Code is Gold – Code as metaphor.

Prompted by Mark Boulton’s Tweet earlier today:

"Talk is Silver, Code is Gold". So, where's design? #drupalcon

Yeah? So where’s writing documentation? Where’s tech support in the drupal.org forums and on IRC? Where’s trawling through issue queues? Where’s organising drupal camps and cons? I could go on. I won’t. It’s all code, even design. Allow me to explain.

Once upon a time, when Drupal was young and the community small that oft quoted phrase “Talk is Silver, code is Gold” was indeed taken more literally. It’s a friendly, less aggressive and more positive way of saying “put up or shut up”. What we really mean is that whilst it’s useful to raise issues and talk about solutions it’s much more productive to do something about them.

Our mantra has long since become a metaphor, however. What we really mean now is not code is gold but contributions are gold. Or so I thought, and so I thought others thought. But Mark’s tweet and the following retweets have me wondering. Maybe it’s not so obvious to those who don’t contribute in code. But lets face it:

"Talk is Silver, Contribution is Gold".

just doesn't have the same ring to it and

"Talk is Silver, design/docs/support/code/etc is Gold".

sags under the weight of it’s political correctness.

So there’s only one answer really. If you feel like ‘code’ excludes you and what you do, take heed of the metaphorical “Talk is Silver, Code is Gold” and think of something new!

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