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On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 11:57 AM, Jon Portnoy <avenj@××××××××××××××.us> wrote: |
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> Which is all well and good -- the "you wrote some ebuilds so here's |
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> your commit privs and @gentoo.org" approach to recruitment worked great |
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> when Gentoo had a few dozen developers. |
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> |
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> Today QA is a bit more important, and development is often rather more |
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> complex than "new version, bump the ebuild" -- it's important that new |
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> developers have a firm understanding of ebuild complexities. |
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That's a very important point. On one side there are developers and |
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would-be developers who want an easier way to recruit people. Most |
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ideas revolve around lowering the technical/social barriers. On the |
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other side there's QA and a bunch of other developers who want fewer |
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people screwing up the tree. Those are proponents of being stricter |
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during the recruiting process (i.e. in the end recruiting fewer |
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people) and firing more devs. |
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None of them though help the poor guys in the middle. Those are the |
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recruiters who could swing completely one way or the other for |
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simplicity, or be more subtle and try and make the best out of the |
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situation and resources. |
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When you're all done barking, and in case you really consider helping |
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here are two things you can do: |
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- join the recruiters |
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- actually *mentor* people to become developers. And by that I don't |
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mean passing them your quiz answers, but really training them and |
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preparing them to become good and well behaved developers. When people |
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ask me how to go about that my usual answer is do as you were teaching |
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your son/little brother how to fly fish (or replace fly fishing with |
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what you do best). Start from the start, progress from there, don't |
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overlook any aspect of the art (there's more to being a dev than |
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writing ebuilds), and be ready to spend hours explaining and |
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re-explaining. If your recruit doesn't get it then it can only be your |
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fault, so try harder. |
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Before you replace/change a system you should first try and make it work. |
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> II don't even like resurfacing to post to -dev. |
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> Just here to offer some insight on why we originally kept the quiz system. |
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Hi Jon, long time no see. Thanks for doing that. |
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Denis. |
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