Mentorship

Mentorship

Postby Jastiv » 09 Dec 2019, 23:14

I want to create this thread about mentor ship because I know it is something we are all supposed to do to be successful. It goes without saying that successful people have had good mentors.
On the other hand, mediocre people have not had good mentors.
There are lots of different type of mentors, work life etc. but obviously what I would like to focus on here is mentor ship for the purpose of becoming a better free software game developer.
Part of the problem is, I don’t really have a good template of what a good mentor ship relationship is supposed to look like.

(on the other hand, an evil mentor ship relationship, that's easy, you just find this guy (or gal) who had a really bad reputation, and ask him (or her) for advice while ignoring half of it. Also, you waste the person’s time with trivia, don’t ask them enough questions that you should because you are afraid of their sith lord powers, and Darth Sidious and Anakin Skywalker is a bad example. I’m not really sure what Akakin learned from that except to get angry and lash out at people.)

So, there are really a couple major problems when wanting to find a mentor to help you make a living as a free software game developer
1. Not a lot of people have done it, and even those that have haven't gotten very wealthy from it.

2. There are lots of mentors for things like learning Debian packaging, in fact they have a whole system set up to do it, but to me, it just looks like learning a bunch of rules. I have a hard time taking advice, and following directions. I already had a lot of teachers that I mostly annoyed with stupid questions. Also, teachers give you a grade, so they have that kind of power over you, mentors don’t really give you a grade. On the other hand, if the relationship (mentor ship) is not working, either party can just walk away from it at any time and there is really nothing to tie the two people together.

3. Technically, you could have two mentors, one to help you on the free software side, the other to help you on the making money as a game developer side, but on the other hand, the person making money on the game developer side doesn’t really share your moral compass, and would be like Luke Skywalker getting mentor ship from Darth Sidious.

So, anyway, I didn’t just want to make points, but rather ask people about their experiences either mentoring someone on a free software project, or being a mentee on a free software project. What did you get out of it? What did you not get out of it that you wish you would have gotten out of it? What do we as a free software community need to get from outside of it, without letting the experience ruin us and taking on some kind of warped value system (like proprietary software and hiding code from people for money)
User avatar
Jastiv
 
Posts: 285
Joined: 14 Mar 2011, 02:18
Location: Unitied States of America - East Coast

Re: Mentorship

Postby Julius » 10 Dec 2019, 15:24

Hmm, the closest is probably the mentoring that happens each year during the Google Summer of Code. A few FOSS game projects have participated in the past, so maybe worth asking there.
User avatar
Julius
Community Moderator
 
Posts: 3297
Joined: 06 Dec 2009, 14:02

Re: Mentorship

Postby smcameron » 10 Dec 2019, 16:55

It goes without saying that successful people have had good mentors.


Does it? Maybe it's true, but it does not really line up with my (obviously limited personal) experience and I can certainly think of some counter examples -- I think it would be tough to argue that someone like John Carmack was successful because of a mentor rather than due to raw talent combined with an intense work ethic. Most of the good programmers I know personally kind of had to figure things out for themselves, though this may be an artifact of my age, since my peers tend to have grown up in the '80s, when there was no web, and very few people even owned a computer, much less tried to program one.

In my own experience in computer programming (roughly 1983 to now) I can't really think of anyone I could call a mentor (OTOH, I suppose I'm not exactly successful either... but neither am I a failure, ha). During most of my career it seemed that I was at least as good as or better than my peers, and there was plenty of collaboration with and learning from peers, but nothing like a mentor. The exception to this was when I was at Google, I cannot say that I was as good or better than my peers there -- there plenty of people were much better than me, I felt like I was in the bottom half, maybe somewhere around the middle of the pack, (*seriously* smart people there). By then I had enough experience that I was the one expected to be a mentor to younger folks, and I tried to be, but I don't think I was particularly great at it. To some extent this is down to personality, I'm not naturally an outgoing, talkative person, rather the opposite, and while you probably don't need to be super outgoing to be a good mentor, it doesn't help to be the opposite.

That being said, working closely with a well matched peer is probably a good substitute for a mentor, certainly you will learn more than you would by working alone. In the early days of SNIS, say around the fall of 2013 and the spring of 2014, after the game became more or less playable, but before it had gotten very far along, a good friend became a strong collaborator, and we pushed each other in many ways to improve and learn, and because the game was not so far along, there were plenty of obvious things which needed to be done. If it had not been for that collaboration, the game would have likely remained a mostly 2D game without much in the way of OpenGL rendering rather than what it has become, and had it not been for that collaboration, I doubt I would have ended up working for Google for a time... not because it was directly applicable in any way (it wasn't), but more because of a mindset shift that wouldn't likely have occurred if I was working by myself. But that was definitely a peer relationship, neither of us was the other's mentor or protege (or we were each both?), and during that time we both learned a ton of new stuff. I suppose what I mean to say is, don't discount the value of a good peer relationship as a substitute for mentorship, however, such a relationship can be very tough to find, and if you find it, count yourself lucky.
smcameron
 
Posts: 377
Joined: 29 Oct 2010, 23:44

Re: Mentorship

Postby freemedia2018 » 11 Dec 2019, 02:57

A group of people can be as rewarding as a single good mentor, and much easier to find, but it's not always easy to get a group of people to act supportive in the way that a mentor is.

