New subject: [trinity-devel] Contribution to TDE progress

19 Feb 2014


      I want to add a couple of more points to my previous email below.
1) internationalization/translation (tde-i18n) is another area where users without any programming knowlegde can help a lot
2) the contribution a person can give to TDE does not depend on his/her skills but on the amount of time he/she is willing to put it TDE. You could be the best C++ programmer of the world, but if you only contribute 5 minutes a month your contribution would be very small indeed (but not futile though). Or you could be just a normal user without any programming experience who is willing to spend a couple of hours each week on updating documentation: in such case your contribution would definitely be bigger than the best C++ programmer of the world.
So it is not about skills, it is about time.
Feel free to pass this email to the user mailing list too (I know, I should subscribe... :) )
Cheers 
  Michele
...
...
The primary reason I got frutrated yesterday is not my lack of C++
skills. My frutration comes from the fact that asking for coaching
help in this list is futile.
Yep - amen. I'd love to learn what is required to fix the systemd
user session tracking issue, but for me, >at this point, to sit down
and try to follow the c++ inheritance and polymophism through
tdelibs/tdebase to >arrive at the points in the code that need
attention -- is -- (looking for word stronger than >futile...checking
kthesaurus...got it!) simply absurd, cockeyed, derisory, idiotic,
laughable, ludicrous, > nonsensical, preposterous, ridiculous --
to the point of making "a contribution so small as to belaughable."
You c++ guys shell out some advise and guidance and we will be more than happy to help :)
As usual, different people have different opinions, so I will give mine too.
1) Number of bugs in bugszilla
As a developer, I prefer to have "10 bugs filed and one fixed" than "1 bug filed and 1 fixed". It means we are doing a good job with testing (and that we have too little active developers :( ).
Having a list of bugs that are almost all resolved, does not mean the project is better. It means we are not testing well at all. Luckily, we have people like Darrell, David, Francois, Alex and others that constantly report any issue they find. Maybe the issue will be resolved 2 years later, but at least we know it exists. So please keep up with filing bugs :)
2) Applications in the tree
The more we have, the better. Not because we want to show to the world how many beautiful applications we have (the first comment against that would be that most of them are 3-4 years old at least), but because when we need *that* particular application for *that* particular job in *that* particular day, the application is already available in our DE. If we don't have *that* application, we need to start looking around for an application doing *that* particular job, and Murphy's laws dictates that when we need *that* particular application, we are usually already short in time :)
3) Contribution to TDE
While I understand very well the frustration of Darrell, I strongly disagree with the comments marked as ">>" and ">" at the beginning of this email. No contribution to TDE, however small it could be, is ever going to be considered "futile" or "looking for word stronger than futile...checking kthesaurus...got it!) simply absurd, cockeyed, derisory, idiotic, laughable, ludicrous, nonsensical, preposterous, ridiculous -- to the point of making a contribution so small as to be laughable."
Please remember that TDE carries on thanks to the effort of us all, not just the (few active) C++ developers.
There are tons of things that need attention.
- testing: very important, so please keep up with it :)
- documentation review: don't need to be a C++ developer to edit docs. Darrell has been doing an outstanding job with it lately. Would be good if others could help him out too.
- website review: same as for the documentation, don't need to be a C++ developer to contribute to it.
- development: yes, here you need to know some C++ :) But not all bugs are major ones, so if your skills are somehow limited, you can try to target small bugs and leave the big ones to the other developers.
TDE lives thanks to the effort of us all. Please don't give up, whether you are testing, fixing paper cut issues, reviewing docs, fixing major problems or whatever else you are doing to contribute to it.
Cheers
  Michele