"Bryan C. Warnock" <bwarnock@capita.com> wrote: > On Wed, 31 Dec 1969, David Grove wrote: > > In order to serve and assist future "apprentices" or maintainers, the > > communication between the two should be public (unless private on > > purpose), or somehow publicly available. Given the undesirability of > > having ten gazillion mailing lists, and likely the limited storage space > > on tmtowtdi (or whatver variation it's spelling is), is there any way > that > > this could become a realistic goal? > > The produced documentation, ideally. Communication distilled to the > necessary > facts. > Understood. I guess I was thinking of the usefulness of knowing what does NOT work, and what's wrong, but that's likely unattainable, since more will probably be wrong than right in any such relationship or series of communications. Ok, it sounds like a plan. Where do we start? By creating a registry of current tasks and masters, then fighting for apprenticeship? We haven't really defined what qualifies a master or apprentice yet, though. That was left sort of open. I think solidifying it would be helpful. What does it take to be considered of "master" status in a certain area (self acclamation? [badly spoken, how about "recognized skill (by anyone) in a certain area and a willingness to expose that skill with patience to one or more persons wishing to acquire that skill"], election?)? I can't help but think of this in Martial Arts ranking systems, and trying to apply that to computer science. What predisposes a person to the top of a list for apprenticeship in an area (RTFM should probably top this list)? Charming personality? Basic comprehension certainly, but what else? Does brainbench still have free tests for Perl? Maybe that's something to look into, and maybe since it's a purely volunteer effort if they are now charging for their perl tests, they might make an exception... I'll look into that and wait for a response about that one from here. It would at least give an idea of perl skill level... possibly be useful for c too. Scream STOP if I'm completely off target.