[IPython-dev] Should I still contribute to IPython ?

[Brian Granger]

>> I know it probably sounds heretical, but I think that part of the
>> solution has to be to reduce the number of issues.  I don't mean by
>> closing issues by working harder and coding more, I mean simply
>> *closing* them outright to reflect the reality that we are not going
>> to work on them anytime soon.  There is no universe where it is useful
>> to have thousands of issues.  How many can each developer
>> realistically keep track of?  A few dozen?  When there are more than
>> that we simply ignore the issues and work on the things we want to
>> work on...I was recently talking to the lead developer of a large open
>> source project that has this problem, and he said "oh it's horrible
>> and I completely ignore our issues on github"  Personally, when I am
>> working heavily on the notebook, I maintain my own "issues list" in a
>> markdown document on my desktop.  We have to figure out a better
>> way...
>
> This does sound heretical to me, but I have a personality that
> dislikes deleting anything.  I personally think of issues as ways of
> organizing discussions about problems/enhancement requests so that
> when the issue comes up again, it is easy to see what was already
> discussed.

Keep in mind, I am not advocating *deleting* issues, just closing
them.  Closed issues are still tagged and searchable and preserve the
record of any work or discussion on the topic.

> SymPy has over 1000 open issues in our issue tracker (of over 3000
> total).  Admittedly, quite a few of the older of these are outdated
> and should be closed, but we don't take the time to go through them.
> But I personally feel that that many issues is manageable because we
> have extensive labeling, and Google Code has great search
> functionality (which GitHub lacks), so that I feel that I can almost
> always find the issue I want if I look for it.

Even with github issues now I can find an issue if I know it exists.
Where it is less useful is as a tool for deciding what we/I should be
working on next and tracking our current work.   Sure we have
priorities in our labeling scheme, but I think we mostly ignore those
when it comes time for each of us to pick things to work on.  When
issues fall off our email radar, they quickly disappear into the
abyss.

I think that issues serve a *very important role* in preserving
discussions, even for issues that don't lead to code.  I do think the
our current approach to issue does work very well for that.

> I'm actually reminded of the one time that I posted a message to the
> git mailing list.  I asked them if they had an issue tracker, and they
> told me that they don't, but rather they *just* use the mailing list.
> To quote Junio Hamano, the lead developer of git:
>
> "What we do is to take advantage of the fact that issues people do care
> about are important ones, and others that nobody cares about are not worth
> pursuing.
>
> "In a sense, 'people forgetting' is a lot more important than 'people
> remembering' to filter unimportant issues (issues that are so unimportant
> that even the original complainer does not bother to come back and
> re-raise it)."
>
> (By the way, this isn't the only strange thing about the git
> community. Their mailing list requires no registration of any kind to
> post, meaning that about half the messages on the list are spam).
>
> Aaron Meurer
>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Brian
>>
>>>> * Currently, we don't really have any long/medium term planning for
>>>> the project.  Our current model works great for attracting the types
>>>> of contributions we are getting right now, but it makes it very
>>>> difficult to tackle larger projects that require a coordinated and
>>>> sustained effort by multiple people.  I don't know what it will look
>>>> like, but we are going to need to do this type of planning for the
>>>> project.
>>>> * How do we manage communication?  Verbal communication is much more
>>>> efficient than emails or even IRC.  The 4 people at Berkeley will have
>>>> an incredible advantage in being able to talk daily.  We don't want to
>>>> cripple or remove that advantage, but we need to figure out how to
>>>> include other core devs and people from the community.  This is
>>>> particularly relevant to myself as I am the only person involved in
>>>> the Sloan work that is not at Berkeley.
>>>
>>> An idea floated around SymPy at some point to use Google+ hangouts
>>> (basically, multi-way video chats).  We haven't tried it yet, but it
>>> seems like it might work well.
>>>
>>> Aaron Meurer
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Brian
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Sorry for the length,
>>>>> --
>>>>> Matthias
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> [Grant announce on HN] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4909070
>>>>> And a small link, also from hacker news to conclude :
>>>>> [Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being A Jerk]
>>>>> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4921152
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> IPython-dev mailing list
>>>>> IPython-dev at scipy.org
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>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Brian E. Granger
>>>> Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
>>>> bgranger at calpoly.edu and ellisonbg at gmail.com
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Brian E. Granger
>> Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
>> bgranger at calpoly.edu and ellisonbg at gmail.com
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--
Brian E. Granger
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
bgranger at calpoly.edu and ellisonbg at gmail.com