On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 12:21:43AM -0700, J.C. Roberts wrote: > On Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:58:02 +0800 Artur Grabowski <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 2:02 AM, Christiano F. Haesbaert > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > I also know he (as every developer) is busy with more important > > > things, so "publishing" these small tasks would also give the > > > developers more time to focus on the big/important issues. > > > > There are a bunch of assumptions here that are wrong. > > > > Small tasks are the most fun to do because they satisfy the instant > > gratification needs all of us have. I won't give you my list of the > > "fun and easy stuff", I want to keep it to myself. The lists that are > > published will contain "dull, heavy and not very important" tasks. The > > kind that gets you burned out the quickest. > > > > Also, todo lists have been published in the past leading to either no > > reaction whatsoever or a bunch of people offering help and vampiring > > the energy from whoever published the list without leading to any code > > committed. It's easy to become slightly bitter about the whole thing > > after spending hundreds of hours helping people who then don't follow > > through when they realize that it actually requires work. > > > > //art > > > > Well said Art! > > Additionally, some of the most "dull and heavy" tasks are not coding, > but instead, they are testing code/patches. There is no joy of coding > involved, and little gratification when at the end of your efforts all > you can say is, "It worked fine on X." The closest thing to excitement > you'll get is *if* you can find a bug. > > Does anyone really rely on a 486 with an ISA bus? What about a vax or > similar esoteric system? Let alone use one regularly? Do these ancient > and odd systems really matter? > > Having code run on multiple archs and lots of different hardware is a > well proven way to find important bugs. > > The developers *CONSTANTLY* *ASK* *FOR* *YOUR* *HELP* with testing, but > this "dull and heavy" work is somehow below most people who just talk > about wanting to become developers and are looking for shortcuts to > becoming one. > > Since validity is critical, if you cannot test properly and hopefully > help in the debugging, then you'll never be any good at writing code. > > jcr > > -- > The OpenBSD Journal - http://www.undeadly.org
the non-sndio ports list I sent to ports@ recently (and which I have been doing for months now) is a todo list. even just looking at the listed ports as they are now, noting how well they currently work in an out of the box configuration on your machine, checking if there are upstream updates or if the homepage has moved or anything along those lines would be helpful. -- [email protected] SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
