While reading a rant from jd__ about why he doesn't like github pull requests I discovered, perhaps, one of the reasons why I find working in the OpenStack environment so alienating.

He says, with regard to pull requests being a full branch:

This kind of branch is composed of the whole brain's construction process of your contributor, and is a real pain to review.

I read that and a bit of a lightbulb went off. I suddenly thought, "I think I’ve just uncovered my main issue with my entire openstack experience".

“whole brain’s construction process” is really the only thing I’ve ever cared about ever with regard to working with other people, collaboration, learning, etc. I want to see it all, share in the sort of embedded brain meld.

The lack of brain sharing makes everything feel very regimented, constructed, artificial and, to me, inefficient. Very little time is spent consciously building shared language or shared understanding. Without that you end up in an environment with very little in the way of shared goals. Instead of everyone on the same page, you get lots of separate pages that are constantly being updated from under you. There is a constant process of reintegration with very little foundation building.

Meanwhile the release and review process works against incrementalism thus driving a need for everything to be perfect instead of just good. This has the effect of denying real world experience and instead moving problem solving into the land of abstraction and projection.

What's especially bizarre about these things is that we have years of evidence from recent software development experience that support doing things differently. Enough that we have catchphrases to go along with them:

• release early and often
• fail fast
• worse is better

meh