Re: [c3] Cocoon 3 Profiling student project

[Andrew Savory <as...@apache.org>]

Hi Reinhard,
It's great that you're able to get students engaged, and to make it part of
their curriculum.

2009/3/31 Reinhard Pötz <re...@apache.org>

yes, I guess it will take the students 2 - 4 weeks to really understand
> the problem and possible solutions. Then they will keep this list posted
> with their insights, proposals and patches and everybody will get a
> chance to comment. The plan is to work in 2 week iterations until the
> end of June. This will mean about 4 - 6 public iterations.


If I might make a suggestion: understanding the problem and possible
solutions is where the cocoon developer community can really help as well.
It's how many of us got started here, with initial discussions that ended up
with us having the confidence to contribute code. It also stimulates the
community, providing diversity and discussion that might trigger other work
as well.


Andrew.
--
asavory@apache.org / contact@andrewsavory.com
http://www.andrewsavory.com/

Re: [c3] Cocoon 3 Profiling student project

[Steven Dolg <st...@indoqa.com>]

Bertrand Delacretaz schrieb:
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 3:57 PM, Sylvain Wallez <sy...@apache.org> wrote:
>
>   
>> Andrew Savory wrote:
>>     
>>> ...If I might make a suggestion: understanding the problem and possible
>>> solutions is where the cocoon developer community can really help as well.
>>> It's how many of us got started here, with initial discussions that ended up
>>> with us having the confidence to contribute code. It also stimulates the
>>> community, providing diversity and discussion that might trigger other work
>>> as well.
>>>       
>> +1. Most of us started by asking dumb questions here.
>>     
>
> +1. I did ;-)
>
>  I'm presenting today at a conference on how we work inside the ASF,
> and one of my recent additions to this talk is that people have to
> overcome their "fear of making mistakes in public" to be efficient in
> our communities.
>   
Couldn't agree more.
The feedback we got from the last student group also reflects that point.

Obviously there is some reluctance to start working on open source 
projects, because all the devs are "so experienced" and actually asking 
some (possibly) dumb questions and proposing ideas somehow scares 
people. (At least that's like I felt)

After a couple of weeks however that stops and the students felt much 
more confident and willing to contribute (to Cocoon and open source in 
general).

> The best learning is by doing, so having those students make mistakes
> here sooner than later (they don't *have* to make mistakes, you get
> the idea ;-) would probably be good for them. Also in terms of general
> community health.
>   
That is exactly the way we want this to be.

However those 2-4 weeks of "research" are entirely intended to get them 
acquainted with Cocoon the way it is now and learn the technologies we 
think we will need.
We could do this on this mailing-list, but I don't think it is really 
useful to ask questions about e.g. Spring here ;-)

Of course this phase will create some ideas about how to actually 
implement the feature, but that is actually part of the plan. (We cannot 
really keep them from thinking, can we? ;-) )
But we will share this ideas as soon as they appear to make sense and 
before we will start implementing them.


I think we did it that way with StAX, but maybe there is something to be 
changed or amended.
Input is welcome and highly appreciated (as always) - after all we (ie 
Reinhard & me) are also learning at lot by doing this.


Steven
> And thanks Reinhard for explaining what you're doing. It might be cool
> to have a web page somewhere to explain the "experiment", but that's
> your call of course.
>
> -Bertrand
>
>   

Re: [c3] Cocoon 3 Profiling student project

[Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>]

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 3:57 PM, Sylvain Wallez <sy...@apache.org> wrote:

> Andrew Savory wrote:
>> ...If I might make a suggestion: understanding the problem and possible
>> solutions is where the cocoon developer community can really help as well.
>> It's how many of us got started here, with initial discussions that ended up
>> with us having the confidence to contribute code. It also stimulates the
>> community, providing diversity and discussion that might trigger other work
>> as well.
>
> +1. Most of us started by asking dumb questions here.

+1. I did ;-)

 I'm presenting today at a conference on how we work inside the ASF,
and one of my recent additions to this talk is that people have to
overcome their "fear of making mistakes in public" to be efficient in
our communities.

The best learning is by doing, so having those students make mistakes
here sooner than later (they don't *have* to make mistakes, you get
the idea ;-) would probably be good for them. Also in terms of general
community health.

And thanks Reinhard for explaining what you're doing. It might be cool
to have a web page somewhere to explain the "experiment", but that's
your call of course.

-Bertrand

Re: [c3] Cocoon 3 Profiling student project

[Sylvain Wallez <sy...@apache.org>]

Andrew Savory wrote:
> Hi Reinhard,
>
> It's great that you're able to get students engaged, and to make it 
> part of their curriculum.
>
> 2009/3/31 Reinhard Pötz <reinhard@apache.org <ma...@apache.org>>
>
>     yes, I guess it will take the students 2 - 4 weeks to really
>     understand
>     the problem and possible solutions. Then they will keep this list
>     posted
>     with their insights, proposals and patches and everybody will get a
>     chance to comment. The plan is to work in 2 week iterations until the
>     end of June. This will mean about 4 - 6 public iterations.
>
>
> If I might make a suggestion: understanding the problem and possible 
> solutions is where the cocoon developer community can really help as 
> well. It's how many of us got started here, with initial discussions 
> that ended up with us having the confidence to contribute code. It 
> also stimulates the community, providing diversity and discussion that 
> might trigger other work as well.

+1. Most of us started by asking dumb questions here.

Sylvain

-- 
Sylvain Wallez - http://bluxte.net