Add daily email for 2025-03-10

Contrib-first doesn't mean building for every use case

source/_daily_emails/2025-03-10.md

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+---
+title: Contrib-first doesn't mean building for every use case
+date: 2025-03-10
+permalink: daily/2025/03/10/contrib-first
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - drupal
+  - open-source
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+  Contrib-first development doesn't mean building for every use case upfront.
+---
+
+Most Drupal projects include writing custom code to add functionality required for that project or that doesn't yet exist.
+
+Some of this may be identified as code that could be contributed back to the Drupal community and uploaded to Drupal.org as reusable code for others to use.
+
+Usually, this involves "cleaning up" the code to make it ready to be open sourced - ensuring it complies with coding standards, follows best practices and doesn't contain any sensitive or project-specific data.
+
+Unfortunately, this doesn't always happen as the next project or task is waiting to be started, and the code is never contributed.
+
+I like to do contrib-first or contrib-driven development, where the code is open sourced upfront, developed in the open and used on the project as I'm developing it.
+
+A common argument to this approach is that it takes too much time.
+
+I assume that's because people think I need to cover every use case and situation in the module because I'm open sourcing it.
+
+That's not true.
+
+When I wrote modules like [System User][0], [Null User][1] and [Private Message Queue][2], I wrote the same code I'd have written if I was going to contribute it later - but I didn't need to clean it up afterwards.
+
+I didn't need to ensure it didn't contain anything I'd need to remove.
+
+It wasn't a big task to open source them as they were already open sourced.
+
+If other people want to use the module and need additional features, they could open an issue, submit a patch or create their own patches.
+
+Just because code has been open sourced doesn't mean it needs to do everything for everyone.
+
+[0]: https://www.drupal.org/project/system_user
+[1]: https://www.drupal.org/project/null_user
+[2]: https://www.drupal.org/project/private_message_queue