Learning curves and such (was Re: pgFoundry)

Lamar Owen <lowen(at)pari(dot)edu> writes:
> To put it much more bluntly: PostgreSQL development (both the process
> and the codebase) has one of the steepest learning curves around,

The backend hacking curve is certainly steep, but I wonder whether the
problem isn't largely one of people biting off more than they can chew.

I got my start by hacking some things in libpq, which is way more
self-contained than any aspect of the backend; and then started hacking
relatively small backend stuff. I think the reason I know as much as
I do today is that I've always been willing to investigate minor bugs.
No one of them was all *that* exciting, but over time I've had the
opportunity to study a lot of the backend code. Nearby you can watch
Neil Conway bootstrapping himself by doing minor code beautification
projects --- again not that exciting in itself, but useful, and in any
case the *real* reason he's doing it is to learn the backend code in
general. (Right, Neil?)

As against that I notice some new arrivals proposing to add deductive
reasoning to Postgres:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2005-05/msg01045.php
or implement SQL99 hierarchical queries:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2005-05/msg01089.php

I might be wrong, but I'll bet lunch that neither of those projects will
come to anything. You can't run before you learn to crawl.

Maybe what we need is some documentation about how to get started
as a Postgres hacker --- what to read, what sort of things to tackle
for your first hack, etc. I think the people who have been successful
around here are the ones who have managed to figure out the syllabus
by themselves ... but surely we could try to teach those who come
after.

regards, tom lane