Hacker News Reader

Do any students/newbies actually want to triage issues, or is it just something the old hands thought up and think might work nicely?

View on HN

Many 1st semester students want to get involved and can't code yet. And I know they'd jump at this.

How many have you suggested volunteer, and what were their thoughts after a semester?

About 60 a semester.

Number that attempt to get involved is unknown.

I require 1st semester students to push final projects to Github public repositories so they learn Git.

Biggest problem is that they can't program very well yet but want to contribute. So any low-hanging fruit is welcome, really.

I've been working as a programmer for a few years and I can't program very well. I can get things done but it takes longer as I'm constantly distracting myself. I want to contribute as well, particularly with compiling binaries and easier stuff but I don't know where to start.

Debian has the how-can-i-help tool, which is aimed at helping people find low-hanging fruit:

https://wiki.debian.org/how-can-i-help

I triage where possible in projects that are important to me, because when I have a problem, I expect my issue to be triaged in return. I'm not a student/newbie, but I'm not a coder and still desire to contribute where I can.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com