Programmer Karma

Programmers have always had a great community of sharing ideas and solutions to problems.  From BBS, to UseNet, to forums and blogs - there's long been a place to look for the solution to a problem you're trying to solve... or to post your solution to a problem you think others may face.

All good programmers inevitably face some situation that no one else has ever had to deal with.  If you haven't, well, you're working on problems that already have a solution.  Applications are built on the knowledge learned from others to create a new application that serves some new purpose.

My apps are no different.  When I think something I've figured out could help someone else, I try to blog about it.  It was one of my main reason for starting a blog, though I'll admit I've not done a great job at it.

Recently I tried another Outlook add-in (I won't say which since I didn't ask them if I could blog about it).  The add-in was great!  Outlook add-ins are not easy, so I used their feedback channel to give them some kudos.

My feedback resulted in a faltering "thank you" response.  That prompted me to look a little further into this add-in.  I read their release notes and noticed a bug they had that I had recently worked on myself... but I was selfish.  I didn't want to get involved in the problems of someone else.  After all, I have my own bugs to fix.

This weekend I got a very kind email from this add-in's developers asking me if I could answer a quick technical question.  For some reason I set my selfishness aside and said yes.

It turns out that the bug they were working on uncovered some other bugs in Inbox 3 that I didn't know about... let alone would have even tried to test for!

The result was a page and a half email about how I plan to fix the issue.  I don't know if it will help them (I hope it does!) but Inbox 3.0 will be a better product in the end.

The lesson I learned was not to be so selfish.  I've learned so much, and have built my own success, off of the solutions others have found.  For me to not give back whenever I can is just plain wrong.