No apparent elementary developer knowledge sharing hub

[Craig Weber]

There doesn't appear to be any sort of wiki or StackExchange-esque site for developers to share their knowledge outside of the #elementary-dev channel. It seems to me a good investment to set something up through the elementary website for developers to post wiki tutorials and ask/answer questions. For instance, I'm learning Vala for the purposes of Elementary App development and I'm blogging small tutorials along the way; however, those tutorials won't have the exposure to other Elementary developers as they would if they were integrated into the official Elementary site.

Additionally, neither Vala nor the Elementary tools are particularly well-documented, and specific articles of information are hard to come by. Also, I understand that there is an effort to put together some sort of Elementary Developer guide. It seems to me that the whole developer community (and of course the users by proxy) would benefit if Elementary developers could participate in the work of educating new would-be Elementary Devs.

Finally, as there isn't a strong resource for Vala information sharing, an Elementary Developer site could meet that need, and in turn expose Vala-learners to the Elementary platform, including its well-designed/developed toolsets, philosophy, and methodology. I think there is a lot of opportunity for the Elementary platform right now, and we should take advantage of it while it's still here.

[Fabian Thoma (fabianthoma)]

Hi Craig,

thanks for reporting this bug, it's a thing that's been long on our TODO List, and we really want to improve the experience for developers, however this also needs the attention of developers to write and maintain Tutorials and Guides, for which we simply don't have the time if we ever want to see a Luna release.
However our devs always provide help in #elementary-dev on the freenode IRC Server, just ask people there if you run into vala problems.
As you stated you are writing small tutorials and we'd love to include them on our new Sites development Section, so we will for sure get in contact with you if you'd like that.

[Kiran Hampal (khampal)]

There's a developers guide in progress which will be copied over to the new site when done too. :)
We're also considering using an answers like system but for developers only.

[Craig Weber (weberc2)]

Hi Fabien,

I'm aware of the #elementary-dev channel (and I should start using it more); however, I think it would be beneficial to implement some sort of knowledge sharing site to make that information more permanent. If for no other reason than to adhere to the Don't Repeat Yourself principle (the devs needn't be bothered multiple times to answer the same question).

Additionally, I'm aware of the Developer's Guide which will be, no doubt, a great tool as there isn't a lot of information readily available outside #elementary-dev; however, I think many of us will be able to cover a greater range of topics in more detail than the comparatively few developers who are working on the Developer's Guide. Additionally, those of us who aren't contributing to a Luna project can do this work and take a large part of the knowledge-sharing burden. This is especially true because a lot of the information that needs to be propagated is entry-level, and many of us fit that bill a lot more so than the luna devs. This means Luna-devs can be free to work on their respective projects and the rest of us can be working more closely to our immediate maximum potential, thereby improving everyone's efficiency.

Of course, that doesn't take into account the obvious cost of the web devs' time; however, it seems this could be a very advantageous next step for the whole project.

Anyway, I'd happily republish my tutorials on your site. Honestly, I'm terribly excited for both Vala and the Elementary project and I'd like to see them both advanced quickly. :)