Some thoughts on the learning curve

[Patricia Shanahan <pa...@acm.org>]

One of the biggest problems facing AOO is getting new developers up to 
speed.

As I understand it, there is a small group of developers who do 
understand AOO, but do not have anywhere near enough time to do 
everything that needs doing. Meanwhile, you have newcomers with various 
levels of experience who would like to help, but don't know where to start.

Even for someone like me who has previously worked on large programs, up 
to and including operating systems, AOO is a formidable body of code. I 
have started trying to study the profile system, since it seems to be a 
problem area, but even that narrow focus includes a lot of code, and not 
many comments.

I suggest forming small teams to work on specific projects. Each team 
should include one of the AOO-experienced developers, and one or more 
newcomers. As newcomers learn one or more areas of AOO they should be 
able to themselves serve as a team expert, getting more developers 
productive.

Any AOO expert need an assistant to work, with some direction, on a project?

Patricia

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Re: Some thoughts on the learning curve

[Patricia Shanahan <pa...@acm.org>]

On 2/20/2016 8:39 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
> I sympathize with Pedro's observation.
>
> Meanwhile, although I am not an expert, I could stand to buddy up on
> the following profile-related situation:
> <https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=126669>.

Looks interesting. I am familiar with pthread and memory management 
issues, so it may be a good area for me to work on.

Patricia



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RE: Some thoughts on the learning curve

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <de...@acm.org>]

I sympathize with Pedro's observation.

Meanwhile, although I am not an expert, I could stand to buddy up on the following profile-related situation: <https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=126669>.

If I had to name one absolutely critical situation it has to do with AOO release engineering.  As far as I can tell, there is too much tacit knowledge still involved with producing a release and too much happening out of sight.  There are things that need to be done to make that easier and more repeatable.  And that means having several able to be release manager.  That's a critical mentoring need.

At the ASF, projects live or die on the ability to make releases.  The usual sign of demise is lacking enough PMC members to provide the necessary binding votes.  We are probably close to that.  But even more limiting is the ability to make release candidates that there can be binding votes for.

It doesn't matter what we fix if we can't ship it.

 - Dennis

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patricia Shanahan [mailto:pats@acm.org]
> Sent: Saturday, February 20, 2016 18:19
> To: dev@openoffice.apache.org
> Subject: Some thoughts on the learning curve
> 
> One of the biggest problems facing AOO is getting new developers up to
> speed.
> 
> As I understand it, there is a small group of developers who do
> understand AOO, but do not have anywhere near enough time to do
> everything that needs doing. Meanwhile, you have newcomers with various
> levels of experience who would like to help, but don't know where to
> start.
> 
> Even for someone like me who has previously worked on large programs, up
> to and including operating systems, AOO is a formidable body of code. I
> have started trying to study the profile system, since it seems to be a
> problem area, but even that narrow focus includes a lot of code, and not
> many comments.
> 
> I suggest forming small teams to work on specific projects. Each team
> should include one of the AOO-experienced developers, and one or more
> newcomers. As newcomers learn one or more areas of AOO they should be
> able to themselves serve as a team expert, getting more developers
> productive.
> 
> Any AOO expert need an assistant to work, with some direction, on a
> project?
> 
> Patricia
> 
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@openoffice.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@openoffice.apache.org


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