UI Component Item `source` Nodes are Redundant

I finally got an answer out of Magento engineering on those <item name="source"/> nodes and their best guess is as good as ours. i.e., they’re redundant/not-used.

There’s a few interesting points to make here for folks just learning to program, and just getting settled into the industry.

The first is software projects often grown beyond what any individual can understand, even (or especially) if that person works at the company responsible for that software. This is why programmers clammer for best-practices and consistency in their framework code. The ability to quickly trace out why something works a particular way is more important than any particular implementation, and inconsistent or over complex systems make that impossible.

The second is, when you find something that doesn’t work right, you’ll often get people who will, very confidently, sometimes (not in this particular case) condescendingly, explain to you how or why a feature works. And they will be completely wrong. Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding, sometimes it’s a lie to cover insecurity. If you feel self-doubt creeping in but you still don’t understand how/why something works, keep pushing forward and you’ll eventually get to the truth. While people remain messy illogical beings code is, ultimately, knowable.