Just to add to that last post, one thing we found very helpful when we had people contributing to our MUD code was that we could have new coders work on skills and spells. Skills and spells in our game were all very similar-looking functions, so there was an abundance of examples to work from, making the creation of a new one quite straightforward. In addition, they are features that only get used when you explicitly use the command, so they were easy to test in the live environment without too much inconvenience.
Any significant project probably has an area of code like this, where new coders can add tiny features in a short amount of time, helping them get to grips with the system while seeing the benefits of their work going live quite quickly.
online projects and motivation
I personally would love to work on some form of XNA project with a team. I tend to have a good solid for our 5 days a week available to offer. The reasons I don't offer my services are because of the 2 following reasons:
1: I'm not really sure of my experience level, I know a good bit of C# but not XNA. This is my primary fear.
2: I wouldn't want to feel like I was slowing the team down or getting "free" tutelage which would derail the project.
I suppose a project will eventually come along that I will help out on but I think a lot of people feel this way.
1: I'm not really sure of my experience level, I know a good bit of C# but not XNA. This is my primary fear.
2: I wouldn't want to feel like I was slowing the team down or getting "free" tutelage which would derail the project.
I suppose a project will eventually come along that I will help out on but I think a lot of people feel this way.
Quote:Original post by DeanMc
The reasons I don't offer my services are because of the 2 following reasons:
1: I'm not really sure of my experience level, I know a good bit of C# but not XNA. This is my primary fear.
2: I wouldn't want to feel like I was slowing the team down or getting "free" tutelage which would derail the project.
I guess quite a lot of people feel this way. But they really shouldn't. In my experience people willing to build a team often really like to help unexperienced people. Sometimes it might no seem/feel that way, as if they just say "RTFM on that here: <url>" for a lot of questions in the beginnig, but it's really often the best advice they can give. If you really do run into some questions that are not trivial to answer they will most likely gladly help you with the answer and will appreciate the effort you put into learning the new things. They had to learn it as well, so they know it's hard. (Obviously there are people who do the exact opposite of what I wrote here, but I think for most projects this holds true).
And theres something important that a lot of people sometimes do not understand. Let me give an example:
If you join my project and I have to explain stuff for 2 hours for you so you can understand how my project works. After that you work 10 hours on my project (even if you are just half as effective as I am, because i know my code very well). You still did 5 hours of my effective work. So 5hours-2hours is still a 3 hour gain for me. So all in all, both win. This is even more true, the longer the project continues. You will get better at the code and the theory. You learn a lot, the project moves forward. Awesome deal! Besides that there is usually stuff that you know, which I don't know, so the sharing of knowledge works the other way around as well.
This is very important for experienced people as well, take your time to share your knowledge, it will not only cost you time.
So go ahead and offer your services. It will benefit you and the project you join, for sure.
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