I've been in a bit of a funk lately, and it's annoying. Part of it is brought on by the exhaustion inherent in pair programming. Part of it is frustration at the fact that so many open source developers are complete jerks to each other. Part of it is that there is so much I want to do, and know I don't have time to do.
My experiences with pairing, until recently, have been the exception rather than the rule -- pair on tough stuff, when having trouble, when both people are very interested in a hunk of code, etc. Now we are pair programming for all new code -- and it is exhausting. The code is better, no doubt about that, and with partners that I mesh well with (still learning how to work with some other people) productivity is way up. I go home exhausted though, and the last thing I feel like doing is thinking.
Couple that with most of my own-time coding commitments recently being colored by a general malaise of confrontation and bad attitudes (not from people involved directly, necesarily, but by the community in general) and it gets more fun. Folks, if you give away your ideas and code, get a grip and recognize others are doing the same thing. Seriously here, the goal is good code, more value, and more pancakes. When people mouth off at gift horses it makes me pretty sad.
FInally, I am backlogged on things I desparately want to work on at the same time that I am too exhausted to work on them =/ So many very cool things are emerging and I am a complete idea junky =)
On the other hand, I see great things happening that really excite me. Thomas Dudziak's maniacal contributions to OJB (we make him a committer and he goes berserk, the man really is one of those 10x as productive programmers we all like to think that we are); the energy and excitement at Codehaus (if you want to find a positive Java community far from the ego of TSS et. al., look no further); ditto Cocoon -- though I am not as involved there (see "Finally..." section above =) as i would like to be able to. Additionally, big business is embracing open source and free software, not because they have to, but because it works better! Lots of exciting stuff. On the technology front, we are in cusp of a paradigm shift finally starting to break into the early-majority phase, which is an incredible time to be in the software business =)
Maybe I need to stop coding for a couple weeks outside of work and just rejuvenate. The problem here is that I have made commitments which are already starting to grow stale. Hmm. Is late, is good to unload. Now maybe I should just go to sleep. Nite all!