Contribute What You Use: Why Real Usage Makes Better Open Source Contributions

There's a pattern I see constantly in open source contributions, and it costs everyone involved more than it should. Someone finds a project. They like the idea. They read the README, skim the codebase, spot what looks like a gap, and open a pull request. The code is clean. The intention is good. The problem: they've never actually used the software. The PR sits in review for a week. The maintainer tries to understand the motivation. Questions get asked. Answers are vague. The proposed solution works for a case the contributor imagined but doesn't account for how real users interact with the system. Eventually the PR gets closed - politely, if the maintainer has the energy for it.