Hi I'm Jeff Mitchell and I volunteer for 2 charities in my city (currently
unemployed). I've frequently used Linux since 2007 and I'd like to become a Fedora
package maintainer. I have two desktop PCs and I have Fedora 28 XFCE on my older system -
I use this system to experiment on. I've read most of the guides on maintaining
packages, now I just need a package to maintain. Last year I failed a programming course
and I'm not sure if I ever want to do programming as a job. I'd rather work on
Fedora packages and get into programming as a hobby, but working as a full-time programmer
doesn't appeal to me. I know a lot of guys who work as programmers and there's
nothing amazing about that job. As a teenager I thought that programmers were cool and
rebellious but I find that most of them are cookie-cutter personalities, and their
opinions are uninteresting (game developers are the obvious exception, but they don't
make much money in this country!)
For a long time I wanted to work as a programmer but now I'm not so sure. I volunteer
my time for projects which help children and people down on their luck, this is a pretty
good life! If I am to maintain packages, then I'm going to need someone to give me
direction. I could Google "software Linux" and find something that isn't
already packaged, but the "just google it bro" approach is bad in my opinion,
it's better to have a mentor. Sure there are a few freak geniuses who are good at
computery-stuff but those guys are the exception, and for most people the best thing is
friendly human advice. I could use Google 50 times to find information, or I could have
someone email to me 3 relevant URLs and a couple of brief paragraphs explaining. One of
the problems in my youth was that I tried to teach programming to myself - my goals
weren't clear and I developed a lot of bad habits which I only un-learned 10 years
later. Similarly, I have a Vox Valvetronix guitar amplifier and after 6 years I finally
discovered that you can only get good tones if you put the master volume up really high
(master volume drives the tube). I wish I had a musician friend who could have told me
that when I bought it! Nothing beats proper advice from someone who knows what they're
doing.
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