No, Really! ... It's a Contribution

This paragraph from Jody Hamilton's post, Drupal Time-savers made me laugh:

This might not seem like a time-saving tip but I've come to believe it really is. It turns out the only difference between being a frightful Drupal hacker and an esteemed Drupal contributor is whether or not you submitted a patch. I used to always hear "don't hack Drupal" and wonder how the hell these people thought that was possible when surely we all know there are dark corners of code where the override and hook systems never reach. Finally I realized they probably just submit a patch and call it 'contributing' instead of 'hacking'. Actually I didn't realize this until some point after I joined them.

I hadn't thought of it this way, but she's right!

Comments

Actually, with the exception of using Memcache, in all my time writting code for Drupal I've never had to hack Core. Someone here is missing something!

AjK, I took the comment in the context of improving the "next" version of Drupal. Admittedly, it might not be what the author intended. "hack" can be an ambiguous term, sometimes.

I think the spirit is dead on, though: Contribution Good!

Hacking Contrib modules should be fair game though ;) (with a patch or two here and there if you feel the need for a spot of "contribution"!)