On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Michael Orlitzky <mich...@orlitzky.com> wrote: > A personal anecdote: I've used sage for about 4 years, but only started > contributing in the last couple of months because the development process > looks scary to an outsider. > > When I started, at every step of the process, I already knew what I wanted > to do: I work on other open source stuff, and the DVCS workflow is pretty > standard. But sage has a special way of doing even simple tasks. Some of the > differences are important (There are different hg repos in every directory? > Ha ha, got me!), but many of them aren't. When you're new, you don't know > the difference, so there's a lot of sage-only stuff you have to keep in your > head at once.
+100 And the special way of doing simple tasks slows core and casual non-newbees alike. (Think about the work required to fix a typo in a docstring...) As I've said before "22 easy steps" http://www.liafa.jussieu.fr/~labbe/Sage/how-to-contribute/ is way to many. On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:51 PM, Jason Grout <jason-s...@creativetrax.com> wrote: > On 2/9/12 4:44 PM, William Stein wrote: >> >> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 2:34 PM, Jason Grout<jason-s...@creativetrax.com> >> wrote: >>> >>> On 2/9/12 4:28 PM, Michael Orlitzky wrote: >>> >>>> I think if we could get rid of a few magic commands in favor of 'mv', >>>> 'cp', and 'ln', it would make the process seem less daunting. >>> >>> >>> >>> +1. And then the new user that is learning how to do sage has skills >>> that >>> transfer elsewhere. >> >> >> That's a slippery slope, but tempting when you get so used to UNIX >> from years of use, that it all seems trivial to you. Maybe you >> don't teach classes that involve a component on Sage development, but >> I do, and 95% (or more) of students don't have even the slightest clue >> about anything regarding UNIX. Making them learn UNIX at the same >> time as Sage development is a recipe for confusion, and I don't think >> it is necessary. >> >> What we really need to expand the contributor base substantially at >> this point is "total magic", so people can fully develop on Sage >> without ever having to use command such as mv, cp, hg, and ln, and of >> course this should be a web-based development environment. > > > Exactly what I've been thinking. The barrier for very new contributors > needs to be lower (i.e., you don't even have to install Sage; everything is > over the web, from editing to submitting patches), and the bar for serious > developers can be raised slightly to incorporate more standard skills (which > in itself will attract more serious developers, if it is easy for them to > get up to speed by using their standard development skillset.) That would be great. Even as a half-way point, if the user could just use/edit/hack/debug/test on their local copy however they wanted, and when they want to submit what they have just "press a button" that would create a commit and upload it to the right places all behind the scenes (and the reverse to review/continue editing on a ticket, and a "reset" button could be provided, all backed by a real dvcs for power users), that would be a huge step forward. I'm really excited to see the enthusiasm for re-vamping our workflow at a basic level. Perhaps it's worth writing up a SEP to consolidate all these ideas and craft the ideal workflow it doesn't get lost among a myriad of random email threads. - Robert -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
