Mozilla "Mentor Bugs
If you are looking for a bug with guidance, we maintain a set of bugs that are marked with an assigned mentor (see "Whiteboard" field). The mentor will help you get the necessary information to understand the issue, point out relevant parts of the code to look at, etc. You can browse these bugs on Bugs Ahoy!, but here's a list of unassigned mentor bugs to get you started:"
There are a bunch of other benefits to these bugs, including:
- There's a lively stream of people setting up the dev environment for the first time, both keeping our instructions up to date and making sure we handle scenarios like slow internet connections, really old versions of Ubuntu or Linux graphics drivers, etc.
- Reviewing these bugs is also a good way to help grow contributors from committers into reviewers/maintainers.
Most of our challenges with these kinds of bugs are related to GitHub. e.g., you can't "assign" an issue to somebody outside of the project organization, so somebody has to manually label it "Assigned" for our filters to work. Also, you don't get notifications when somebody pushes a new commit to their work branch or rebases, so there's a lot of manual watching of these PRs during the review cycle that sometimes gets dropped (though our myriad GH bots could probably fix this!).
Even with the challenges, we love having this kind of bug as a way to bring in more contributors and keep development on the project accessible, and like the author, I'd highly recommend it to other projects.
I am getting desperate to contribute (too much post-work free time, don't ask). I have been spamming my favorite python libraries on github with feature requests (so I can pick them up myself later ; ) ), but it's _really_ hard for a n00b contributor to get grounded and started.
I'll hijack this thread: would you have Python projects for first-time contributors? Can we turn downthread from here to "Post open-for-beginners python projects"?
Great read. My favorite part is this bullet point:
> Use npm scripts so people don’t have to understand or globally install any build tools
I do this on every project I work on. In fact, where possible, I completely skip globals entirely (for instance in my msngr.js library it uses Grunt but it executes grunt locally without it being installed globally on the machine).
I think it's really important that anyone can go up to a library, pull it down, and start it with little to no further effort. The less friction you can provide a developer the better.
100% agree.. and just as important as ease of starting: ease of finishing. make all of your tests / linters / etc. runnable via a simple npm run.
there's overhead in setting this up, but i can remember several times where i have pulled the code down, made my changes, and gave up when trying to figure out how the maintainer wants my code formatted / tested.
I've been thinking about a very similar issue for a while now, and I'm still trying to organize my thoughts into a blog post or something, but here's the basic idea:
Hire more juniors. Or cross-train people from other departments[1]. Doesn't really matter who. But they should be pretty darn close to beginners.
Assign a relatively small issue to them. The kind of thing that would only take about an hour for a more senior dev to look in to. Plan more than an hour for the junior. Probably a lot more. Also plan some time for one of those more senior devs. Sit them down next to each other.
Point the junior to the readme. Ask the junior to ping / poke / bother the senior every time they hit a roadblock. Every single time. Ask them to be relentlessly persistent. (Not everyone's good at being relentlessly persistent. So encourage them. Create an environment where they feel like they can be relentlessly persistent.) Then leave them alone.
Give it a day or two. Watch as interesting things start to happen.
Watch as the junior dev learns how to be a better communicator. Watch as they learn how to make problems visible. How to get help. And as an added bonus: how to program.
Watch as the senior dev goes insane at first from all the questions. Watch them start to wonder how they can avoid going through this every time somebody needs to touch their code. Watch them remove obstacles. Or at least reduce their number. Watch them automate things. Or speed up things that are already automated. Or improve processes in ways they had never even considered before sitting with the junior. Also watch them learn how to be a better communicator.
Do this a few times. Watch for magical things. Code quality improves. Onboarding times plummet. Hiring friction melts away. Teamwork starts... working. Productivity skyrockets. Job satisfaction goes up. Happiness prevails.
As a true open-source zero timer, I can't quite figure out what PR means. My gut was "pull request" but it sounds like you're "committing a fix" at this point, so I suppose "push request" might be the answer, but it's an ambiguous pair of letters.
