[OT] what is a "mentor", anyway? (was: [classlib] where to put mods...)

[Leo Simons <ma...@leosimons.com>]

Hi gang,

Just some soul-searching on a sunny wednesday morning (over here
anyways)...

much of the traffic I see these days on harmony-dev (I'm through the
back-log. Yay!) to me looks like lots of people in "violent agreement"
and it prompts me to write messages like this, eg trying to help the
people doing the actual work to reach consensus. I keep wondering whether
I should actually send them (and try and fill this whole "mentor" (I
*hate* that word. It reminds me of mr. Myagi from the movie "The Karate
Kid". I identify more with the karate kid :-)) role, since this
consensus thing in an online community is probably new to some of the
harmony crew) or just let people sort it out on their own (and let
meritocracy rule).

If you have an opinion on this, please do let me know, and I might
adjust behaviour accordingly (realistically, I learn slowly, but I do
try! :-)).....its not like the incubator has any kind of "how to do
mentoring" guide, nor is harmony a whole lot like the other projects
in the incubator, so we're often just winging it.....thanks!

cheers,

LSD

----- Forwarded message from Leo Simons <ma...@leosimons.com> -----

From: Leo Simons <ma...@leosimons.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 01:36:23 -0800
Subject: Re: [classlib] where to put mods that make classlib more portable
To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
Reply-To: harmony-dev@incubator.apache.org
List-Id: <harmony-dev.incubator.apache.org>

I detect a difference in approach between "doing things right" and
"doing the least amount of work to get things running". I think both
are good ways to make progress, and we should do both.

On Wed, Mar 22, 2006 at 10:49:37AM +0800, Paulex Yang wrote:
> There has been a VM/classlib interface definition named as VMI [1] ,  it 
> is concise and a *much* smaller interface than *all* native codes 
> classlib needs. If only the alternative VM implements the VMI and kernel 
> classes, the sample Java launcher current in SVN should can be used by 
> it to load classlib native libraries as well as VM libraries, so that 
> not only java codes but all the classlib specific native codes can be 
> used on alternate VM without modification, this make sense to me as 
> *portable*.

Yeah it does! (to me)

To make my comment above a little more concrete, From a very practical point
of view, search-replacing all "native" keywords with '/* native */' is a much
lazier/quicker way to get some stuff running (I mean, making JCHEVM implement
this VMI sounds like lots of work, and it already implements another abstraction
layer (the GNU classpath one), so the best way to do it is probably not so
straight-forward), which is not without its merits either. 

Is there a good reason not to just go and try both ways?

Man, who is this guy from the peanut gallery who keeps popping his head around
the corner? O wait, its me. Carry on people, carry on...

- LSD

----- End forwarded message -----

Re: [OT] what is a "mentor", anyway? (was: [classlib] where to put mods...)

[Henri Yandell <fl...@gmail.com>]

On 3/22/06, Leo Simons <ma...@leosimons.com> wrote:
> Hi gang,
>
> Just some soul-searching on a sunny wednesday morning (over here
> anyways)...
>
> much of the traffic I see these days on harmony-dev (I'm through the
> back-log. Yay!) to me looks like lots of people in "violent agreement"
> and it prompts me to write messages like this, eg trying to help the
> people doing the actual work to reach consensus. I keep wondering whether
> I should actually send them (and try and fill this whole "mentor" (I
> *hate* that word. It reminds me of mr. Myagi from the movie "The Karate
> Kid". I identify more with the karate kid :-)) role, since this
> consensus thing in an online community is probably new to some of the
> harmony crew) or just let people sort it out on their own (and let
> meritocracy rule).
>
> If you have an opinion on this, please do let me know, and I might
> adjust behaviour accordingly (realistically, I learn slowly, but I do
> try! :-)).....its not like the incubator has any kind of "how to do
> mentoring" guide, nor is harmony a whole lot like the other projects
> in the incubator, so we're often just winging it.....thanks!

There hasn't been a karate kid movie in which a wizened and old Ralph
Macchio trains up some new upstart for the 2050 Virtual Karate bout?
Once the new Rocky movie is out, I bet we'll see it.

In the much simpler Roller, I've tended to split it such that for
foundational issues (legal/infra/board-report) I hop in pretty quickly
and for development issues I stay quite out of the way. Being a mentor
kind of pulled me away from the little development I was doing, so I'm
looking forward to it going TLP.

The downside of this is that it's not getting people used to how to
get those things done - so probably a better answer is to hop in
pretty quickly for foundational issues - but don't actually do
anything. Merely provide the information for someone else to get it
dealt with.

Rotating build reports is one such example. I think we mentors should
be encouraging members of the community to do them rather than taking
care of them (unsure if the Harmony mentors take care of the reports
or not).

For developmental issues and general community banging - hand out the
rope and then when everybody is hung you can be wise Mr Miyagi and
explain why they should have been waxing on and off? :)

Hen