Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[Katherine Cox-Buday]

On 8/24/23 6:10 PM, Ekaitz Zarraga wrote:

> >                                        Lots of important use cases that
> > Guix could serve are ignored because the people who need them are not
> > represented in our community and/or they can't contribute and no one is
> > able/willing to write code for them.
>
> Yes, and even if you manage to write something yourself, many times you
> get now answer to your patches because no one else is interested on what
> you did. It's perfectly understandable but also discouraging.
>
> Example: I wanted to push Zig support in guix a while ago. Made a build
> system and got no answer. <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/60889#3>
> The feeling here is that the code proposed is not good enough, but I don't
> know how to improve it so I'm stuck. It would be great to feel comfortable
> enough with the code to be sure that it can be merged, but I can't find
> the resources to make it better. If it was clearer or if it was easier
> both sides, maintainers and contributors, would be more effective and
> happier.

Yes, a point I'm seeing echoed a lot here which I can't highlight enough is:

Any effort made to make it easier to contribute helps everyone, not just 
those having issues.

Your point about your patch going unanswered is indeed a good example. 
Here we sit with no Zig build system. It can't be proven, but maybe if 
contributing and reviewing were easier, we'd have more hands, and 
getting something like that merged would be easier.

> > > * It's OK to make lots of mistakes
> > >
> > > The people who have reviewed my code have been generous both with their
> > > time and fixing my mistakes and then applying. Maybe this model is OK? I
> > > still feel guilty every time a reviewer has to correct an oversight I've
> > > made. I also want to become a committer, but I don't know how that would
> > > work if I'm regularly making mistakes. Obviously people would still be
> > > reviewing my commits, but presumably a committer should not regularly be
> > > making mistakes.
>
> Exactly my feeling. And I've been working with Guix for a while...

Same here. My first commit was in 2018.