Published: Wed 05 August 2009
By C. Titus Brown
In python .
tags: python oss gsoc
I'm nominally involved in co-mentoring or cheerleading 5 Google Summer
of Code projects this summer, and several of the students have the
same problem: they send me one big e-mail (or post one big blog
entry), every few weeks, asking for input.
This imposes a big energetic barrier to me. In order to answer their
question(s) or look at their code, I need to come up to speed with all
the changes they've made to their project since the last time they
asked for help. (And because I'm busy, this often means I don't get
to it at all. Mea culpa.)
I think this might be a consequence of the learning process the good
students learn in school: "try to figure everything out yourself, and
only come ask for help if you're really stuck." That, or they just
don't want to bother me with "trivia", even though that's what I
actually want -- to be bother with small-sized stuff, not big chunks!
Anyway, the message is: ask me to look at small things every now and
then, and make them easy to look at (VCS rather than attachments, some
form of docs, etc.). I'll rub the corners off of your code base more
regularly and I can be much more helpful on that basis than on the big
chunk/every month basis.
Paranthetically, one of the joys of this GSoC has been watching
several students plow through the work without really any input or
oversight from me. Eden Elos, Eric Pruitt, Shuaib Khan, Zach Riggle,
and Yang Yang (and... who am I missing?) have all really stepped up
to the plate, or at least allowed themselves to be inexorably moved
towards the plate and assumed plate-occupying responsibility.
--titus
Legacy Comments
Posted by Owen on 2009-08-07 at 14:29.
Duly noted, Bossman.
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