That's tied up with how git works, which is a huge mess.
You really do "commit a fix" but you commit it to your own git repository, then you make a "pull request" to the owner of the main repository, asking them to pull in your fix.
We've a curated set of Pioneer Projects for MirageOS [1], where more established contributors have agreed to act as mentors for newcomers. It's worked really well for us!
One of the unexpected benefits was that we could quickly take part in things like Outreachy and GSoC, as we already had a curated list. Reviewing this list every few months has become part of the normal process now.
In addition, asking people to act as mentors also gives them a different perspective on the existing code base, especially where things are particularly thorny.
Mentorship in OSS makes everyone involved a little bit better at something, be it following instructions, learning practical tooling, writing clear instructions, justification of process and habits, etc.
This is a really nice initiative, when I was starting with open source development I had no idea how to do what we needed to do and almost no project i talked to had any initiative like this where they keep some part of their project open for first timers like me, i had to struggle a lot to get started, it'd be great if more and more influential projects started to use this and if they were a little more open to feedback, of late I have noticed those who manage the project just don't listen to feedback what so ever.
There are a lot of ways to contribute that don't involve making pull requests. Identifying and raising issues is a good place to start for someone who is not familiar with the codebase.
A caveat to that is that they need to be well-researched before filing issues - otherwise it actually is a negative, especially when a modicum of effort reveals when something actually is a usage issue and not a bug.
I would add: if someone tries to do contribute something, but maybe they have a git issue, don't step in and push it yourself. This happened to me on one project, and it bothered me so much that I stopped contributing entirely (which was the right move, it turned out).
I think the KEY thing here is that you wrote the tests, that gave someone the 'confidence' to say whether or not they were even on the right track - this is amazing - the tests give exactly the right context for someone to dive into the code.
... and this is a prime example of the "developer ergonomics" v. "end-user needs" trade-off that was being discussed a few days ago re: web frameworks.
I mean, it's very well possible that the long-term investment in expanding the "base" of willing coders is worth the short-term loss in productivity. But even long-term investments in human capital need better planning than just "hey, I bet a high-schooler could deal with this simple accounting spreadsheet; that would train him even if it takes him a day to fix what I can fix in ten minutes". It's fine investing in high-schoolers, sure, but that's not the point.
This is really great. I've contributed to lots of projects and it would be nice if maintainers were all this thoughtful. If not actively encouraging people to get involved, it would be nice of maintainers to simply acknowledge or appreciate someone's effort.
I've contributed a lot of code and have had vastly different experiences. Sometimes people are excited and accept a PR without question. Some people just ignore PRs. Some people make you feel as though you've just spit in their face. I had one pull request that I thought was reasonable which was met with a ridicule from the maintainer at how useless my idea was (to him). I'm a seasoned programmer with my own projects and a lot of code under my belt but, even knowing how these things work, that one really soured me on his project. I can't imagine if a novice who was excited at their first PR was treated so poorly.
If I could suggest anything to maintainers, it would be to simply appreciate that somebody was trying to contribute. If their code doesn't meet your goals or standards, try to still respect that they spent some time on your project.
Along the same lines, I'd encourage everyone, first timers and grey beards alike to check out http://24pullrequests.com/ (they use a 'beginner' instead of 'first-timers-only' as their novice-friendly tag).
If you're in the Salt Lake area, also please consider joining us next Saturday [1] or Tuesday, Dec. 15 [2] as we give a little back to the Open Source community!
I believe if dang (and perhaps others) finds a submission that would probably be interesting to a lot of HNers but didn't get much/any traction when initially posted it is "resubmitted" to give it another chance.
