Thank you for your reply.  Some of this information I already knew... but the question that was asked, "Can you tell me some specific instances that have made it hard for you?".

That was the question I was replying to.  The issue is that there are no simple tools or walk-throughs.  Learning all this stuff takes a lot of time and focus.  Time and focus I can't give right now due to my studies.  I consume myself in what I am learning, because, as you know, teaching institutions do not teach.  They are MacDonald's.  5 Billion served.  It processes as many students as it can to make a profit.  You end up with a grade at the end that probably doesn't reflect any actual learning, but rather how well you can jump through hoops and provide something that appeases the gods of your school.

I'm not looking for an easy way out.  I just don't know the process and there aren't very many "You are here" maps to get you though to where you want to go.

When I'm done in December, I would be thrilled to make a map like this.  I just need to have the free time to do so.

Thanks,

-Cory


On 31/08/16 01:22 PM, Ankur Sinha wrote:
OK, so in your specific case, the issue is neither the lack of
documentation, nor the lack of tooling. It the required learning curve
that needs to be navigated - and this cannot be shrunk down in case of
something as important as package maintenance. I've explained inline
below:

On Wed, 2016-08-31 at 10:31 -0400, Cory Hilliard wrote:
OK, well for example, if I want to be a package maintainer:
I need to learn how to create RPMs.  That process in itself is pretty
difficult to jump into when you have no clue what those insanely long
and wordy documents mean.
Well, you don't need to understand what everything in the document
means. You pick up one part of it that's relevant to what you're doing
at the moment, and focus on this part. For example, in 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Join_the_package_collection_maintainers

you start with a bugzilla account, then a fedora account, then mailing
lists and so on.

You need to learn bohdi https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org again, what
am I supposed to do with all that?
I don't really understand this - learn how to use bodhi you mean? Have
you reached this stage - it's a one page form with 4-5 fields, and a
submit button :(

I understand that these tools are important for maintaining a secure
structure for tracking updates and such, but then there's git and
whatever else is going on.
I'm in my last semester of the engineering/science course I'm
taking.  I know about 7 languages and I'm pretty good at coding now,
but all these systems aren't taught anywhere.  I've used git in basic
ways, but still feel a little newbieish with it. 
Unfortunately, there aren't too many universities that teach version
control - they'll teach "software development", sure, but they won't
teach version control. I wasn't taught it at university either - but
that's the difference between school courses and open source - in
school courses, they decide what can be taught in that limited period
of time irrespective of whether or not students will use this stuff; in
open source, you teach yourself what you *need* as the need arises. 


Yesterday, I was tinkering with html/css/js/jquery/bootstrap to make
this:
http://ankursinha.fedorapeople.org/charlie/ - it took me a few hours of
googling to get the hang of it but now I think I know how it works.

Today I'm tinkering with Inkscape and I have no clue how to do things.
I google when I get stuck and then move to the next phase. 

 All of these processes are not intuitive, overwhelming and difficult
to jump into.  ...and this is for only package maintainers.   I'm
sure there are similar things to learn in every specific thing you
want to contribute to.
OK, no one can really teach you how to use tools. Even if you had a
mentor, he could not teach you how to use git, or inkscape, or GIMP -
you'll have to learn these yourself by using them, I'm afraid. If you
do have a specific "how do I do this in git?" question, we can help
you, yes - but then you'll probably find the answer on stackoverflow
already :D 

Where is there a simple walk-through or basic points needed to
understand all this stuff? 
So, in software development, git is pretty much everywhere - it's why
it was chosen - because it's so common that most people that write any
code will have spent the time to learn it. There are thousands of walk
throughs - you can't expect any community to maintain documentation for
ubiquitous tools, can you? :(

 I want to contribute, but I really don't want to look like a
complete moron trying to muck about with all these tools.  As awesome
as the fedora community is, I don't want to look like an idiot
because I did something wrong.  
I'm most interested in this. Why do you feel you'd "look like an
idiot"? Have you seen this happen to someone? Have you gotten the
impression from somewhere that people will be offended if you make a
mistake? I've made massive blunders in my time here, and all I do is
find someone who knows more and ask them to help - no one has ever made
me feel stupid. You shouldn't be thinking like this in an open source
community - in any open source community. 

Did you know that we get shiny badges for failed package builds??
https://badges.fedoraproject.org/badge/what-goes-up...-koji-failure-i

You'll have to be more careful in that high paying corporate job you're
eyeing, though ;)

I'm not stupid.  I'm just new at all this.
And everyone was new to all this - even our kernel developers! You're
not the first one to face a new tool - that's just a necessary step
everyone takes. 

So it boils down to the same issue I've had for 2 years now.  I want
to contribute, but I don't know how. 
Actually you do - in your case, you seem to be looking for an "easy
way" out, and like in the case of Maths, there isn't one - you just
have to trudge along and learn.

 I've joined this group, but there isn't a single thing that this
group has offered that explains these steps or pointed me to a simple
walk-through.
If you're still referring to git, google "git for beginners" - there's
a whole book, stackoverflow, blog posts. Anyone you ask about git will
ask you to do the same - it really is everywhere. Someone with a sense
of humour may even give you a lmgtfy link!

Trust me, if I had figured it out, I would have written one.  
I love helping people overcome hurtles.  This hurtle is big and scary
and overwhelming and I don't have time to learn it all with all my
studies.  
See, time management is a different issue - we have lots of volunteers
who struggle to continue contributing. I'm doing my PhD, and if you
think coursework is time consuming, you really haven't an idea ;) I
tend to go MIA for weeks sometimes when I'm bogged down with my
research work - there isn't much that can be done - we all have our
priorities, and we all have lives outside of Fedora :)

Maybe in December, I could, but I would probably already be
contributing if there was already a teaching tool that was simple to
understand and implement.
I hope this helps,
It does. From everything that you've written, I get the feeling you're
looking to get started rather quickly, and not being able to do so is
annoying you somewhat. It doesn't work that way. You've studied
programming languages - did you learn the first one in a day? No - it
takes time and practice. That's quite common to most of software
development, whether it's coding the software, testing it, deploying
it, building it, whatever.

So, I'd suggest you give it *one* more try, but this time, you go step
by step. Build an rpm first, get it to work, and then worry about the
rest of the process - there is no point learning how to push an update
if you don't have an rpm, right? Ping me if you get stuck - IRC or even
via e-mail, and I'll be happy to help out.


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