2006 Gentoo Developer of the Year as nominated by YOU

[steveL]

Well, you must have seen the other posts, so no explanations needed. I've taken the nominations from [topic=528059]this thread[/topic] in the order that they were given there. (I think I missed a few when one person nominated loads.) Personally I only know of a few devs, and yes I find this to be somewhat of a popularity contest. Having said that, the other poll was very much cokehabit's choices, so off we go.

Please don't troll in here- go that other topic if you want to do that. It'd be cool, however, if you wanted to nominate more people and thus let other users know about devs we've never heard of and what they do. So in other words, only positive posts about why someone is good, none about why someone is lame, or shouldn't be in the poll. I'd ask the moderators to bear that in mind, and move any posts that they think are negative in tone to another thread, perhaps [topic=529971]this one[/topic].

Sorry if I've missed out some of what people do, or made mistakes; I'm not an expert on gentoo or its devs. Bear in mind that most devs work on various projects, fix bugs and help users as well. Nothing to stop you finding out what they do yourself.

Regards,
SteveL.

PS When voting, don't just vote for ciaranM cos your friends are, or to fsck cokehabit off. I like the guy too, and his work, but I do think his attitude can suck (so can cokehabit's!) If you genuinely feel he did more for gentoo or its users, then vote for him. I'd hope that, if you don't know any devs, you'll wait and read a bit more about what they do or did in 2006.

NB the only votes that will count are the ones you make here. You only get one vote, so if you're not sure, don't vote (yet). The poll has 45 days to run. Results are deliberately kept hidden until then, so we hopefully don't get too much herd mentality. (or comparisons about how many people have voted, who's winning etc.)

bunkacid posted a great link, please check it out as it shows what can happen, and what some feel already is. The positive thing I want out of this is for us to discuss what good work we've seen going on and to big our devs up for that. After all, we all have egos. This blog post has a lot to say about how gentoo might alleviate a similar situation.

edit: removed list of nominees that didn't make it because of poll limitations. ++Earthwings.

[Conan]

stuart.


Sorry, just joining the bandwagon :/

[steveL]

all aboard! honestly it's crazy, there's so many devs, and it's facile to try and pick a top one.

cokehabit: you really surpassed yourself this time.

[Earthwings]

I added the ones phpbb didn't let you.

[steveL]

Thanks!

Just to kick off the +ve approach, I'd like to say that I'm voting for antarus, purely for personal reasons as he's helped me a lot with writing ebuilds and the whole process. He's put me straight when I've been out of line, but always with impeccable manners, which I really rate. He also does a shed-load of work with treecleaners, and is currently working on implementing GLEP 42 which I note was one of ciaranm's (along with spb and zmedico) - how ironic ;) Further, his recent post intelligently states some good ground rules which I think the whole gentoo community should follow.

edit:
Avoid prejudice because of:
- install probs even though they're not the dev's fault (he's just managing the process and doing his damnedest; think about it- would you like to be dealing with those bugs?)
- no one likes their bugs being closed without feeling it's been solved :) - personally I'd give the bugs team a huge award.

[zlin]

vapier == SpanKy is on the list twice.

[Maedhros]

vapier == SpanKy is on the list twice.

I wonder which will get more votes.

[1clue]

FWIW, I'm interested in this poll but unless there is some (hopefully mature) discussion about the candidates this will evolve into a vote for whichever project each regular user feels is most helpful to them.

I might add that for me, this last will be modified by removing any of the trolls from the other threads. Gentoo works right now, without these guys. If they fell off the site permanently, there would be no net loss IMO. "Best developer," as has been previously mentioned, is not simply best coder. The best developer can be a mediocre coder with really good teamwork abilities and a good grasp of what needs to be done.

[cokey]

flameeyes does so much work it's untrue. I saw on CIA that he makes a commit on average every 10 mins or something, that is over 3 years

[Paapaa]

"Best developer," as has been previously mentioned, is not simply best coder. The best developer can be a mediocre coder with really good teamwork abilities and a good grasp of what needs to be done.

