Wabi Sabi Software: Caring for Imperfect Projects in Public
Room A | Thu 22 Jan 2:25 p.m.–3:10 p.m.
Presented by
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Sam Bishop
@TechDrgn
https://techdragon.io
Professional software developer, Amateur content creator and rocket scientist. Loves Python, their cats, working on personal software and hardware projects, along with everything space, playing games and 3D printing things.
Sam Bishop
@TechDrgn
https://techdragon.io
Professional software developer, Amateur content creator and rocket scientist. Loves Python, their cats, working on personal software and hardware projects, along with everything space, playing games and 3D printing things.
Abstract
Open source projects live a long time and many hands shape them. That history is not a flaw. It is the story of the work. This talk uses three simple lenses from Japanese art to guide how we care for technical debt in public. Kintsugi treats repair as part of the vessel’s beauty. Dorodango shows how quiet patience turns mud into something that shines. Wabi-sabi reminds us that nothing is perfect and nothing is finished.
We will translate these ideas into daily maintainer practice. Repair that teaches by leaving visible seams in the code and the commit log. Refactor in place with clear migration notes so downstream users keep moving. Use branch by abstraction, the strangler fig pattern, feature flags, and staged schema changes. Build light guardrails with smoke tests, contract tests, and canary releases so contributors can help without fear.
Polish with a steady rhythm instead of rare big pushes. Add a weekly polish pass to triage. Keep pull requests small with a clear scope. Let formatters, linters, and type checks lower review time. Track a few humane metrics that reflect real experience, like time to first review, time to merge, and change failure rate.
Accept limits with intent. Write short pull request decision notes and mini RFCs that record why a choice was made. Use versioning practices and deprecation notes. Keep track of technical debt budget so the project knows when to slow down and fix. Mark some work as not now, and choose changes that are easy to reverse.
You will leave with a new perspective you can use in your projects. The goal is calm, sustainable progress. Care is the method. Stewardship is the result.
Open source projects live a long time and many hands shape them. That history is not a flaw. It is the story of the work. This talk uses three simple lenses from Japanese art to guide how we care for technical debt in public. Kintsugi treats repair as part of the vessel’s beauty. Dorodango shows how quiet patience turns mud into something that shines. Wabi-sabi reminds us that nothing is perfect and nothing is finished.
We will translate these ideas into daily maintainer practice. Repair that teaches by leaving visible seams in the code and the commit log. Refactor in place with clear migration notes so downstream users keep moving. Use branch by abstraction, the strangler fig pattern, feature flags, and staged schema changes. Build light guardrails with smoke tests, contract tests, and canary releases so contributors can help without fear.
Polish with a steady rhythm instead of rare big pushes. Add a weekly polish pass to triage. Keep pull requests small with a clear scope. Let formatters, linters, and type checks lower review time. Track a few humane metrics that reflect real experience, like time to first review, time to merge, and change failure rate.
Accept limits with intent. Write short pull request decision notes and mini RFCs that record why a choice was made. Use versioning practices and deprecation notes. Keep track of technical debt budget so the project knows when to slow down and fix. Mark some work as not now, and choose changes that are easy to reverse.
You will leave with a new perspective you can use in your projects. The goal is calm, sustainable progress. Care is the method. Stewardship is the result.