[squeak-dev] Re: Harvesters

Göran Krampe goran at krampe.se
Wed Dec 10 10:31:10 UTC 2008


Hi!

David T. Lewis wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 09, 2008 at 01:00:36PM +0100, G?ran Krampe wrote:
>> Many of us who have been around for a while know that we have tried 
>> numerous approaches over the years and we know that many of these have 
>> failed due to various reasons. For example, the idea of "harvesting" and 
>> having so called "harvesters" failed because it only led to a few people 
>> burning out (in the very early years it "worked" because we had paid 
>> people doing the harvesting).
> 
> I cannot help but suspect that the task of harvesting is inherently
> hard work that requires human communication, intelligence, and
> motivation. While the work certainly can be streamlined with
> better tools, it should also be possible to improve by making
> it more enjoyable.
> 
> That's the reason that I like Edgar's emphasis on "Fun Squeak",
> regardless of the specific tools employed. It is also the reason
> that I liked the old BFAV (Bug Fix Archive Viewer) process. The
> tool had problems, but using it and participating in the process
> was enjoyable and accessible to the entire community.
> 
> The harvesters approach did not fail.The quality of the work
> was very good, and the results were both successful and broadly
> accepted by the community. That sounds like success to me.
> 
> Dave

Right, let me clarify then - it worked while it worked. But it was not 
sustainable. Very few joined the harvesting team and the few that kept 
on working with it eventually got very tired.

So, sure it "worked" - for a while.

Observation:

Most of our progress is made as "side effects" from a specific project. 
Be it SimpleLog from Gjallar or improvements in MC because people just 
need it to work etc etc. But doing harvesting is not such a side effect 
- it is a rather complex task with no other direct benefit than your 
personal satisfaction. Well, not 100% true perhaps but you get the picture.

It is easy to make a small fix to say SMTPClient and smack that up on 
Mantis - while working on Gjallar - but it is a totally different story 
sucking up that fix, reviewing and pushing it into the image. The latter 
is not something someone do as a "side effect" of other "real work".

regards, Göran




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