EDIT: Since posting, I’ve started such a community: https://lemmy.ml/c/learningrustandlemmy, !learningrustandlemmy@lemmy.ml. Please come and join in.
The idea comes from the discussion that occurred over the new lemmy-clone or alternative, SubLinks and how its main feature is that its tech stack is different from lemmy’s which should enable all of the developers who don’t know rust to contribute.
One of the core lemmy devs (dessalines I believe) said responded to these general sentiments by saying something to the effect of rust being a good technical choice and that learning rust in order to contribute would be a good expenditure of time (as tech people need to learn new things all the time anyway).
Soooo … for those interested … how about we all learn together rust through learning about ActivityPub and Lemmy’s codebase and solving problems and making contributions? We could have a community dedicated to asking questions, sharing solutions or ideas and generally discussing all things we’re learning about rust, activitypub, fediverse and lemmy? If an actual community can be built around the desire to learn rust and give back to lemmy with all us newbs working together as much as posslbe … that would have to be a win right?
Even better if those who know more about the topic could use the community as a chance to post or write up what they know for us to learn from. For instance, I’ve glanced at lemmy’s code base (without knowing rust of course) and I feel like it could do with an architecture birds-eye perspective on how the code base works.
Obviously chatting on matrix might be a good place for this, especially as devs and admins are chatting there already … but I feel like the structure of lemmy might be a better place for a sort of reading club.
Any thoughts or takers? I feel like creating the community on lemmy.ml would make sense, maybe having one of the core devs as a mod too?
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That would be an excellent idea. But I feel like an even broader community should be created. Like a generic book club, but for code bases! Could even have a small handful of different code bases on the go at a time. I’d love to get to know lemmy’s, but also e.g. neovim, or even unciv :)
Maybe one day it could even start tackling Moby Dick!
You know what? I’d be up for it. Sounds like a cool idea and we might be able to contribute as a team where possible.
We should likely have a bi-weekly, monthly, or whatever voice call discussion on the code we’ve reviewed on mumble (or discord if more convinient)
Yea, that’d definitely be part of it. As a group, we could try to take on some issue, try things and report back etc … could be fun, educational and productive … or at least one of those!
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So, before I go around posting in other communities (rust, programming and the two fediverse communities come to mind) …
I’ll just tag the current core devs and other contributing devs I’m aware of (@nutomic@lemmy.ml , @dessalines@lemmy.ml , @phiresky@lemmy.world , @CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.ml , @sunaurus@lemm.ee ) … and ask them if they have any thoughts or input on this idea.
As far as its value and meaning for the lemmy project as a whole, I see it as:
- Building a contributor community, especially by leveraging the interest in rust but countering the intimidation by or ignorance of rust
- Which of course feeds back onto lemmy community building too. Creating a sense of shared ownership over one’s social media platform is surely a good thing.
- Providing a more dynamic
CONTRIBUTING.md… by assisting the would-be-contributor’s on ramping by providing a space in which they can search for answers to questions (in addition to dropping into the matrix chat) and have more general technical discussions that out of scope for issue tracker threads. - Also extending what seems to be the core devs’ interest in rust into a rust-learning community with lemmy itself as a practical example.
As I’ve said elsewhere in the thread, I don’t see myself being the sole leader in this at al, as I’m only a learner/newb here on the technical front too, and I think some degree of involvement from anyone with some more experience with either rust or the lemmy code base could go a very long way. Obviously that’s more work for the devs, perhaps more distraction, which I’m rather mindful of. But still, any involvement, any pointers or guidance, and any looping in others who could be helpful or linking to helpful resources for particular purposes … all of that could be invaluable.
Additionally, should a decent community around this form, any direct interaction with the lemmy devs would also be valuable … even if it’s just a general awareness so that any appropriate issues for the community to tackle can be forwarded with some quick guidance.
Anyway … thoughts?!
EDIT:
One clear point relevant to the lemmy.ml admins is whether such a community would be appreciated on the lemmy.ml instance? To me it makes sense given the alignment with the lemmy project, and IIRC, new community creation was turned off on lemmy.ml so this would require your blessings.
I think this is a great idea. I would be happy to help with this by answering questions or other things that need to be done.
Community creation has been enabled for a while on lemmy.ml, so you can just create it yourself.
Thanks and great to hear!
- Building a contributor community, especially by leveraging the interest in rust but countering the intimidation by or ignorance of rust
