TIL I Suck at Hosting Workshops

16 April 2016

This is my report from our first Rust Lint Workshop. Short story short: We were only four people, and I ended up doing all the typing. So what went wrong?

First the low attendance was not a big surprise, because only five people had accepted and one of them had bailed the last time shortly before our meetup, so it was kind of expected they’d be missing too. Perhaps I should have advertised the workshop more, but I also have family and a full-time job.

The second was entirely my fault. I had prepared for talking a bit about how to write a lint and planned to give them a short rundown and let them figure it out, meanwhile I’d be running around and give advice where needed.

Instead I let myself talk into live-coding the lint myself, explaining what I did while I did it, somehow reducing my attention to what was actually happening because I was so preoccupied with both coding and explaining.

Note to self: Next time set an alarm to stop coding/explaining and ask someone else to take over the keyboard. At least I made a few typing mistakes which were pointed out quickly by those in attendance.

So first I’d like to apologize to Max, Vincent and Hanno, because I feel I’ve not been giving them what I should have. I’d also like to thank them to allow me to learn this lesson – next time, I’ll hopefully do it better.

Anyway, we ended up with two half-written lints and three more people who know how to write them, so the evening wasn’t a full disaster. I’ll clean up the code and put it on Github when I find the time.

(Incidentially I also fail at blogging, because this post didn’t appear on the first try. Go figure. The reason was I mistyped the filename. Thanks killercup for helping me out.)

Bonus: At least, here’s the clippy PR for the first lint.