Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How do technical non-developers help with open source projects?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 93 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do technical non-developers help with open source projects?

#71

Post by anupshinde »

Yes. These are very important skills you have to make any open source project successful. I know a few developers (including me) who do not love to write functional specs or sometimes even updating a read me, but its necessary.

When I am designing a solution and processes, I need the freedom to do so. When it comes to writing code and tests, updating docs, etc - I absolutely want to be "managed" because self-induced-management is more effort. Even a person who just tracks the process and reminds us "you are not doing this right" is very useful from my perspective.

Re: Ask HN: How do technical non-developers help with open source projects?

#74

Post by drincruz »

There is definitely a need with documentation and even style guides and such. I've seen a bunch of pull requests that are merely just edits to grammar and such.

There are also projects like 500lines (https://github.com/aosabook/500lines) where it's a book and you can help out with all types of editorial-type tasks.

Re: Ask HN: How do technical non-developers help with open source projects?

#76

Post by thomk »

xmjee wrote: post #65

Did you over time develop yourself from being in a technical/developing position into a technical/management position?

Thanks for the question.

Actually what I did was quit my job at Ford as a developer to do freelance work. I realized that when I was speaking to my own clients I really enjoyed talking about their projects and documenting what was said in a meeting.

Often I would turn-around full functional specifications the same day as the meeting.

I was programming off of those specs and quickly realized that all of the "fun stuff" was already figured out and I was just typing in code, so I started hiring out the programming work.

Developers have often told me that my functional specs are some of the most organized and clear they have ever worked from and it keeps the back and forth communication to an absolute minimum.

This is the waterfall model of software development (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model) and it has helped me earn a living for years. I have built a business around it and don't even have a website for myself.

So yes over time I transitioned myself from being a developer to whatever I am now, but I really, really enjoy it.

I always tell customers "Software is difficult to change, word documents are easy (and cheaper) to change".

Re: Ask HN: How do technical non-developers help with open source projects?

#78

Post by xmjee »

thomk wrote: post #76
xmjee wrote: post #65

Did you over time develop yourself from being in a technical/developing position into a technical/management position?

Thanks for the question. Actually what I did was quit my job at Ford as a developer to do freelance work. I realized that when I was speaking to my own clients I really enjoyed talking about their projects and documenting what was said in a meeting. Often I would turn-around full functional specifications the same day as the meeting. I was programming off of those specs and quickly realized that all of the "fun stuff…

> I was programming off of those specs and quickly realized that all of the "fun stuff" was already figured out and I was just typing in code, so I started hiring out the programming work.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I figured.

As far as your status goes, in my book you can't easily transfer that to opensource projects: You do need to go through a bit of the programming work yourself, again, to see how things work in order to get to that same position you fill with respect to business prospects.

At this point I'd say: team up with a few opensource-interested developers and form your own project, from scratch.

Re: Ask HN: How do technical non-developers help with open source projects?

#79

Post by nashashmi »

hkmurakami wrote: post #55
jdietrich wrote: post #44

With your skillset, you could be doing invaluable work by writing documentation. The world is full of good Free software that is essentially orphaned, because the documentation is practically useless. Many moribund projects could be revitalised with little more than a concise description of what the software does, why you might choose it over the alternatives, and how to get started. Other projects suffer from dreadf…

I have a similar skillset to OP, and I was brought on board to write/improve the documentation for http://www.fluentd.org/ I'm now unable to devote nearly as much time to the project as before, so there's definitely a need in the project right now. The tool is used by AWS, Google Cloud Platform, LINE, Nintendo and others, so it's something that would have wide reach right away.

What is the pay range for someone who does "non-technical" work like writing technical documentations?
Post reply on HN