[Python-Dev] Encouraging developers

[Georg Brandl]

Martin v. Löwis schrieb:
> Nick Coghlan schrieb:
>> One thing that did happen though (which the messages from Jeremy & Phil 
>> reminded me of) is that I got a lot of direction, advice and assistance 
>> from Raymond when I was doing that initial work on improving the speed 
>> of the decimal module - I had the time available to run the relevant 
>> benchmarks repeatedly and try different things out, while Raymond had 
>> the experience needed to suggest possible avenues for optimisation (and 
>> when to abandon an approach as making the code too complicated to be 
>> effectively maintained).
>> 
>> I don't know whether or not there is anything specific we can do to 
>> encourage that kind of coaching/mentoring activity, but I know it was a 
>> significant factor in my become more comfortable with making contributions.
> 
> While there was no explicit management of a mentoring process, I think 
> it so happened that committers always found a mentor. It so happened 
> that some developer activated privileges for them (either himself, or
> requesting that this be done), and then certainly feels responsible
> for his 'student'. This automatically establishes a mentoring
> relationship.

Perhaps we should really try to make *that* notion widely known out there,
opposed to others like the alleged 5:1 requirement or that it is hard to
get patches into the Python core :)

A sort of announcement and some text on the website would surely help...

Georg