Reflections on my progress and plans

On Friday Team FOSSils met to discuss the planning of the poster and looked at examples of what an abstract entails.  We discussed what layout and design we want for the poster.  As far as content goes, we are unsure what exactly we want to include on our poster and which bug fixes we wish to highlight.
We spent part of the meeting discussing what the Django colors are (a very productive use of time).  We want to use their color scheme for our poster.  The dispute was ended when Bobby used the eyedropper tool to tell us exactly what shade of orange and green were being used on their website.  I do want to mention that I was indeed on the winning side of this dispute.  #winning

We submitted yet another ticket fix: #22323, but it was not accepted and the ticket was closed by one of the core developers.  We have also been considering #22161, we are planning on speaking with one of the core developers regarding inconsistent return types.  We shall see.

Tomorrow is Tech After 5, my whole group has RSVP'd so we're ready to get in there and network.  My sister will also be joining us and Diana from the 8AM 462 class will also be there, so we should have a nice little group.

For future meetings, we need to lock down the content of our poster and start fine tuning what we wish to include.

This semester has literally flown by.  I will be on a plane destined for SE Asia in approximately 6 weeks.  SIX WEEKS.  What?!?!  I have only bought my ticket there and back, everything else...I'm just gonna wing it.  I'll be "winging it" for SEVEN adventure filled weeks.  I. Cannot. Wait.  And if I do feel like making some extra cash, I have been approved to "work remotely" for my internship.  Maybe this is what my future looks like?  Traveling to exotic places while working remotely?  One can only hope.

Planning to Meet in Charleston

Team FOSSils has decided to attend Tech After Five on March 25th at Southend Brewery.  I have actually been to two of these before back in 2013 when my sister was networking for a job.  It's a great place to meet people in the tech community PLUS you get a free glass of wine or beer.  We are planning on meeting at Southend to schmooze and network.  Then we plan on having dinner together at the Blind Tiger which has excellent burger specials on Tuesdays...perfect.  I'm looking forward to it.

Release early and often

Release early.  Release often.  And listen to your customers.  We read the Cathedral and the Bazaar earlier in the semester and this happens to be one of the "lessons" Raymond learned from various software development experiences.

Releasing early and often gives great feedback between developers and users which means...

You get bug fixes and and new features in customers hands faster and see how customers react to them.  This is very valuable information for the developers who can work with this information to make a better product and ultimately a happier customer.  In turn, a happier customer makes a happier developer!

Releasing early and often is a way of using customers as co-developers (Free testers!).  And according to Linus's Law-``Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.''  More heads are better than one.

So if you want happier developers, happier customers, and a better product- releasing early and often is key!

The Doc is in!

We were to read Chapter 8 in our online text which was entitled "Explaining the Code".  It basically stresses the importance of documentation.  My favorite section was 8.5 and it starts like this, and I quote "Documentation has a reputation as being an easy way to begin contributing to a project. This is more true where the new contributor is already experienced or an expert in the material. It is much less likely to be true where the project has not considered how to enable good and easy documentation, or the technical content is very high."  VINDICATION!  We aren't incompetent- it's just hard!  This whole semester Team FOSSils has been trying to contribute documentation fixes to our open source project Django, but to no avail.  And lets be honest- it's been depressing, but this quote somehow makes me sit up a little straighter and not feel like a complete failure.

We were also to read Chapter 6 in our text.  I'm currently taking CSCI-360 and this chapter goes over  all those concepts we are currently learning.

Exercise 8.1.1
We've been looking at a lot of documentation for Django.  They have a VERY detailed link explaining/instructing how to write documentation for them.  As frustrating as it has been trying to write documentation that is up to their standards- at least they are still allowing us to try and contribute and are always readily available when we have questions.

Exercise 8.4
I do not have enough time for this tonight- this will have to be done at a later date.

After the break...

Uggggghhhhhh Spring Break is over?!  My parents rented a beach house on Isle of Palms so that the whole family could be together over the break.  What disgusting weather.  Freezing beach walks and huddling inside for warmth were our family spring break activities.  Which means I was probably really productive over break, right?  Nope.  Oh well.

The FOSSils did manage to have a team meeting on Thursday over the break, where we realized that nothing we do will make the Django crew happy.  Right after this realization, however, we got our first ticket approved!  Bobby was the lead on this bug fix and we are relieved to have an approved fix.

Our plans after break are to continue working on our initial documentation ticket and find other tickets of the bug variety to squash.