, so he was God-sent. Whatever he said was the truth, nothing but the truth.
And while wandering around his site, I found the video he gave at NDC conference called The Next Big Thing Or Cool-Kid Koolaid? Slicing Through The Rhetoric of MVC vs Web Forms. Sorry, I didn't find any downloadable link for it, but I still have a copy of it. This video turned me upside down, changed my way of thinking and learning. I started questioning more and learning more.
In a way, Rob is responsible for my path to the community. Then I became a customer/viewer/admirer of tekpub. Yes, I earn in rupees and spend in dollars. But every penny of it is worth it.
The best thing that happened is it opened the door to open source projects. It all started with leaving EF and checking out other ORMs. I won't talk about them now, but I'll move on to my few favorite web projects.
One is Servicestack and the other is NancyFX. I do like others, but these are kind of the first ones I fell in love with. And just like first love, nothing can replace that. I like to thank them for their work. Both are wonderful frameworks for web development if someone is working in .Net. One is for rapid web development and the other is for rapid web service development in true Object-Oriented Programming fashion.
And there is one more transition from Object-Oriented Programming to Functional Programming. Trust me, the F# community is awesome, and that is kind of the reason behind the transition. I don't know why, but they are simply awesome. And I love to thank them too.
I was born in 1986, so I'm a kid to most of the members of the F# community. Most of them were coding even before the day I was born. But whenever I get stuck somewhere or something, they help and give answers to any of my dumbest questions. Thank you <3
I would not know philosophical programming without Jessica Kerr, would not know Actors without Rachele Reese, functional programming would not be fun without Bodil's presentations and talks, without the infinite force of Don Syme there is no me loving F# and Phillip Trelford, Dave Thomas, Scott Wlaschin, and others who are always there for the community. I have never met any of them, but they are always there whenever I need them. Maybe this is the reason the Internet was invented, or if I say specifically, then social networks were invented.
I am sorry if I missed any other community members. But there is a long list. Hopefully, someday I'll meet them and thank them personally.
Even this blog is running on Snow made by Phillip Haydon. Thanks <3 <3 <3
Frequently Asked Questions
You can reach out to open source maintainers through various methods including emails, social media, or by writing a public post expressing your gratitude. Scott Hanselman encourages developers to take a moment and directly thank the organizers of their favorite open source projects, as these contributions often go unappreciated despite their significant impact on the community.
Learning resources and mentors can fundamentally transform a developer's career trajectory and way of thinking. As shown in the blog, quality educational content from experienced professionals can inspire developers to question assumptions, learn more deeply, and eventually contribute to the open source community themselves.
The author's journey began with learning ASP.NET MVC through Rob Conery's video series and NDC conference talks, which changed their perspective on development. This led to exploring alternatives like different ORMs and ultimately discovering and falling in love with frameworks like Servicestack and NancyFX, which opened the door to the wider open source ecosystem.
Open source maintainers invest significant time and effort into creating tools and frameworks that benefit thousands of developers worldwide, yet their work is often taken for granted. Taking a moment to thank them acknowledges their contribution and encourages continued community support and collaboration.