On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Roan Kattouw roan.kattouw@gmail.com wrote:
However, the fact that it takes so long to get a good grip on reviewing code suggests that reviewing code is just something that senior developers do, and that newly hired developers will be able to review code a few years from now. If we have our existing senior developers do more code review, educate all of our developers about code review better, and just hire more developers to initially cover the void of senior devs doing less coding and more review and later to join the reviewers, I believe we'll have a much more sustainable and sane setup than we would get by hiring people specifically for review and having them focus on review from day 1.
Yep. And we could do this immediately. So why aren't we? Slow code review, and consequent slow deployment and release, has been probably the biggest problem with MediaWiki development for at least a year.
On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 4:33 PM, Roan Kattouw roan.kattouw@gmail.com wrote:
I think I know almost all developers we contract and what they do, but that's only because I proactively stay on top of things by e.g. asking new people who they are and what they do when they appear in the staff channel.
Apparently this isn't a reliable strategy, since I'm technically a Wikimedia contractor right now, but no one invited me to any special channels. (I say "technically" because I did a few hours of work and got to the point where I couldn't do much more without review, which I've been waiting for for more than two weeks.)