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by swiftcoder 107 days ago
> Why would I ask annoying questions when I can identify, reproduce, pinpoint the bug, locate it in code, and fix it?

Because if the bug is sufficiently simple that an outsider with zero context to fix, there's a non-zero chance that the maintainers know about it and have a reason why it hasn't been addressed yet

i.e. the bug fix may have backwards-compatibility implications for other users which you aren't aware of. Or the maintainers may be bandwidth-limited, and reviewing your PR is an additional drain on that bandwidth that takes away from fixing larger issues

2 comments

If the maintainers are already bandwidth limited, how is first asking annoying questions not also a drain on that bandwidth?
The source and documentation is the context. And it's not like we don't have to deal with undocumented, uncommented, ancient patchwork code from time to time. I'd rather solve the puzzle than harass another volunteer who has a life if I can avoid it.

Also feel free to consider the PR itself to be the question, just with said context presented in one go instead of a back and forth. Feels more respectful, too. In the end, if it's not getting merged because of some weird hacky edge case, then my code will still live on in my fork.