Re: [gentoo-dev] [Gentoo Phoenix] recruitment process

[basile]

Sebastian Pipping wrote:
> On 04/03/10 21:00, Jesus Rivero (Neurogeek) wrote:
>
>>    Maybe if we could find the way to make the knowledge found in
>> quizzes be more "exciting" to new devs, then we could still have a
>> strong recruitment process without the burden of completing the
>> quizzes. So, what I propose is to transform the "quizzes" part of the
>> process into a list of tasks the prospect should complete in order to
>> gain the necessary ability to "pass". This ability could be measured
>> in points or just by task completed.
>>
>
> Nice idea!
>
>
>
I am a dev in training.  My mentors are now looking over my end quiz.  I
am also an IT professor and teach software engineering.

The learning process was somewhat lacking in that I found myself often
just searching for answers rather than performing some exercise.  It
would help if we had exercises where the prospective dev is guided
through writing some ebuild and then commits it to some "play" overlay. 
He/she can do this over and over until the ebuild works, and then
answers quiz questions.  I effectively did this -> I wrote some
helloworld-xxx.tgz tarballs with various issues and then wrote ebuilds
to build/install the package, committed them to a git overlay I set up, etc.

Also, when I asnwered the quiz questions, I documented the references
where I found the answers and I documented a link to my ebuilds on my
git repo.

The learning flow should go something like this:

1) Read this documentation, eg. http://devmanual.gentoo.org/ section on
Eclass Writing and Tool References

2) Write an ebuild/eclass to do something, with skeleton howto steps,
eg. name transformation like versionator (don't worry if its already
been done)

3) Commit to the play overlay

4) Test the ebuild/eclass

5) Answer ebuild questions

6) Go back to step 1 and address the next issue.

-- 

Anthony G. Basile, Ph.D.
Chair of Information Technology
D'Youville College
Buffalo, NY 14201
USA

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