On Aug 19, 2006, at 5:08 AM, Bèr Kessels wrote:
Golden stars are -indeed- not going to magically bring me coding ninjas.
here, here. my original post in this thread wasn't directed at golden contrib at all. i think these are basically orthogonal discussions (though there's a tiny-winy bit of overlap)... golden contrib is good for quality control, help sorting through the very large and highly mixed project download listings, etc. basically, most of the stuff ber is talking about. i see it as something to help site admins choose what modules to build their sites on top of, not as something to help our internal development workflow. of course, a gold star isn't the only thing that would help. browsing by download stats (http://drupal.org/node/66013), a project rating/review system (http://drupal.org/node/77976), exposing the kind of end-user-readable data about issue + code activity dries is talking about, etc, etc, can all help with this problem. one possible solution to my original concern about core running too fast for contrib to keep up was the proposal for a longer *freeze* period. i see a few pros to this approach: 1) more time for contrib to catch up. ;) 2) more time to work on hardening, testing, bug fixing for core itself 3) more time to work on documentation 4) more time to work on usability enhancements (so long as they're not major and don't change the API) the downside, of course, is that it would delay the next furious round of changes. however, that might just be a good thing. ;) 2 major releases a year instead of 3 isn't anything to be ashamed of. and, if the extra time means that the folks working on new core API changes have more time to design, get feedback, do initial implementations, etc, etc, it's probably going to speed up the rate at which the patches make it in, since they'll be better patches with more sane APIs in the first place. ;) but, whether or not we have more time to do the work, we still have the human resources problem. i think dries is right about what brings you "coding ninjas" -- people using the stuff, relying on it, and effort spent developing a team. that said, sometimes a "team" (or elements of it) do just fall out of the sky. for example, justin randell (cck in IRC) decided, simply because he wants to, that he's going to help adopt the project issue queue and work on patches. we've discussed some stuff via IRC and email, and i'm about to commit a set of patches from him that will end up resolving about 5 critical bugs. i suppose dries would say the only reason justin decided to do this is b/c i've been so active and vocal in working on project, developing a team, etc, but from my perspective, i did no work at all to get his help -- he just came out of no where as a blessing in my time of need. ;) only justin could really answer for sure, but i certainly didn't spend any effort trying to recruit him for the task... On Aug 18, 2006, at 9:55 AM, Boris Mann wrote:
On 18-Aug-06, at 8:32 AM, Jeremy Epstein wrote:
IMHO, the first project that deserves the "Boris Mann Gold Star" certificate is the project module itself. Great work on this, Derek.
/me leads round of applause for Derek.
/me blushes. thanks for all the love, everyone. ;) of course, i'm only able to do what i'm doing because i'm "standing on the shoulders of giants" -- dries, kjartan, killes, nedjo, and everyone else who wrote, maintained, and kept project.module afloat (not to mention drupal itself(!)), long before i "dropped out of the sky in the time of need". ;) cheers, -dww