Managing student expectations
Posted by Titus Brown on 2010/01/02
Over at the pony-build wiki I’ve started a page that outlines my expectations for students participating in the pony-build UCOSP project this term. These aren’t set in stone — I’d appreciate comments, thoughts, links, etc.
Charles Merriam said
I would strongly suggest that students submit a patch early. Really, any patch. There is almost always a typo in the README file or a better web link in an open source project. Having a reasonably early accomplishment is always helpful. This generally takes a minimum of a few hours. A quick guideline includes:
1. Find something trivial to fix. Use apt-get sources / apt-get build-dep to get something up and enough to look through the code. Try adding a name to the ‘about’ box or usage statements.
2. Find something trivial to fix. Add one sentence of explanation to a README.
3. Source control. Get the account on github/bugzilla/etc. Pull down the current sources, edit files, make a patch.
4. Submission. Make a bug report, attach the patch, see how people react.
We need a culture in open source that is far more open to the trivial patch so that all of this non-programming administration can be practice as separate problem.