Today I’m at my first Scala eXchange conference - the 5th annual one to be precise.

The day started with the keynote session by @jessitron which was both inspiring and enlightening. The general tone being that code should be clear and useful so that others can learn.

Drawing on examples where opaque libraries with poor documentation or overly simplified examples limited the accessibility to the new user. Words like “Simply”, “Just”, “Obviously” and “Clearly” are the scourge of documentation and for the most part lazy.

Contribution to any project should be welcomed, its an active attempt to say “hey, I’m here to help and I’m interested”. Even if the contribution isn’t entirely helpful or needs polishing it should still be embraced and encouraged.

I’ve mumbled for years about how to get involved with a project assuming that I needed to offer huge value on the first pull request - Jessica has help me see that the first step is to just do something.

If only the second speaker had been listening, maybe his talk would have been less obscure and contained less usage of the words “Simply” and “Just”.