what it's like to be old debian maintainer
i'm wondering what happens when you spent hours and years dealing with debian... is it something you don't regreat ? I'm in the learning curve and it's still very interesting, so it's natural for me to ask what more experienced people feel about that. Kind regards, Jérémy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4ba8219d.9080...@edagames.com
Re: what it's like to be old debian maintainer
On Tue, 23 Mar 2010 03:04:13 +0100 Jérémy Lal je...@edagames.com wrote: i'm wondering what happens when you spent hours and years dealing with debian... is it something you don't regreat ? I'm in the learning curve and it's still very interesting, so it's natural for me to ask what more experienced people feel about that. Kind regards, Jérémy. I'm a maintainer hopeful and have some years behind me also. That being said, I am looking at this 2 fold. 1. To develop my programming skills 2. The main point, to gain a much better understanding about Debian AND, the challenge!!! You need to keep yourself challenged in life. It's what helps to make life in exciting! So - I don't feel that age is a matter as long as you can learn and don't have hang ups about taking compliments and criticism from younger and almost certainly more knowledgeable folks! That's just me though! -- Regards, Chris When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. -- Thomas Jefferson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100322213834.6a443...@makeworld.com
Re: what it's like to be old debian maintainer
Jérémy Lal je...@edagames.com writes: i'm wondering what happens when you spent hours and years dealing with debian... is it something you don't regreat ? No regrets for time spent working on Debian, from my perspective as a few-years-maintainer and a many-years-contributor. Debian has been such an enormous benefit in my personal and professional life that I'm driven to give back in some manner. The skills I have grown as a result are partly technical, but mostly social and psychological: how to deal with distributed teams, large and small, of independent-minded folks and motivate each other to work for mutual benefit despite conflicting objectives, without resort to coercion. Those skills, once gained, transcend just the Debian project in my experience. I am much better able to work with people of varying backgrounds and interests, and to get to the nub of an issue to attempt to resolve it, than before I began working in the Debian project. The key, IME, to not having regrets for time spent, is to ensure that “failure” is followed up to actively turn it into a positive lesson (for oneself and others, even observers outside the incident) for how to do better in future. This, in turn, requires humility and the difficult discipline to actively investigate the possibility that one's own habits and behaviours need improvement, while simultaneously having the discipline not to lose self-esteem as a result. When it works out like that, failure becomes a good result. I'm certainly not perfect at this — as I said above, it's a psychological skill that needs to be worked at — but it did become a whole lot easier to accept after I learned the disciplines of behaviour-driven development :-) -- \“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make | `\you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” —Ralph | _o__)Waldo Emerson | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87mxxzr8iv@benfinney.id.au
Re: what it's like to be old debian maintainer
On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 03:04:13AM +0100, J??r??my Lal wrote: i'm wondering what happens when you spent hours and years dealing with debian... is it something you don't regreat ? I was wondering if you meant someone who is old who is a Debian maintainer or someone who has been involved in Debian for a long time. I've been working in the Debian project for over 13 years. While there have been highs and lows I don't regret the time. I'm in the learning curve and it's still very interesting, Debian is evolving. It gets better and generally learns from its mistakes. A good example of that is the glibc/libc transistions but there is so much going on now. You'll get better too usually after making some mistakes (In 1997, I once installed /bin/ps as /bin; hopefully noone remembers that) I've been playing around with computer and programming since the very early 80s and writing free software since 1994 and I'm still learning new things. So don't worry about running out of new things to see and do in Debian. - Craig -- Craig Small GnuPG:1C1B D893 1418 2AF4 45EE 95CB C76C E5AC 12CA DFA5 http://www.enc.com.au/ csmall at : enc.com.au http://www.debian.org/ Debian GNU/Linux, software should be Free -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100323042927.ga22...@enc.com.au