And that is exactly why "Best this and best that" polls are so stupid. We need both kind of "best developers": we need those guru coders that are not socially that competent but who produce "the perfect code", and we need those average Joe coders that bring something else to the community and the whole development process. We also need those who don't care about the popularity but have the guts to point out errors and possibly stupid ideas/decisions. With open source we just have to try to cope with many kinds of people - but apparently some people can't do that.

[papal_authority]

I voted for Flameeyes for ridding Gentoo of XMMS. I mean nobody was using it and it didn't give anyone any headaches recompiling all the software that was using the XMMS USE flag. If we haven't chosen a prize yet, I'd be willing to donate a kick in the nuts.

[1clue]

"Best developer," as has been previously mentioned, is not simply best coder. The best developer can be a mediocre coder with really good teamwork abilities and a good grasp of what needs to be done.

And that is exactly why "Best this and best that" polls are so stupid. We need both kind of "best developers": we need those guru coders that are not socially that competent but who produce "the perfect code", and we need those average Joe coders that bring something else to the community and the whole development process. We also need those who don't care about the popularity but have the guts to point out errors and possibly stupid ideas/decisions. With open source we just have to try to cope with many kinds of people - but apparently some people can't do that.

Yes and no.

A good developer need not be what is widely described as socially competent. They need to be able to communicate effectively with their fellow team members. They need to COOPERATE with their team in a way that does not undermine the rest of the team. Popularity is nice, it means people like you. However it's not critical. What is critical is that the rest of your team is willing to work with you.

We had a guy who was by far a faster coder than anyone else in the company. Give him a project, let him go and he gets it done on time, on budget, exactly per spec. Let him loose on an existing project, again with a spec, and he looks at a module. He sees that it does not do what is required (we knew that, we told him in the first place) and if he can't figure out what it does he replaces the module with one that works the way he thinks it should. Well, that module did a lot more than we mentioned in the meeting. He didn't think any of it was important, but when it came time to build it for the customer more than half the functionality was gone! We mentioned that too, and he said nobody uses that stuff anyway. We listed the customers who use it every day, and he said they should find some other way to do it. Out the door he went.

His tendency to rewrite what he couldn't understand even extended into his own code from 2 months ago. He never wrote documentation and his variables looked like "m, m2, m3, m4" and his parameters looked like "p, p2, p3, p4" no matter what they were for. There was absolutely no chance to maintain his code. Write it, use it, throw it away. To this day, if anyone looks at a stretch of his code, they immediately burst into a string of profanity, and everyone else knows exactly what happened.

Worse than all that, he didn't ever TELL anyone what was going to happen. I remember one of the first meetings I had with this company. We went to the meeting, everyone agreed what the goals were and who would do what. We all went to work. He replaced a module that he knew everyone else was working on, committed it and never told anyone until we were getting errors in CVS. Everyone else's day was wasted, but he got his stuff done. No apologies, no concerns.

Was he a good coder? Yes. Was he a good developer? No, he was the worst developer I've ever met who could actually write a line of code. We actually log time as "de-morganizing."

The moral of my story: The only software project which only needs a good coder is the one which only has one coder, and which need not ever be modified even by that same coder.[/code]

[amne]

vapier == SpanKy is on the list twice.

According to the enhanced HMES rules 2007 revision 0.1 that makes him instant winner!

[Paapaa]

Was he a good coder? Yes.

He never wrote documentation and his variables looked like "m, m2, m3, m4" and his parameters looked like "p, p2, p3, p4" no matter what they were for. There was absolutely no chance to maintain his code.

I wouldn't say you described a "good coder". IMO a good coder does not only produce well designed and well implemented bugless code but also makes it easily maintainable for other programmers. I think that should be a basic requirement in every kind of programming and for all programmers - no matter if there is 1 (yourself) or 100 people maintaining your code.

[1clue]

Was he a good coder? Yes.

He never wrote documentation and his variables looked like "m, m2, m3, m4" and his parameters looked like "p, p2, p3, p4" no matter what they were for. There was absolutely no chance to maintain his code.

I wouldn't say you described a "good coder". IMO a good coder does not only produce well designed and well implemented bugless code but also makes it easily maintainable for other programmers. I think that should be a basic requirement in every kind of programming and for all programmers - no matter if there is 1 (yourself) or 100 people maintaining your code.

