access to professional libraries etc

[Johannes Zarl-Zierl]

Hi Lydia,

On Sonntag, 17. Mai 2020 13:26:54 CEST Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> One thing that came up as
> an additional venue to explore is access to professional libraries,
> like O'Reilly's video and book library. I'd like to know if this is
> something you are interested in and if so which kind of content from
> which provider you'd be interested in.

A short look at https://www.oreilly.com/online-learning/ doesn't really give 
an overview over the available materials, and I'm not familiar with the 
offering myself. This makes it kind of hard to give some meaningful feedback.

>From what I can see, though, O'Reilly's online learning platform would 
probably work best to improve community skills if we create a set of 
"recommended skills" (maybe even create some badges/achievements to collect).
This would allow newcomers to quickly get up to speed...

Regarding the "which kind of content you'd be interested in", IMO these are 
some topics that should be covered in some way (obviously I'm coming at this 
from a programmer point of view):

# For beginners:
- Some solid introduction on modern C++
- Programming with Qt (obviously)

# Intermediate:
- Debugging (something like "Why programs fail" by Andreas Zeller):
  Having a mental model for debugging is an invaluable resource for every
  programmer.
- Basics for API design:
  I've seen too many APIs where people "learned on the job".
- Working effectively with legacy code (cmp. the book by Micheal C. Feathers)
  If a codebase is lucky, it will eventually become legacy code. If not, it
  will no longer be used/usable.
- Generally any materials that focus on the "why" rather than the "what"
  As we all know, there is usually more than one way to achieve something.
  Telling a good design from a bad one, or a okayish design from a horrible
  one is a skill that is often learned by experience.
  For C++, CppCon videos tend to cover this area to some extent, but I'm not
  sure how accessible they are to people new to programming or C++.

On a less technical note, materials on community building, project 
organisation for FLOSS projects, and technical writing seem like a good start.

Cheers,
  Johannes