[LRUG] Mentoring Meetups

[Stephen Bartholomew]

I'm totally agreed with you regarding the tutorials. Also, some sort  
of reading list would be great and quite quick to put together.

The reason for discussing the group project idea was that a lot of  
people found that they picked up a huge amount by seeing applications  
being developed by experienced developers.  However, those people  
tended to have previous programming experience so perhaps this style  
would not be suitable for complete newbies - I'm not sure - it'd be  
interesting to hear other opinions.

There is also the concern about whether or not people will be able to  
make it along to these sessions enough to make it worth while.

However, I think it's important to get the idea out there as a  
possibility.  During discussions it was decided that there a few  
things we can do immediately and then think about other bigger ideas  
as we go.

With your suggestions, the current 'immediate' list is:

1.  Welcome code questions on to the main list (with a look to review  
if this becomes a issue)
2.  Compile a 'recommended reading' list of books to get started (i'd  
suggest limiting this :0) )
3.  Devise some small programming problems to work on (this was also  
suggested last night - a 'code kata' style approach, possibly working  
in small groups at meets)
4.  Some way of publishing the results and discussions on the LRUG site

Depending on time constraints of those involved, another idea could  
be to have 'requests for explanations'  where someone picks up the  
challenge to write a short article about a particular subject (or  
point people to an existing article).  The REST discussions where a  
perfect example of this.  A high percentage of the audience were  
unsure of what REST was and left confused at the April meet-up.  I  
know there is a lot of information on the net regarding these things  
but the more experienced members of the group may be able to offer  
guidance for a particular subject.

Thoughts?

Steve


On 15 May 2007, at 13:44, Eleanor wrote:

> On 15 May 2007, at 11:05, Stephen Bartholomew wrote:
> Unfortunately I couldn't make it along to last night's meeting so I
> missed the chance to discuss this, but  speaking from my experience
> of group developments at Uni. I'm not sure this is the best approach
> to adopt. We're quite a large group so any collaborative project is
> bound to require a lot of organisation and for those relatively new
> to programming I think this approach will fail to engage them
> sufficiently to get over the initial level of frustration when
> they're picked up enough Ruby to be doing something relatively
> ambitious but not yet acquired the experience necessary to know that
> even the toughest problems can be solved with the right combination
> of tenacity and deviousness.
>
> Perhaps a better alternative would be to devise a series of tutorial
> problems that newbies can solve on their own, building in difficultly
> over time. We could publish both the problems and the various
> solutions that are submitted on the LRUG site and that way build a
> useful resource for Ruby newbies everywhere. By studying these
> solutions those who are new to programming as well as to Ruby would
> also develop that most useful of skills: code literacy.
>
> As an additional aid to newcomers to the programming world I think we
> should also compile a list of useful books to help them develop a
> broader understanding of the craft. Whilst it's nowhere near as
> difficult as most non-programmers assume, there's still a lot of
> knowledge out there that can greatly simplify the task and giving
> newcomers a leg-up on acquiring should hopefully improve their skills
> quite dramatically.
>
>
> Ellie
>
> Eleanor McHugh
> Games With Brains
> ----
> raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason
>
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