Right now, this is a basic Rails application, one tiny step removed from the end product of the "Intro to Rails" RailsBridge project. If you've been to a RailsBridge workshop, you probably have your own already.
I just came from mentoring at a RailsBridge event and I was frustrated that, at the end of the project, I couldn't think of a good, open-source Rails project to point our students to as an example of what might be "next" for them.
But I had an idea: as it happens, the company I work for needs something that sounds a little bit like Suggestotron -- well, like a "super Suggestotron" (hence the name of this repository).
Our team has these big, weekly meetings. Someone gives a short presentation, but then there's a lot of Q&A after. Most of our team are widely distributed, so we're streaming video and audio of the presentation. Currently, remote people ask questions in Campfire or maybe add them to a Google Doc, but both of those have problems.
What we need, is a way for people to submit questions and vote questions to the top of the list of questions to ask.
Sounds like Suggestotron, right? If you squint at topics, they are kind of like "questions", and we already have voting. We're almost there, right?
So, here's what I'll do:
- Make a list of things we'd like this app to do
- File Issues in this repository with those things
- Label each issue with helpful tags, like the likely difficulty level
This is where you get involved and help make things happen:
- Post a comment on an issue you want to work on, so we know what's up
- Fork the repository
- Submit a Pull Request
(If you're confused about forking and pulling on GitHub, check out Git-It which is a great introduction to git and GitHub.)
If you're a mentor, or not a novice Rails developer, you could help:
- See features that could use work? Submit more issues!
- Have new pull requests come in? Provide constructive feedback or a hearty 👍
- Have some time? You could volunteer to pair program with a beginner!
This is all new to me. It's very likely it won't work, for one reason or another. But I thought I'd give it a whirl. If nothing else, I'll learn something.