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How are you supposed to onboard people onto a project? with training and teaching. What do you professionals do? They work with other professionals and progres

How are you supposed to onboard people onto a project? with training and teaching. What do you professionals do? They work with other professionals and progress with each other. What do you do with the world class experts you have? Make them work with other world class experts to make the impossible possible. Again, lots of collaboration and interactions needed! For anything non trivial or not explained by a stack overflow answer, the "go learn X by yourself" could easily take weeks to years, whereas it could be explained in a few days with face to face interactions. The "can't hear ourselves think in an open plan" are dysfunctional organisation. Of course, a lot of things do better than that, including other dysfunctional organisations. Let's have a better point of comparison than that ;)

Clubber 10y ago
You give them a task, point them to the source code that the task involves and let them figure it out. They can ask questions here and there, but they won't learn unless they are ass deep in the code trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I mean the world was educated through text for over a millennia. It works.
- felipemnoa 10y ago
  >>I mean the world was educated through text for over a millennia. It works I would replace text with mentors
  - Clubber 10y ago
    You certainly make a good point. I would say hands on mentors are much more valuable in hands on skills, like an electrician or physician. I think programming falls into a less hands on skill like Math, Philosophy, or writing. You can have a Math mentor, but you gain most of your knowledge from reading what your mentors have written down.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      To continue on the math example, you will need explanation from the mentor as long as you are facing something unfamiliar, or you're up for a very long struggle.
      - Clubber 10y ago
        Yes, but it doesn't have to be in person, it can be in text. Something like electrician or plumbing probably requires hands on mentoring. Many times, the person who wrote the original code is long gone, so there isn't a mentor. The original point I was trying to make is you don't have to be "in the office" to learn programming stuff.
    - glenneroo 10y ago
      On top of this there are multiple learning styles (e.g. visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile) of which many people are able to harness all or a combination thereof, whereas others learn best by only using one style.
lazerwalker 10y ago
By your reasoning, open source projects should never be able to onboard new contributors or maintainers. You seem to be suggesting that "collaboration" and "interactions" are things that necessarily can only happen synchronously and via richer media than text. Even if you want to move away from OSS as an example, I'd point towards the centuries of intellectual discussion that took place via hand-written snail mail letters. Is in-person communication faster? No question. Is it the only way to effectively communicate ideas as part of a two-sided discussion? I should hope not.

Clubber 10y ago

You give them a task, point them to the source code that the task involves and let them figure it out. They can ask questions here and there, but they won't learn unless they are ass deep in the code trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I mean the world was educated through text for over a millennia. It works.

felipemnoa 10y ago
>>I mean the world was educated through text for over a millennia. It works I would replace text with mentors
- Clubber 10y ago
  You certainly make a good point. I would say hands on mentors are much more valuable in hands on skills, like an electrician or physician. I think programming falls into a less hands on skill like Math, Philosophy, or writing. You can have a Math mentor, but you gain most of your knowledge from reading what your mentors have written down.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    To continue on the math example, you will need explanation from the mentor as long as you are facing something unfamiliar, or you're up for a very long struggle.
    - Clubber 10y ago
      Yes, but it doesn't have to be in person, it can be in text. Something like electrician or plumbing probably requires hands on mentoring. Many times, the person who wrote the original code is long gone, so there isn't a mentor. The original point I was trying to make is you don't have to be "in the office" to learn programming stuff.
  - glenneroo 10y ago
    On top of this there are multiple learning styles (e.g. visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile) of which many people are able to harness all or a combination thereof, whereas others learn best by only using one style.

lazerwalker 10y ago

By your reasoning, open source projects should never be able to onboard new contributors or maintainers. You seem to be suggesting that "collaboration" and "interactions" are things that necessarily can only happen synchronously and via richer media than text. Even if you want to move away from OSS as an example, I'd point towards the centuries of intellectual discussion that took place via hand-written snail mail letters. Is in-person communication faster? No question. Is it the only way to effectively communicate ideas as part of a two-sided discussion? I should hope not.