It's a good start anyway. IMO, the coder MUST work well on a team. That team does not need to be socially correct, nor does it need to shower regularly. It simply needs to be effective.

If a developer needs two people who do nothing but follow around and fix things the "hero" developer does so they work with the rest of the team's work, then the "hero" costs the company 3 salaries, at least. Not to mention inadvertent changes to functionality that somehow got through QA and onto a customer's site before blowing up. If the star is doing the work of 3 normal developers, then (s)he might be worth keeping on in that case, but statistically 3 "normal" developers will be more reliable and easier to deal with.

[Marlo]

Hi @,

I vote for Genone and Carlo.
Because the two communicate in the German forum with other users and they was giving valuable hints.

THX
Ma

[chrisduck]

ciaranm

[eroyf]

Nice one dudes!

[steveL]

Was he a good coder? Yes.

He never wrote documentation and his variables looked like "m, m2, m3, m4" and his parameters looked like "p, p2, p3, p4" no matter what they were for. There was absolutely no chance to maintain his code.

I wouldn't say you described a "good coder". IMO a good coder does not only produce well designed and well implemented bugless code but also makes it easily maintainable for other programmers. I think that should be a basic requirement in every kind of programming and for all programmers - no matter if there is 1 (yourself) or 100 people maintaining your code.

It's a good start anyway. IMO, the coder MUST work well on a team. That team does not need to be socially correct, nor does it need to shower regularly. It simply needs to be effective.

Err, no it's not; you might be the most effective `team-player' in the world, but if you write code like that, there's no way you're on my team.

If a developer needs two people who do nothing but follow around and fix things the "hero" developer does so they work with the rest of the team's work, then the "hero" costs the company 3 salaries, at least. Not to mention inadvertent changes to functionality that somehow got through QA and onto a customer's site before blowing up. If the star is doing the work of 3 normal developers, then (s)he might be worth keeping on in that case, but statistically 3 "normal" developers will be more reliable and easier to deal with.

Exactly- and that kind of code leads to requiring other people to fix it.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, you just seem to have proved the point with your counter-example.

[steveL]

vapier == SpanKy is on the list twice.

Oops. I always wondered why Spanky only ever seemed to comment on bugzilla

Can that be fixed Earthwings (and other nominations added like genone who I forgot to mention) or is too late since we started voting? Ideally we should be able to just have vapier/SpanKy with the sum of the two votes.

Again, trying to keep this in the spirit in which it is meant, it just goes to show you how much work Frysinger does, that I meritted his two aliases as two of the top devs. I'm sure many users don't even know about him. My only prior experience of SpanKy was as a bit brusque in bugzilla, but he's the example I mentioned in another thread as seeming rude, but someone I have a lot of respect for as doing "a shed-load of work".

[steveL]

vote in [topic=530425]the other thread[/topic], mate.

[Earthwings]

vapier == SpanKy is on the list twice.

Oops. I always wondered why Spanky only ever seemed to comment on bugzilla

Can that be fixed Earthwings (and other nominations added like genone who I forgot to mention) or is too late since we started voting? Ideally we should be able to just have vapier/SpanKy with the sum of the two votes.

Fixed, though I can't change the number of votes - add two votes for vapier/spanky once the poll is finished.

[cokey]

vapier == SpanKy is on the list twice.

Oops. I always wondered why Spanky only ever seemed to comment on bugzilla

Can that be fixed Earthwings (and other nominations added like genone who I forgot to mention) or is too late since we started voting? Ideally we should be able to just have vapier/SpanKy with the sum of the two votes.

Fixed, though I can't change the number of votes - add two votes for vapier/spanky once the poll is finished.

only 2?

[steveL]

Fixed, though I can't change the number of votes - add two votes for vapier/spanky once the poll is finished.

only 2?

I'm sorry but this is what I mean by negative. FSCK YOURSELF cokehabit. You've managed to anger a hell of a lots of devs, plus G knows how many users.

[PaulBredbury]

Calm down, calm down. Anyway, with those 2 votes he'll probably beat me (and that's after I've voted)