Re: Need a mentor, and a project.

abindra wrote:
> Next quarter I am planning to do an Independent Study course
> where the main objective would be to allow me to get familiar
> with the internals of Postgres by working on a project(s). I
> would like to work on something that could possibly be
> accepted as a patch.
>
> This is (I think) somewhat similar to what students do during
> google summer and I was hoping to get some help here in terms of:
> 1. A good project to work on for a newbie.
> 2. Would someone be willing to be a mentor? It would be nice
> to be able to get some guidance on a one-to-one basis.

I would start with the TODO list: http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Todo
These are things for which there is a consensus that it would be
a good idea to implement them. Pick things that look interesting to
you, and try to read the discussions in the archives that lead
to the TODO items.

Bring the topic up in the hackers list, say that you would like
to work on this or that TODO item, present your ideas of how you
want to do it. Ask about things where you feel insecure.
If you get some support, proceed to write a patch. Ask for
directions, post half-baked patches and ask for comments.

That is because you will probably receive a good amount of
critizism and maybe rejection, and if you invest a couple of
months into working on something that nobody knows about *and*
your work gets rejected, that is much worse than drawing fire
right away.

It's probably not easy to find a mentor (unless you have money
to give away), but you may find people who are interested in
what you are doing and who will help you.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe