On 25 Oct 2009, at 19:19, Guy Hulbert wrote:
On Sun, 2009-25-10 at 11:23 -0600, chris fedde wrote:
you might also consider hanging out on irc.perl.org#poe. Most of the
active developers frequent that channel.
Thanks for letting me know. I have enough bad habits already that I
have not yet had time to master irc ... but if lurking here is
fruitless
then perhaps I'll have to consider it.
It's not a given. #poe isn't really a chat channel, although some goes
on. I can understand avoiding IRC as it has the potential to be a
distracting time-sink but (for me, anyway) it's a much more gratifying
and interactive way to get in contact with developers (both of POE,
and people using POE) than the list. You'll find that the learning
curve is trivial, and the rewards considerable.
I see myself as a POE user before I'd wade in to development.
However,
besides git, I am interested in documentation. I spent a few minutes
browsing what's already there and it was much less than I expected
based
on my first impression from the website.
Part of the issue is that POE is largely written by people who know it
inside and out. These are the same people who, by and large, produce
its documentation. The point being that they don't necessarily refer
to the documentation very much, so aren't in a particularly good
position to judge whether the level, quantity, quality etc of
documentation is adequate.
I looked through some of the offsite material as well. Everything
that
exists seems to be useful and well-written.
It will be a few months before I have much time for learning but
lurking
here will help to become familiar with the project.
This is a relatively low-traffic list (see the archives) but you
definitely *can* help. Actually, these are crucial times - as a
beginner in POE you're uniquely placed to reflect on where and whether
the documentation is adequate, appropriate, well structured and so on.
Your feedback and contributions now (for example, doc patches) are
valuable, not least because they're based on recent, crystal-clear
experiences. Your feedback is welcome and I hope that where the
documentation doesn't explain stuff clearly you are able to point this
out. Providing doc patches is great, but even just sticking your hand
up and saying that you didn't understand something provides useful
colour. Especially if having had it explained (on-list or on IRC) you
then turn the information into better documentation, to help others as
you were helped.
I hope this didn't sound lecturing. I'm sure you can understand how
the best person to document a feature (or to say 'this should go
here') is the person who's just hard-won the information. Your
learning experiences can and should be valuable to others.
Good luck in your POE adventures!
/joel