[+] [-] pella|10 years ago|reply
Mozilla "Mentor Bugs If you are looking for a bug with guidance, we maintain a set of bugs that are marked with an assigned mentor (see "Whiteboard" field). The mentor will help you get the necessary information to understand the issue, point out relevant parts of the code to look at, etc. You can browse these bugs on Bugs Ahoy!, but here's a list of unassigned mentor bugs to get you started:"
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/Get_Involved#Mentor_Bugs
Other examples:
#easyfix: https://github.com/facebook/flow/labels/easyfix
#beginner: https://github.com/eslint/eslint/labels/beginner
#exp:beginner https://github.com/docker/docker/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aiss...
[+] [-] larsberg|10 years ago|reply
http://servo.github.io/servo-starters/
One of the biggest challenges we have is keeping some around and available! The good ones almost always have an opened PR within 24 hours:
https://twitter.com/ServoDev/status/665930502503723008
There are a bunch of other benefits to these bugs, including:
- There's a lively stream of people setting up the dev environment for the first time, both keeping our instructions up to date and making sure we handle scenarios like slow internet connections, really old versions of Ubuntu or Linux graphics drivers, etc.
- Reviewing these bugs is also a good way to help grow contributors from committers into reviewers/maintainers.
Most of our challenges with these kinds of bugs are related to GitHub. e.g., you can't "assign" an issue to somebody outside of the project organization, so somebody has to manually label it "Assigned" for our filters to work. Also, you don't get notifications when somebody pushes a new commit to their work branch or rebases, so there's a lot of manual watching of these PRs during the review cycle that sometimes gets dropped (though our myriad GH bots could probably fix this!).
Even with the challenges, we love having this kind of bug as a way to bring in more contributors and keep development on the project accessible, and like the author, I'd highly recommend it to other projects.
[+] [-] masklinn|10 years ago|reply
Rust has E-easy and E-mentor
https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/labels/E-easy
https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/labels/E-mentor
[+] [-] benten10|10 years ago|reply
I am getting desperate to contribute (too much post-work free time, don't ask). I have been spamming my favorite python libraries on github with feature requests (so I can pick them up myself later ; ) ), but it's _really_ hard for a n00b contributor to get grounded and started.
I'll hijack this thread: would you have Python projects for first-time contributors? Can we turn downthread from here to "Post open-for-beginners python projects"?
[+] [-] BinaryIdiot|10 years ago|reply
> Use npm scripts so people don’t have to understand or globally install any build tools
I do this on every project I work on. In fact, where possible, I completely skip globals entirely (for instance in my msngr.js library it uses Grunt but it executes grunt locally without it being installed globally on the machine).
I think it's really important that anyone can go up to a library, pull it down, and start it with little to no further effort. The less friction you can provide a developer the better.
[+] [-] chowes|10 years ago|reply
there's overhead in setting this up, but i can remember several times where i have pulled the code down, made my changes, and gave up when trying to figure out how the maintainer wants my code formatted / tested.
[+] [-] peterjmag|10 years ago|reply
I left a similar response on Medium before I noticed your comment: https://medium.com/@peterjmag/great-tip-d6fcdec36e13
[+] [-] peterjmag|10 years ago|reply
I've been thinking about a very similar issue for a while now, and I'm still trying to organize my thoughts into a blog post or something, but here's the basic idea:
Hire more juniors. Or cross-train people from other departments[1]. Doesn't really matter who. But they should be pretty darn close to beginners.
Assign a relatively small issue to them. The kind of thing that would only take about an hour for a more senior dev to look in to. Plan more than an hour for the junior. Probably a lot more. Also plan some time for one of those more senior devs. Sit them down next to each other.
Point the junior to the readme. Ask the junior to ping / poke / bother the senior every time they hit a roadblock. Every single time. Ask them to be relentlessly persistent. (Not everyone's good at being relentlessly persistent. So encourage them. Create an environment where they feel like they can be relentlessly persistent.) Then leave them alone.
Give it a day or two. Watch as interesting things start to happen.
Watch as the junior dev learns how to be a better communicator. Watch as they learn how to make problems visible. How to get help. And as an added bonus: how to program.
