Quite a few weeks ago now, the Second official Quarter of Contribution wrapped up.  We had advertised 4 projects and found awesome contributors for all 4.  While all hackers gave a good effort, sometimes plans change and life gets in the way.  In the end we had 2 projects with very active contributors.

This post, I want to talk about WPT Results Viewer.  You can find the code on github, and still find the team on irc in #ateam.  As this finished up, I reached out to :martianwars to learn what his experience was like, here are his own words:

What interested you in QoC?

So I’d been contributing to Mozilla for sometime fixing random bugs here and there. I was looking for something larger and more interesting. I think that was the major motivation behind QoC, besides Manishearth’s recommendation to work on the Web Platform Test Viewer. I guess I’m really happy that QoC came around the right time!

What challenges did you encounter while working on your project?  How did you solve them?

I guess the major issue while working on wptview was the lack of Javascript knowledge and the lack of help online when it came to Lovefield. But like every project, I doubt I would have enjoyed much had I known everything required right from the start. I’m glad I got jgraham as a mentor, who made sure I worked my way up the learning curve as we made steady progress.

What are some things you learned?

So I definitely learnt some Javascript, code styling, the importance of code reviews, but there was a lot more to this project. I think the most important thing that I learnt was patience. I generally tend to search for StackOverflow answers when it I need to perform a programming task I’m unaware of. With Lovefield being a relatively new project, I was compelled to patiently read and understand the documentation and sample programs. I also learnt a bit on how a large open source community functions, and I feel excited being a part of it!  A bit irrelevant to the question, but I think I’ve made some friends in #ateam :) The IRC is like my second home, and helps me escape life’s never ending stress, to a wonderland of ideas and excitement!

If you were to give advice to students looking at doing a QoC, what would you tell them?

Well the first thing I would advice them is not to be afraid, especially of asking the so called “stupid” questions on the IRC. The second thing would be to make sure they give the project a decent amount of time, not with the aim of completing it or something, but to learn as much as they can :) Showing enthusiasm is the best way to ensure one has a worthwhile QoC :) Lastly, I’ve tried my level best to get a few newcomers into wptview. I think spreading the knowledge one learns is important, and one should try to motivate others to join open source :)

If you were to give advice to mentors wanting to mentor a project, what would you tell them?

I think jgraham has set a great example of what an ideal mentor should be like. Like I mentioned earlier, James helped me learn while we made steady progress. I especially appreciate the way he had (has rather) planned this project. Every feature was slowly built upon and in the right order, and he ensured the project continued to progress while I was away. He would give me a sufficient insight into each feature, and leave the technical aspects to me, correcting my fallacies after the first commit. I think this is the right approach. Lastly, a quality every mentor MUST have, is to be awake at 1am on a weekend night reviewing PRs ;)

Personally I have really enjoyed getting to know :martianwars and seeing the great progress he has made.

https://elvis314.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/qoc-2-wpt-results-viewer-wrapping-up/