[SciPy-Dev] What we do struggle with is lack of progress on big-ticket items

[Stefan van der Walt]

Hi Robert

On Tue, 23 Jan 2018 04:57:01 -0500, Robert Lucente - Pipeline.Com wrote:
> I am a newbie and have just been lurking.

Thank you for raising your thoughts here; it's so helpful to hear
perspectives from outside the established developer community.

> Perhaps we could put some bounds around unacceptable, good enough and
> perfection? I realize that it is hard to put words to this. Perhaps an
> example to kick off a conversation?

It's a tricky balance.  My feeling is that a person should lower the
barrier to contribution as much as possible: avoid unnecessary technical
challenges like git rebasing, push to PRs to guide new contributors, and
provide good documentation.

That said, I think it's better to educate than to adjust standards.
Experience has taught that introducing code of insufficient quality into
the code base inevitably leads to headaches later on (we all have a lot
of hypothetical time to fix things up in the future, right?).

> Perhaps people could volunteer to just help someone w/ the SciPy
> workflow?

This is an excellent suggestion, and one we've also been considering for
scikit-image.  The idea of having existing developers acting as mentors
is often what happens informally, but it may be helpful to establish
more obvious ways for that to take place.  Do you have any thoughts on
how this could look?

Best regards
Stéfan