Forum OpenACS Q&A: Skills needed to help on OpenACS development

Hi,

I think it would be helpful to post what skills are required for
someone to productively help on development of OpenACS.  In another
thread, folks were volunteering for various modules.  Some may hold
back from volunteering due to fear of not being qualified -- and not
wanting to broadcast that fact by asking questions along this line.

I suspect posting the specific skills needed would encourage more
volunteer efforts.  Especially among newer visitors to this site.  It
would also provide a road map for those who wish to "skill up" so they
can help out. Especially **specifically** denoting such things as
"just C" or "C++ proficiency" required to help those newer to
development work.  This would also be educational for many -- and
might spur some non-programmers into learning programming if they are
given a roadmap.

Could one or more of the core team post something along these lines
somewhere on the site?  Maybe under the software, documentation or
team home page links?  Kind of a "big picture overview" of the skill
sets required.

This might also provide a **framework** for volunteers to better
dovetail their specific skills, strenghts and interest with the needs
of the community.  For instance, some might be more qualified to do
maint./bug fixes .vs new module development.  Or non-coder types might
still feel great in helping with documentation.  Also, some work might
be reserved for more senior and skilled developers while other work is
able to be doled out (i.e. put up for bid -- a new module?) to those
new to development work.  An overall framework of the various areas
where help is needed could provide this.

Thanks.  I hope this will help grow the community.

Louis

Collapse
Posted by Don Baccus on
Well...I recently posted a survey asking some simple questions in order to help me get a better feeling for the level of experience people have, how much time they have, and when they can start working on porting.

I only posted it to those who'd expressed an interest in porting, though.  You're not on my list of volunteers so you've not seen it.

I'm partway through putting together a "Porting HOWTO" for folks that should help people get some idea as to what's involved.  I'm going to try to finish it by the end of the day (since I'm leaving town tomorrow afternoon for a bit).

In order to help port, there are three essential skills that are necessary - you need to be able to understand and write SQL queries, at times fairly complex ones.  You need to be able to understand PL/SQL, which is an Ada-like programming language (easy to pick up) and to be able to figure out how to translate these to PL/pgSQL.  And finally you need to feel comfortable with Tcl.

In my simple survey I asked folks to tell me what versions of the ACS they've worked with.  This gives me some idea of how long they've worked within the framework.  For the most part people have written fairly detailed answers telling me a bit about what they've actually done with the ACS.  So I feel like I have a pretty good idea as to the skill level of most of those folks who are on my volunteer's list.

Even if you can't help in porting, due to inexperience or simply insufficient free time, there's plenty of work to be done on documentation and testing.

Collapse
Posted by Roberto Mello on
I intend to start coordinating more actively the documentation effort
for OpenACS 4.x as soon as my finals are over (last one is tomorrow.
Missed a dumb assembly question on my Computer Architecture final
today. Grrrrr!).

So we'd incorporate and maybe expand Don's Porting HOWTO,port the docs
to PostgreSQL, write more documentation where necessary, and whatever
else the community feels like as long as there are people willing to
make the effort.

Great suggestion. Stay tunned.

Collapse
Posted by Louis Gabriel on
Hello again,

BTW, I also think this same kind of "skills needed to help out" info would be quite helpful on the opennsd.org site.

Thanks again!!

Louis