Eric Schaefer wrote:
Why am I not participating in reviews of core patches? Naked fear. How could I possibly understand whats going on in core? Fire up your debugger (i use eclipse + pdt + zend debugger) and step through the major operations of the bootstrap process to discover the big picture. Then walk through the loading of a node that is decorated with cck fields and taxonomy terms. Finish up your tour with the editing of a form (node, admin) to get a good look at fapi and the form processing involved in form.inc and you have a VERY strong foundation from which to build. Most people involved in core don't understand 100% of it. Many specialize in a particular area. This is why we have reviews and the testbot. One reason for this is the fact that core is a moving target. This is a conscious and purposeful decision on the part of the project it will not change.
If I am not understanding the USE of those APIs how can I judge patches to the code behind them? api.drupal.org lists each function and in the declaration is detailed everywhere that function is also used in core. This is a good start but your IDE can help you alot more if you use one especially if you put a breakpoint in your function and start debugging to see how various functions arrive at the location and what the variables are set to at that time.
Please take the time and try it just once. Install D7, apply a couple patches, review their changes and you'll be surprised how quickly you fall in place. We want your help. I normally find that future contributors are simply scared away by the challenge certainly not actually unable to rise to it. Pick a patch that seems interesting to you. If you ever need help find me in IRC and I'll always be happy to lend a hand. -mf