Hello,
I’m very glad that summer of Nix is happening this year again, I feel that it is a very good opportunity for new people that want to learn Nix to do it in great conditions.
I really like teaching, especially Nix and I have acquired a lot of experience in the domain by writing teaching material and giving Nix formations in professional contexts.
I am also an experienced NixOS developer and I have the commit bit on nixpkgs, which makes me a good candidate, I think.
However, I don’t want to “facilitate mobs”. This is not the way I work. I don’t think mobs are an effective way to learn something as challenging as Nix. I think mob programming makes it easy to think you understand something when you are actually very dependent on your teammates. I don’t like that mob programmers are taking very short shifts of code, as learning requires sustained concentration. Learning Nix requires to be able to think by yourself, to take the time needed to find the way forward and make it “click”. This is of course only my opinion, and also a matter of personal preference, but I am not willing to teach this way.
As a consequence, I am a candidate to be a SoN facilitator, but I do not intend to manager my “team” as a mob. I would instead provide 1 to 1 mentorship to help each member of my team reach their potential by adapting myself to their level and learning methods, and make them package projects adapted to their level.
I understand if that makes my application moot, but I am not sure to understand why the SoN organization is making such a structural choice on how mentors should handle their mentee.