Exercism desperately needs Rust mentors

1

Hi, people. I have been learning Rust with the help of Exercism.

It's a fun way to learn a new language. I recommend it for any Rust newbie like me.

That said, I am waiting more than a week for a mentor to review the last submission of mine, so I asked Exercism admins for help. That was the answer:

"We don't have many Rust mentors but they have hundreds of solutions per week to review. We desperately need more Rust mentors."

So, I am asking you guys to join Exercism as a way to foster Rust community growth. Exercism tasks are fun, short exercises easy to review for any Rust programmer.

Thank you.

https://exercism.io/mentor/registrations/new

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2

Ok, I wouldn't mind to mentor people on exercism, but since I'm not a rust expert, I will first follow the mentored track myself. Just subscribed. If I feel comfortable after that I will mentor.

3

That's exactly what I plan to do myself, najamelan. I remember from the time when I was learning C++ that helping other people was a great way to polish my own knowledge.

Thank you very much.

4

I had heard of Exercism but never really looked into it; I guess it's time to mentors.add(self), then :slight_smile:

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5

Thanks for posting this. It's sad that there's a lot of solutions remaining in the queue for a long time. Added myself and invited a friend of mine! :smiley:

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6

I shall be joining the legion, too. Let's clean up that backlog!

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Thank you for the heads up! I just joined and mentored a couple of waiting solutions.

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I kinda want to mentor as well, but figure I should complete the track first... which exerbates the problem for now, but should help in the long run! Thanks to everyong who's mentoring already :slight_smile:

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9

FWIW, you can follow the Rust track yourself and mentor solutions to exercises you've already completed simultaneously. I've just become a mentor even though I've only solved about 40% of all Rust exercises.

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10

From reading Exercism -- it's not clear to me: are mentors paid or is this purely volunteer work?

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11

Fairly possible that I'll go the same way, since the last lessons look like something I should yet learn, but at the first steps I perhaps could be useful even now. Thanks for noting this!

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Since students don't pay for their lessons, it's unlikely that there are funds to pay mentors. I presume that it's volunteer work, giving back to the greater Rust community. In a way that's similar to what Rustaceans do when they answer queries in this forum.

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13

To the best of my knowledge:

I think the difference here is

  • volunteer work for a community VS
  • volunteer work for a company w/ employees
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14

That's good information, I'll do that, thanks!

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"volunteer work for a company"? Please allow me to disagree. To me it sounds more like "volunteer work for the community thru a company". Yes, that company makes money, much like StackExchange makes money. I see no problem with that, as long as they do their job.

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I got my exercise reviewed by a mentor. I think that backlog is diminishing right now.

You guys are making a difference. Thank you very much for such a generous response.

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17

That said, as far as I can tell, we still need more volunteers!

My first weekly mentoring report is in, and:

  • New solutions submitted: 961
  • Solutions submitted for mentoring: 255
  • Total solutions mentored: (by all) 114
  • Current queue length: 587

This means the queue length has grown by up to 141! ("up to" because some of the submitted solutions may have been retracted)

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I am NOT attacking Exercism's business model.

I had to spend time on my own to figure out that:

  • Exercism appears to be a for-profit company
  • Edercism does not appear to pay Mentors

I think these are two relevant facts that others in the community may also find useful before deciding whether to join Exercism or not.

19

I hardly see anything to substantiate this claim.

  • Wikipedia describes the organization as not-for-profit.
  • Searches for "exercism income statement," "exercism business model," or anything of the sort come up bone dry.

Viewing the LinkedIn page as logged off on my phone, it shows 5 of the employees' names and "positions" at LinkedIn. These positions are:

  • Kotlin Mentor
  • Java and Kotlin mentor
  • (blank)
  • Software Developer/Web Developer
  • Volunteer Rust Mentor & Maintainer

All but the fourth one are currently employed in at least one other corporation on their profile, and the fourth one only has non-business engagements listed. As far as I can tell, these are not people making income related to Exercism. They are people who wanted to put something on their resume.

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Students don't pay for the service, the privacy policy states they don't distribute user info to 3rd parties, and there are no ads, so how could they generate income?

I don't think there is anything nefarious or untoward going on with exercism.