Letter to Summer Students

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A Letter to Future Summer Students

On behalf of the Drasil team, we would like to extend a warm welcome to all future summer students. For the past few years, Drasil has been a home for many Undergraduate Researchers, especially those in first year. This contributor's guide is a product of all of the students working on Drasil, leaving advice, instructions, and tips whenever possible to help any future students who decide to work here. We personally had a great experience working on this project, and would like to leave some things we learned along the way to ensure that future students have a great experience as well. To future students, when you have finished your work on this repo, feel free to add your bits of advice at the bottom of this letter, and sign it with the year you worked here. We think it would be amazing to see all of the helpful tips and lessons passed on to new students, especially the accumulation of advice to advance this project even further.

One of the first lessons we learned here was to never be afraid to ask for help. Often, especially when starting, the sheer volume of Drasil's code base can overwhelm students who are new to programming in general. Thankfully, Dr. Carette, Dr. Smith, graduate students, and any other members of the Drasil team were always willing to help. If you ever get stuck on a tricky bit of code or a complex concept, drop a message in the Issue tracker. There will always be someone ready to help, so long as you ask for it. You can also tag people in issues (by using @Username) or assign issues to others and mark it with the question label. There are a lot of conceptual ideas within Drasil that might be hard to grasp, so we definitely recommend asking one of the professors or more experienced students about it.

When solving a problem, it is also a really good habit to come up with a solid design plan so that other contributor's can check your work. There are a lot of issues involving the design of Drasil, so communicating all steps of the problem-solving process helps to avoid conflicts within the code. Especially for more complex issues, make sure to clearly state your problem, possible solution designs, and then possible implementation of a solution.

Make this work your own! Some of the most satisfying work comes from solving problems that you found within Drasil. Actively seeking out issues that interest you helps you to learn more about the problem areas of Drasil, and gives you plenty of choice for things to work on. Treat it as you would a heavily-weighted school assignment, where you constantly look for possible improvements at all times. This also helps in learning more about software and programming in general. For example, I personally did not know the first thing about lensing, or that the concept even existed, but now I am able to use them comfortably because some of the issues I found required me to learn about them. Creating your own issues brings about a new kind of motivation to solve them and in my opinion made for a very enjoyable work experience. Furthermore, if you tend to gravitate to a certain kind of problem, try and find other problems similar to it! Drasil is a massive repo and its almost impossible to solve more than a few different kinds of issues at once. You can find more math-related issues like working with Expr, information related ones that deal with Chunks, or even documentation related ones (like writing this Wiki page). As an added bonus, working on similar things means you can have a central idea for a possible poster when the Annual Summer Undergraduate Research Poster Showcase rolls around in August. Actively progressing Drasil is really what contributions are all about.

The internet is your friend. Back on the topic of seeking help, you will also find yourself scrolling through various forums, documentation, and papers to understand the correct way to solve a problem. Fortunately, there are a wide variety of articles available, the closest being the Wiki. Side note: if you don't find what you are looking for in this wiki and feel that it should be added, feel free to do so, especially if it is Drasil related! Learning how to use the internet to effectively search for a certain topic is one skill that will definitely be used throughout the work term. There are plenty of free and independent resources available, so if something doesn't work out, try looking online. Stack overflow (and various other forums), Hoogle, Hackage, and Learn you a Haskell will be super helpful throughout your work term.

Sincerely, the students of Summer 2021.