[serf]

yeah, agreed : the difference between a non-programmer who programs and a programmer is the methods by which they achieve the results.

an easy way to find work to help with on github is to go to hackaday or some other such 'hackaton/diyer' community and follow the project links -- you can spend the entire evening fixing foot-guns and lazy/naive implementations of fairly well understood early CS concepts -- that's not to say that professionals don't make the same mistake, but amateurs who are just trying to get something to work rarely hit the codebase again after the thing does what they want.

[teddyh]

> amateurs who are just trying to get something to work rarely hit the codebase again after the thing does what they want.

Are you saying that programmers do? I mean, they should, but…

[switchbak]

I've often been prevented from improving existing pieces of code.

Usually with a variety of reasons, but it boils down to not prioritizing keeping the code clean. Invariably that's led to a higher carrying cost and decreasing ability to meet business goals.

But you're right, it's a rare developer that's interested in doing the unsung work of keeping a codebase clean.