On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 3:21 PM, Mike Solomon <m...@mikesolomon.org> wrote:

>
> The only hassle for me, which I did not run up against when I started with
> the project, is David’s way of communicating.  I’m not claiming this is all
> on him, but I’m also pretty sure that I’m not the only one who has peaced
> out because of this.  I am looking for ways for this to no longer be an
> issue.  I was hoping that branches would go a way towards making this
> happen for myself and hopefully other developers, but it’s clear that this
> is not a good idea.
>
> In my two day jobs, director of the ensemble 101 and developer for the
> Guido project, I work with two (very different) teams of people on projects
> that require creativity, consistency, and tons of communication.  Neither
> of them has any of this friction resulting from communication issues, both
> of them enjoy a diversity in major contributions, and both are evolving
> rapidly and stably in several interesting ways at the same time.  I truly
> hope that LilyPond can be like that.
>
>
I don't know how you communicate with your other two teams, but the simple
fact is that email is a terrible method of communication, when it comes to
the things that you appear to be seeking. An amused or straightforward
comment can across as harsh or sarcastic when visual and aural cues are
absent (citing the studies that show that 90% of communication is
nonverbal, i.e., not connected to the actual words). Some people's manners
of speech translate into text-only communication better than others', and
some don't translate at all. I had a boss a couple of years back who could
be very friendly and personable face-to-face, but unless she was obvious
happy about something, always came across as stern and upset with the way
things were done. It happens. But you may already be well aware of all this.

It is regrettable that you would let such things interfere with your
contributions to LilyPond. Ultimately, it is about the project, not the
people. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the answer to the problem you perceive
is not to reduce participation, but to increase participation. In my own
case, my interactions with David had the effect of getting me more involved
in the "behind the scenes" workings of the code. Why? So that eventually,
David won't be able to criticize me for not being willing to "get my hands
dirty." I haven't made a commit yet, but that's probably a matter of weeks
or days (whenever I get git-cl set up on my dev machine). In the meantime,
instead of complaining about this feature or that feature, or going "Oh,
poor, pitiful me, someone give me a code snippet to do x," I've tried to
dig into things to make them work. Now the thing I'm trying to figure out
is how to make what I'm doing usable for others who do the same things so
that LilyPond is an easier environment to use. Will I ever get to where I'm
wrangling the underlying C++ code? Probably not. But I'm working on what I
can.

Cheers,
Carl P.
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