Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[MSavoritias]

On 9/6/23 23:10, Wojtek Kosior via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU 
System distribution. wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I wanted to add to this thread my 2 cents. As a person who has recently
> (last months) made the first attempts at contributing.
>
> To me, registrations and reliance on JS had always been an obstacle to
> using web-based forges. This is one of the reasons I haven't been
> contributing to existing projects in the past.
>
> With Guix this issue is gone but there's also another thing that
> incentivized me — that, since joining the Guix mailing lists, I am
> seeing activity all the time, right at my fingertips (because I have my
> email client opened most of the time).
>
> So far I have sent patches 4 times. Once it was a simple update that got
> accepted quickly, once I was addressing a problem that turned out to be
> better solvable another way and 2 submissions are still waiting for
> someone to review them.
>
> Although I had to learn to use `git format-patch` and related tools, I
> don't consider it a problem. Actually, I wanted to learn email-based
> workflow anyway because it seems to be a more KISS way of software
> development.
>
> The amount of new stuff to learn can, however, be a bit overwhelming. I
> did learn to use git to send emails but haven't yet started using any of
> the templating packages for Emacs that were recommended in Guix
> documentation. It would be just too much to process at once.
>
> Do I think Guix has a problem with cognitive overhead? Not at all.
> Rather, it seems to be addressing the problems really well.
> 1. It makes it easy to hack on itself without the need to clone the
>     repo first. That's what helped me get familiar with it before I
>     could even try to contribute anything.
> 2. It, by default, updates to the most up-to-date version.
> 3. It has some detailed documentation.
> 4. It eases the setting up of one's development environment.
>
> I fact, I suspect the email-based workflow might be automatically
> filtering out some bad submissions that would have been made otherwise.
> The geeky nature of the project does put it in a kind of a niche where
> only geeks dwell. But this is somewhat benefitial because geeks are
> those who can build it.

Arguments that its a good thing its hard for people to contribute to the 
project don't really help.

Because among others it promotes gate-keeping and elitism. Im not saying 
you specifically are that person,

but that is how a person that wants to contribute will get the argument.


The part about email working for you, I am glad it does :)

We need to care for the people that may like a different style of 
contributing too though.

Because the more people guix can attract the better for the project.


MSavoritias

> Lastly, sorry if something I wrote is a duplicate of other's opinions —
> the thread got soooo long it'd be hard to read through 100% of it
>
> Best,
> Wojtek
>
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>
> On Tue, 05 Sep 2023 22:43:04 +0200 Liliana Marie Prikler 
> <liliana.prikler@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Am Dienstag, dem 05.09.2023 um 19:40 +0100 schrieb (:
> > > Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@gmail.com> writes:
> > > > Uhm, we have snippets?
> > > Well, those are exclusive to Emacs :)  And without regard to /that/
> > > issue, I do think that there's a problem if the commit format is so
> > > complex that it's not trivial for anyone new to the project to write
> > > them out manually.
> > By definition, no amount of typing is non-trivial, safe for the empty
> > amount, which good luck trying to commit your changes by pure mouse
> > movements, I guess?
> >
> > Now, if you excuse my French, I think the problem isn't really as much
> > that people struggle to type out the perfect ChangeLog on the first
> > try, which also makes it odd to request a linter.  Bear in mind that
> > committers will sign off anything that appears convincing enough, even
> > if there are smaller mistakes in the message.  Trust me, I've been
> > there and seen that; and also done it myself.
> >
> > Instead, we have seen in this thread appeals to age, appeals to
> > perceived lack of personal benefit, and now appeals to typing effort,
> > none of which really make that great of an argument against the
> > ChangeLog style, especially when they come in combination with a
> > refusal to make use of already provided tools.  I think we're starting
> > to see the moving of the goal post as the actual game here.
> >
> > Maybe it's time to take a step back and instead of asking “How can we
> > decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?”, we should perhaps
> > ask “For which contributors do we want to/can we decrease the cognitive
> > overhead?”  We have drifted much from the original post that discussed
> > moms with full-time jobs, who struggle to do “difficult” tasks
> > (simplified wording; may change the meaning of the OP a little).  Now,
> > I personally struggle to see how your personal preference for
> > communication media, commit message style, and other things that were
> > discussed in any of the preceding threads actually correlate with being
> > a parent.  However, I do know that with its 150 million users, most
> > people of the world don't have a Github account.  Being one of the 4
> > billion email users out there is a comparably low barrier of entry
> > imho.  So, whose cognitive overhead do you want to reduce (besides the
> > obvious "my own", which everyone always tries)?