Seeing Something I Created Get Used

A coworker sent me a screen-grab of a forum post where someone stated that they used an experimental Docker image that I had built to help them with their local dev work. I don't even remember how to make that Docker image work for local dev and the build is currently broken; but now I want to fix the build and figure out how to use the image so I can provide some nice instructions in a README.

Last April, at the Longhorn PHP conference, I was giving an uncon talk and mentioned the Haystack library that I had built a few years ago. One of the members of the audience said, "That was you? We use that library all the time!"

Knowing that people use my stuff and appreciate it makes me want to keep going with providing things freely via open-source.

I have two projects, one that is pretty much abandoned and the other that is stable but hasn't been touched in a while, that are being used out there. This ties into one of the reasons I entered into software development in the first place. I wanted to increase my production/consumption ratio. I wanted to make things that others would want to use.

If knowing these two usages feels good to me, imagine how much power one could have in making the world a better place if each one of us lets other people know how much we appreciate their work? It doesn't have to be someone we know, it doesn't have to be a celebrity in whichever field, it just needs to be someone who does something that we appreciate.