Watch as the senior dev goes insane at first from all the questions. Watch them start to wonder how they can avoid going through this every time somebody needs to touch their code. Watch them remove obstacles. Or at least reduce their number. Watch them automate things. Or speed up things that are already automated. Or improve processes in ways they had never even considered before sitting with the junior. Also watch them learn how to be a better communicator.
Do this a few times. Watch for magical things. Code quality improves. Onboarding times plummet. Hiring friction melts away. Teamwork starts... working. Productivity skyrockets. Job satisfaction goes up. Happiness prevails.
-----
[1] See also https://twitter.com/patio11/status/657902663686754304
[+] [-] neogodless|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymoushn|10 years ago|reply
You really do "commit a fix" but you commit it to your own git repository, then you make a "pull request" to the owner of the main repository, asking them to pull in your fix.
[+] [-] hartator|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kentcdodds|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ant6n|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kentcdodds|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crottypeter|10 years ago|reply
Acronyms and abbreviations with well defined / well known alternative meanings really bug me.
Actually Acronyms and abbreviations bug me full stop.
[+] [-] amirmc|10 years ago|reply
One of the unexpected benefits was that we could quickly take part in things like Outreachy and GSoC, as we already had a curated list. Reviewing this list every few months has become part of the normal process now.
In addition, asking people to act as mentors also gives them a different perspective on the existing code base, especially where things are particularly thorny.
[1] https://github.com/mirage/mirage-www/wiki/Pioneer-Projects
[+] [-] jedanbik|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thewhitetulip|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jondubois|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mfringel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Bahamut|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javajosh|10 years ago|reply
I would add: if someone tries to do contribute something, but maybe they have a git issue, don't step in and push it yourself. This happened to me on one project, and it bothered me so much that I stopped contributing entirely (which was the right move, it turned out).
[+] [-] nartz|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thanatropism|10 years ago|reply
I mean, it's very well possible that the long-term investment in expanding the "base" of willing coders is worth the short-term loss in productivity. But even long-term investments in human capital need better planning than just "hey, I bet a high-schooler could deal with this simple accounting spreadsheet; that would train him even if it takes him a day to fix what I can fix in ten minutes". It's fine investing in high-schoolers, sure, but that's not the point.
[+] [-] geon|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlexC04|10 years ago|reply
(Or a vagrant file)
If the image is set up so it "just works" and has all tools preinstalled, you can be up and running locally in seconds.
With NPM scripts, its often possible to run I to problems with node-gyp... Or any other number of cross platform incompatiblities.
The docker/vagrant route is a really novel solution I've seen used effectively in other projects.
[+] [-] jakejake|10 years ago|reply
I've contributed a lot of code and have had vastly different experiences. Sometimes people are excited and accept a PR without question. Some people just ignore PRs. Some people make you feel as though you've just spit in their face. I had one pull request that I thought was reasonable which was met with a ridicule from the maintainer at how useless my idea was (to him). I'm a seasoned programmer with my own projects and a lot of code under my belt but, even knowing how these things work, that one really soured me on his project. I can't imagine if a novice who was excited at their first PR was treated so poorly.
If I could suggest anything to maintainers, it would be to simply appreciate that somebody was trying to contribute. If their code doesn't meet your goals or standards, try to still respect that they spent some time on your project.
[+] [-] twic|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yandrypozo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metasean|10 years ago|reply
If you're in the Salt Lake area, also please consider joining us next Saturday [1] or Tuesday, Dec. 15 [2] as we give a little back to the Open Source community!
[1] SLC JS Learners - monthly JavaScript Study Group - http://www.meetup.com/SLC-JS-Learners/events/224563977/ [2] SLC JS Learners - monthly meetup - http://www.meetup.com/SLC-JS-Learners/events/226862778/
[+] [-] munchor|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thewhitetulip|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eitland|10 years ago|reply
Edit: Changed "spamming" to "filling" That was meant as a positive thing but I guess I shouldn't have used the word spamming.
[+] [-] eitland|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] MindTwister|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frostmatthew|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkagenius|10 years ago|reply