2013 Developer Education Book Campaign

Resolution:

Motion was adopted

Proposal:

  1. Purchase and distribute a programming book to the top 10 Inkscape contributors for the past 12 months, as calculated by Ohloh.net: http://www.ohloh.net/p/inkscape/contributors?query=&sort=commits_12_mo

  2. The contributors can choose from one of the following books:

    1. Effective C++, 3rd Ed. by Scott Meyers
    2. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler
    3. A Tour of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup
  3. The campaign proposer (Johan Engelen, or their designee) will be empowered to officially announce and introduce the campaign to the larger community.

  4. The board chairperson (or their designee) will be empowered to

    1. Identify the qualified contributors as per (1), ii) Contact the qualified book recipients to collect their address and choice of book from (2), iii) Purchase and disseminiate the books to the provided addresses, iv) Collect reimbursement from SFC for expenses incurred.
  5. If a recipient does not respond within a week, or chooses to pass on receiving a book, the next person in the list will receive it. In the case of a tie that would necessitate extra books be purchased, up to 12 total books maximum can be provided, in order to solve the tie.

Background:

Lately, I’ve become obsessed with code quality. I’ve been reading Bjourne Stroustrup’s “bible” on C++11, watched all videos of the “Going Native” conferences, started using clang, …, and it has made me much more aware of the language’s facilities for preventing bugs. I regularly browse over Inkscape’s code and try to fix things I think can be improved (janitorial); our source is a pretty big mess I really do think Inkscape can use some love to improve logic and to decrease some amount of spaghetti.

I just saw the book “Effective C++”, which I believe is a great resource to inspire thought and learn how to write better code, and is meant for experienced programmers. In general: how do you guys feel about donating something [like this book] to our top committers for their “education”? We would need some metric of what “top committers” means, we could use ohloh.net’s numbers.

For example, we have 10 people that committed more than 50 times in the past 12 months. So that’d be 10 books = 10 x 31 euro = 310 euro cost — shipping and whatnot –> 400 euro cost.

(After we release 0.91, I will become very active in pushing for C++11 (i.e., upgrading our compiler dependencies to more modern versions so we can start using part of C++11 features), and general maintenance / refactoring / cleaning up. It’s pretty rewarding I find, and very low-key in terms of long-time brain-investment.)

Johan

Email:

Hi!

As mentioned by Johan Engelen last week, the Inkscape Board is sending programming books to Inkscape contributors, both as a way to enhance our community’s programming know-how and as a thank you for your ongoing work to the project. You’ve been identified as one of the recipients due to your work in 2013, so congratulations and thank you!

To send you the book, I need to know:

  1. Your shipping address

  2. Your book preference:

    1. Effective C++, 3rd Ed. by Scott Meyers
    2. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler
    3. A Tour of C++ (C++11) by Bjarne Stroustrup

Please respond by Feb 7th. If I don’t hear from you by then, I’ll assume you’re passing on the offer and it should go to the next developer on the list. Otherwise, please expect to receive the book by mid- to late- February.

Bryce

Choices:

Recipient Book
Martin Owens A Tour of C++
Kris De Gussem Effective C++
Nicolas Dufour Effective C++
Alvin Penner Refactoring
Krzysztof Kosinski Effective C++
Dr Alexander Valavanis Refactoring
Matthew Petroff A Tour of C++
Markus Engel A Tour of C++

Announcement:

Hello all,

In an effort to give back to our developers, I hereby present to you the Developer Education Book Campaign 2013 !

We’d like to give an educational present to our most active contributors. The board has decided to buy a programming book for each of the top 10 contributors of 2013! The ranking is determined by the number of commits to trunk in the past 12 months, as calculated by Ohloh.net [1] [2]:

Kris de Gussem Alex Valavanis Markus Engel Matthew Petroff Nicolas Dufour Martin Owens Tavmjong Bah Krzysztof Kosiński Sebastian Wüst Alvin Penner

Thank you very much for your great work in 2013!!!

These 2013 rockstars can choose from one of the following books:

  1. Effective C++, 3rd Ed. by Scott Meyers
  2. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler
  3. A Tour of C++ (C++11) by Bjarne Stroustrup

The developer is also allowed to pass it on to the runner-up if he so wishes. Because I initiated the book campaign, I will pass (don’t worry, I’ve already ordered my book ;).

So now you might think: wait a minute…, these coders get a book on how to program… are they that bad? They are not bad; they could be even better! We all can improve our coding, and there is no shame at all in reading up and refreshing our coding skills. Every day I am reading Stroustrup’s C++11 tome in the train to work, no joke!

I hope you all will enjoy your present, and can perhaps share with us the best things you’ve learned :-)

Cheers to a good start in 2014! Johan


All books have been ordered as last week. Recipients in the US should be receiving their books now. Canadians should receive books over the coming week. European residents should be receving the books within a month. If you provided me with an address and do not receive a book within these time frames, please let me know.

Let me add to Johan’s thanks a thank-you out to everyone who has donated to Inkscape. Your funding has made this educational effort possible. If in the coming months and years you find Inkscape to be more robust, responsive, and performant, the credit could indeed originate from your contribution to the project.

Bryce

Website Blurb:

Developer Education Book Campaign 2013

We’d like to give an educational present to our most active contributors. The board has decided to buy a programming book for each of the top 10 contributors of 2013!

The books were ordered Feb 20 and should reach developers by the end of March at the lasted.

Thank-you to everyone who has donated to Inkscape in the past. Your funding has made this educational effort possible. If in the coming months and years you find Inkscape to be more robust, responsive, and performant, the credit could indeed originate from your contribution to the project.