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What mentoring is available for qpixel development?
Codidact uses the open source Qpixel, which is also maintained by CD admins.
Sometimes it is mentioned in passing that the devs are open to and interested in help with developing this codebase. I'm sure some contributors are resourceful enough as to simply skim the source and figure out everything on their own.
For those who are not able to do this, what mentoring (if any) is available from current devs? Are they open to jumping on some kind of chat to explain the code to me, will they help me troubleshoot trying to run the project locally, run tests, install dependencies, etc? Or is this a project where contributors should be self-sufficient and the current dev team does not have the resources to help them contribute? No specific expectation here - I'm cognizant not everyone has unlimited time to maintain a FOSS project.
According to Github, Qpixel uses: Ruby, HTML, Javascript, SCSS, Docker and bash. Implicitly, you also have to know git and proper pull review form. For those who are novices at these techs, are the maintainers interested in helping them also learn the language while attempting to contribute, or would they prefer if contributions came only from people who are already confident users of these tools? I know that many FOSS maintainers complain that dealing with low-quality PRs is a big time sink and they'd rather not have novice coders attempt to submit them.
Please note: I am not (despite my phrasing) personally looking to contribute to Qpixel right now, due to a lack of time. However, I think this is an important question for any potential contributor, and having it addressed can increase the chances of receiving useful contributions, so I decided to ask.
1 answer
We're absolutely interested in helping new contributors, and we don't have as strong a mentoring program as we'd like. We encourage prospective contributors to join our platform Discord server, which is distinct from the communities-focused server linked in the right sidebar. The platform server is for everybody who wants to help, whether that's writing code or testing or documentation or database stuff or whatever else.
On the platform server you'll see a #readme channel with more of an introduction, including an invitation to introduce yourself. If you tell us what you're interested in helping with or learning more about, folks on the server will help guide you further. What I've seen work best for new contributors is to start by setting up a development environment -- if you run into problems, folks on the Discord server will help. Then ask for a good "starter issue" or pick something on GitHub that's tagged "easy" or "good first issue" and that appeals to you. If there's something specific you want to work on, say so and folks will help you find an entry point. The contributor guidelines on GitHub cover workflow, coding standards, and stuff like that.
I've seen, and gotten, a lot of debugging help on that Discord server. (I did not know Ruby/Rails and am still a beginner.) We also have the Collab Q&A site, which is a good place to ask questions about architecture or code patterns or topics that don't require heavily interactive debugging. There's a lot of good knowledge buried in our Discord server probably never to be found again because Discord search isn't so great, and it'd be great make more of these answers more visible. The Collab site doesn't get a lot of activity but we're paying attention to it. Please feel free to ask questions there.
We don't have a mentoring program per se or a formal learning program/tour. But everyone was new sometime and we've got some really helpful people. I hope you'll join us.
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