The element of friendly cooperation is alright, but sometimes a group gives up quickly and a mentor typically doesn't. People who are used to being let down would do better with a mentor-- or a very unusual group.

Most of what I've learned I either taught myself, got from books, or learned from interacting with a group. The rest I learned from trying to mentor. As with coding, you can learn a lot by trying.
freemedia2018
 

Re: Mentorship

Postby Technopeasant » 11 Dec 2019, 03:46

I am largely self taught too, but I did get a better formal grasp of coding concepts by taking online courses, so those are a good resource too. Platforms like edX also have discussion sessions where you can learn with other students and some instructors.

I had a mentor who helped me learn more about OpenGL programming, though that was more a fellow learner who was a few steps ahead of me.

smcameron {l Wrote}:
It goes without saying that successful people have had good mentors.
Does it? Maybe it's true, but it does not really line up with my (obviously limited personal) experience and I can certainly think of some counter examples -- I think it would be tough to argue that someone like John Carmack was successful because of a mentor rather than due to raw talent combined with an intense work ethic. Most of the good programmers I know personally kind of had to figure things out for themselves, though this may be an artifact of my age, since my peers tend to have grown up in the '80s, when there was no web, and very few people even owned a computer, much less tried to program one.


Well, Carmack did consider John Romero to be a superior programmer when he first met him, though Carmack quickly bounded over that gap, as was mutually acknowledged. Certainly the two pushed each other forward, as talked about in the book Masters of Doom, which is a good example of peer relationships.
User avatar
Technopeasant
 
Posts: 176
Joined: 22 Feb 2017, 03:38

Re: Mentorship

Postby Julius » 11 Dec 2019, 11:57

freemedia2018 {l Wrote}:The rest I learned from trying to mentor.


Important point I think, although maybe a bit off topic. Trying to teach something is often as beneficial in understanding to the wanna be teacher as it is to the student.
User avatar
Julius
Community Moderator
 
Posts: 3297
Joined: 06 Dec 2009, 14:02

Re: Mentorship

Postby Technopeasant » 24 Dec 2019, 22:30

Honestly, it does not even matter that much if the mentee is even interested, to an extent. One programming course I took made the valid point that just trying to arrange things in your head in order to communicate an idea to someone else helps you understand it better yourself, as you look at it from an outside perspective.
User avatar
Technopeasant
 
Posts: 176
Joined: 22 Feb 2017, 03:38

Re: Mentorship

Postby freemedia2018 » 26 Dec 2019, 16:55

Technopeasant {l Wrote}:One programming course I took made the valid point that just trying to arrange things in your head in order to communicate an idea to someone else helps you understand it better yourself, as you look at it from an outside perspective.


Teaching is a great way to learn-- even for a beginner. Obviously with a beginner you have to lower your expectations a little, but I like it better than just pairing everybody.
freemedia2018
 

Re: Mentorship

Postby drummyfish » 26 Dec 2019, 18:08

I'd love to do mentorship and I was once trying to organize an elementary school course of basics of computer science and maybe even simple programming, though it didn't happen in the end, so though I have many ideas, I have no practical experience in the end.

In my opinion the best form would be a group consisting of the mentor (or even two or three mentors) and a group of a few students (about 1 to 6).

Then I think it is very correct how you view the relationship, i.e. it is beneficial to everyone in the group -- the mentor(s) and the student(s). From this it follows that the traditional view employed in schools, i.e. the teacher is a "tool" everyone can "use" to learn stuff, the teacher is the responsible, the authority with privileged rights, is wrong. It should rather be this way:

The teacher chooses his students as well as the students choose their teachers. They're equal, there is equality between all members of the group -- it is just that some in the group have advanced knowledge (mentors) and some only sparse (students). The roles of the members then follow from this, i.e. teacher usually explain and students usually listen, but it can also be the other way around, as the student can happen to know something the teacher doesn't, or have something else that's important to share, e.g. feedback ("This way of explaining is difficult to grasp.", "This concept is simple, you can move on." etc.). But in the same way the mentor can give feedback to the students and ask things from them ("I don't want to be teaching this today.", "I need you to ask questions now." etc.).

For example I couldn't teach students that just want to learn something they aren't really interested in and only do it for their work, only learning as little as possible to pass. I don't like that and don't have that mentality myself so I can't think that way. I'd need my students to learn for the sake of learning, for the pure beauty of exploration, not for success or practical use, asking constantly "how can I use this in real life?". I'd simply refuse such students, and I might also refuse students that I can't very much get along with well or that I don't feel comfortable being around -- and of course I'd respect people refusing me as a mentor for similar reasons.
socialist anarcho-pacifist
Abolish all IP laws. Use CC0. Let's write less retarded software.
http://www.tastyfish.cz
User avatar
drummyfish
 
Posts: 448
Joined: 29 Jul 2018, 20:30
Location: Moravia

Re: Mentorship

Postby Lyberta » 27 Dec 2019, 09:08

Deleted.
Last edited by Lyberta on 01 Oct 2021, 05:29, edited 1 time in total.
Lyberta
 
Posts: 765
Joined: 19 Jun 2013, 10:45

Re: Mentorship

Postby freemedia2018 » 27 Dec 2019, 09:39

The generally accepted definition of "teacher" is "what a teacher ought to be."

Exceptions abound, obviously.
freemedia2018
 

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

cron