I have a really terrible memory. I am reminded of this whenever I find myself searching our git repo because I am hoping that someone has written a particular helper function, and I find one, and the author is me, from two years ago.

I used to follow the Linux kernel mailing list more closely, and one of the things you notice on that list is that people are not shy about being a jerk if they don't like your code. It's an interesting dynamic, because there's no obligation on the part of maintainers to accept your patch. No level of "I really need this code to go in to support or to make work properly" is likely to get your code in over the objections of the people in charge of that subsystem.…