welcome software developers from international community (aka onboarding)

[dckc]

following up on introductions (#222) and onboarding (#15, #253)...

Welcome aboard, everybody! Some of you are productively engaged in the RAM process; for the rest of you, here's hoping!

Note that RChain has a core dev team nearby; we can and do aim to help them out, but they have different processes. See #184 and/or contact @MParlikar .

@AbnerZheng did some good work on VM primitives (#176). I helped him navigate the budget and reward process (see CONTRIBUTING.md).

I chatted with @cenyuhai and answered some of his questions.

@zsluedem included Software Development in his skills inventory (#222), but he seems most active in Chinese translation so far. Likewise @David405 (#280 portuguese).

@as1ndu included Software Development in his skills inventory; his github profile shows him from Kampala, Uganda. I have yet to get in contact with you, @as1ndu but if you have any questions, I'm around. (@dckc on github and in discord)

Likewise hello @vadimtrifonov in Tallinn, Estonia and @nzpr (who shared a location in our survey but not in a public place than I can find).

¡Hola @msicilia! Much gusto. (Yo hablo un poco.) His linkedin profile shows his location as Madrid, Spain. ❤️

In the introduction survey (#222) a few people have given only email addresses; here's hoping for time to reach out to them (or someone to do with with me!).

I should perhaps split out a separate issue for onboarding each person, but not just now...

[dckc]

@patrick727 the "Developer Brain Picking Session"... do you want to share any of your notes here?

[JieL314]

I am a people who can only compile some simple programs with c++ or python, but I have a great passion for the blockchain.
Can I engage in software development or testing？

[dckc]

@JieL314 one guidelines from @pmoorman's experience joining the community is:

Be a self-starter Being a RAM is much more like being an entrepreneur than it is like being a employee.

That is: rather than ask "can I engage?" we advise that you go ahead and invest some of your time and see if you get rewarded.

Meanwhile, your question reminds me of something I discussed with @TrenchFloat : review of the recently release Rholang tutorial by casual developers. See #301 .

As to testing, yes, of course:

We invite all community members to test the code, use Rholang and provide feedback and ask questions.

• Questions & Comments via our Gitter channel.
• Bugs can be filed in our Jira.

• RChain Rholang SDK (v0.1) Released Jan 31
• RChain Node.Hello (v0.1) Released Dec 27, 2017

[JieL314]

@dckc Thank you for your guidance. Now I am preparing to reading the Rholang Tutorial and other documents.
@David405 Thank you for post related page for me.

[cenyuhai]

@dckc Can you assign a task for me?

[dckc]

@cenyuhai how about ROS-253? That's in the core dev team's bounties list (from #176) and unclaimed. As I mentioned, @AbnerZheng completed a similar task; you can model your work after his (see PR 121) and perhaps chat with him about it.

p.s. I just tried to explain that RAMs are expected to be self-starters. "Can you assign a task for me?" is very similar to "can I engage?" which is not self-starter style. If you choose something to work on and get stuck, I'm happy to help - even if you're stuck getting started. But as the guidelines say, there is no boss here; please don't expect me to choose tasks for you.

[dckc]

@David405 and I had a good chat. He gave me a better link to his profile where I learned that he is part of the tech startup community in Africa.

(The profile link he gave in the introductions survey (#222) was broken somehow.)

I used part of the architecture document to answer one of his questions (about what operating systems rholang runs on; more on that in #298) and I discovered that he hadn't read it yet. So many of you are involved in translating things like the architecture document that I had started to assume everyone had read it. Not a good assumption.

Anyone who hasn't followed the link from https://www.rchain.coop/ to FAQ, I strongly recommend investing a few hours in reading the FAQ and following most of the pointers from it.

[dckc]

I guess this is done.