I used to look down on posers who submit some contrived one-off trivial patch to a big, famous project like Django or whatever, sheerly for the glamor and ego-gratification of being able to say, "I'm a contributor to Django." I thought that if it wasn't a fix that you needed for your own work and you're not going to be a seriously involved contributor, it's more dignified to only work on your personal projects (which would be more authentic) or some non-super-famous but still widely-used library (which would have more socially-useful unfinished work left).

Then I landed a patch in the Rust compiler.

And it is so ego-gratifying!! But maybe now I have to submit a bunch more patches in order to prove—in order to be—a seriously involved contributor rather than a mere poser??

    let path = Path::new("/proc/meminfo");
    let proc_meminfo = match File::open(path) {
        Ok(f) => f,
        Err(e) => {
            println!("Error: {:?}", e);
            // TODO: be kinder to our friends still under Cupertino's rule
            moral_panic!("couldn't read /proc/meminfo?! It is possible \
                          that you are struggling with an inferior nonfree \
                          operating system forced on you by your masters in \
                          Cupertino or Redmond");
        }
    };

// XXX: old_io is probably facing deprecation if names mean anything
#![feature(old_io)]
use std::old_io;
use std::collections::HashMap;

fn main() {
    let things_to_ask_about = ["name", "age", "username"];
    let mut collected_information = HashMap::new();
    for askable in things_to_ask_about.iter() {
        println!("What is your {}?", askable);
        let input = old_io::stdin()
            .read_line()
            .ok().expect("failure message here");
        // XXX EVIDENCE OF MY IMPENDING DEATH in these moments when I
        // want to scream with the righteous fury of a person who has
        // been genuinely wronged, on the topic of what the fuck is wrong
        // with this bullshit language where you can't even trim a string
        // because "`input` does not live long enough" this and "borrowed
        // value is only valid for the block suffix following statement 1
        // at 21:48" that
        //
        // But what the fuck is wrong with this bullshit language is in
        // the map, not the territory
        //
        // on the balance of available evidence, doesn't it seem more
        // likely that the borrow checker is smarter than you, or that
        // the persons who wrote the borrow checker are smarter than you?
        //
        // and if you can't even follow their work even after several
        // scattered hours of dutifully trying to RTFM, will an
        // increasingly competitive global Economy remain interested in
        // keeping you alive and happy in the decades to come?
        //
        // I am not a person who has been genuinely wronged, just a man
        // not smart enough to know any better
        collected_information.insert(askable, input.trim());
    }

    for (askable, response) in collected_information.iter() {
        println!("You claimed that your {} is {}.", askable, response);
    }
}