A little organization and updates!

[mark]

Hi all!

I've been doing some poking around and realized that I don't have a good overall state-of-the-DW-development. I have some vague ideas about what some people are working on and interested in, but I wanted to make those vague ideas become a bit less vague. :)

If you have a few minutes, I'd appreciate you taking the time to answer a couple of quick questions here!

1. Are you actively working on a bug (or several) right now? Which ones?
2. What are you interested in working on -- broadly or narrowly, what do you want to do? (Or are you just open for suggestions?)
3. Is there anything explicitly blocking you from doing what you want? (Knowledge, someone has the bug claimed for a year, need a hand with something, etc.)
4. Free form! Anything you want to say or ask. :)

I also want us to have another development focused chat like we did some months ago. I think the last one I did was well timed for US developers but bad for EU, so I'll go the other way this time. I'm thinking something like 8AM Pacific which is midnight for fu and 4PM UTC on a Sunday. Reasonable?

Thanks!

Comments

[mark]

Hi -- welcome to Dreamwidth development! Pleased to meet you. :)

Denise has given lots of good advice and some suggestions about picking a bug, so I won't dabble too much on that. I will say that you're always welcome to ping us and ask for advice on a bug, or for suggestions. We're happy to point you in the right direction or talk your ear off about implementing things!

Perl and JS are very different languages with different focuses. If you want to do frontend development, JS will serve you better. For backend stuff, Perl. Since you know HTML and CSS, frontend might be a better match -- but it all depends on where you want to go with your skills. It's always good to have a variety and learn lots of things!

The way forward, generally:

1. Have your hack environment setup (sounds like you do)
2. Find a bug that is interesting and someone says is easy (there's a list below!)
3. Figure out where in the code this bug sits (you can search with 'grep' or you can look through files or you can ask) -- this is sometimes the hardest part, don't be afraid to ask for help!
4. Make a change to fix it
5. Test your change on your hack environment
6. If the bug is fixed, submit a pull request
7. Wait for a review!

The last step ... I believe we have the documentation on the wiki. Afuna/Denise, do you have a link handy?

Totally ask for help, though! Then help make sure the documentation is good. If something is lacking, edit it and submit some clarifications. It is very much appreciated and another great way of getting familiar with the process.

Whew -- there, I've rambled at you. Welcome again. :)

[denise]

do you mean the dev getting started?