Re: Splitting P&P templates into two
On Sun, Jan 02, 2005 at 09:29:37PM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
> <quote who="Helen Faulkner" date="2004-12-30 01:46:38 +0000">
> > It strikes me that testing whether or not I can spend 40 hours in a week
> > doing all my T&S stuff in one big hit is not very useful to Debian. My
> > impression, after living with a DD for years, is that what is more useful
> > to Debian are people who are prepared to put in a long commitment that will
> > mainly involve small amounts of work that are distributed in time, but
> > which ideally require a quick response as they come up (ie to fix a bug
> > that appears in your package, but there might not be a bug for weeks or
> > longer at a time).
>
> I think that having that applicant put in the small amount of time
> over a long period of time so that their skills and ability to follow
> through on the Debian tasks they intend to do as developers become
> apparent should be tasks and skill test enough.
>
> Early on in the NM process, few AMs asked any T&S questions at
> all. They expected NMs to demonstrate that they had the skills by
> doing the tasks. I still think that a history of doing good work, an
> audit of packages, and a few good recommendations say as much or more
> than any number of questions broken up in any number of chunks. In
> most cases, they make the questions themselves (and the 10-40 hours of
> work that answering them entails) of questionable use. :)
I agree. Basing the NM process on lots of questions does a really good
job of demonstrating how well an applicant can answer lots of questions,
and that's about it IMO. There isn't a very strong correlation between
answering questions well and actually being a good developer.
Note that I went to a university that focused very heavily on test
taking, and very little on practical skills. As a result, I have a nice
shiny mechanical engineering degree but can barely assemble a typical
ballpoint pen (damn that spring). So, my opinion is probably a little
biased...
--
For every sprinkle I find, I shall kill you!
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