[Development] Dev needs to be optimised

[TASSIA]

As said we have a separate server panel that is accessible and managable to a certain extend. The limit being access to the point where things can get even messier than they currently are and can cause confusion to infrastructure of the system.

I'm sorry you have had a bad experience with inactive developers being in "charge" of a certain department. But you have to understand that everyone has its expertise and experience with their subject. Whilst I praise the possibilty to widen and extend your coding capabilities and knowledge, it still has to be safe at the end of the day to secure the data. Which is one of the points for setting up a good workflow with reviews. Where such things can be resolved before reaching production. This is a much safer process of development and my reasoning for implementing it. This has nothing to do with enterprise standards. This is care a developer should have for it's work. Sure it might not be the quickest solution. But its the safest, and that is necessary for a community with a size like this.

I totally see your point and I mostly agree. In modern software development all projects should be having quality assurance via approvals, test suites, GitHub actions analyzing & linting the code, and more. However, I just don't think that FL really could benefit from this. As said, a simple linter that checks for syntax errors is fine. Anything beyond that, not really. You are messing with a gamemode that is more than 10 years, based on a special Lua variant, has been contributed by a dozen of developers, each using their own code style for a game whose internal libraries have been updated massively. The only way to really get a safe, clean and good code would be to literally make a new gamemode. Being against such strict enforcement has nothing to do with being careless. If I wouldn't care I would just bypass the system somehow or just stop developing. I just do think that this really stops developers from creating updates quickly. If you really want to check every PR, you can still disable your checks and check the code afterwards and then revert the merge if you find something odd. Or you can already take a look at the branchs commits while the update is still a work in progress.

I just know that if I'm staying up until 3 AM to finish an update for FL, I want to merge it. And I want to merge it as soon as I fixed the last bug. I do not want to wait for approvals for the code that I have been testing and debugging the past 16 hours.

As far as I'm aware you have reduced the amount of required reviews from 2 to 1, which tbf, I quite like. I think with one required review even I could agree with, but 2 was just completely overkill. Still I would an option, if not already in existence, to instantly merge a PR if it's marked as a hotfix. As said, one can always check on it the next morning.

The initial problems with git lfs was it being setup by someone who was new to LFS and didn't have the required experience to set this up, being one of the reasons why server maintenance has been assigned to DevOps.

As far as I know, the person who was setting it up was in the middle of improving it, when their SSH access got taken away and a new system was promised. This new system either hasn't arrived, or, as could be seen today, is also non-functional (or well, at least buggy).

You need to understand that some actions have been taken due to feedback from the community. The sole purpose of contributing is to take approved suggestions and implement them into the gamemode. When the community complains you have to take action and revert to how the system supposed to work. This is done via tickets so you have control on what goes in. I find it facinating how the owner and management barely has a say on what is being implemented just because there is no grip on development. This is not how it is supposed to work. You don't add features the client hasn't asked for?

Back in my day I had to ask permission for everything. Implementing new features were done via a teamviewer session on the owners pc. These days we have a lot more access, but still some things are not for us to decide.

I find it fascinating how apparently now the issue is the owner and "management" having no say on what is being implemented, while back in 2019 we had to literally beg "management" and admins for ANY form of feedback, usually with far less than 50% even just responding. Furthermore, I think strictly binding a developer to a single project/feature kills development too. If I'm being forced to work on a feature requested by the "management", I'd probably have close to 0 motivation. If, for example, I could properly talk with "management" about what they think is needed currently and about what I currently would like to work on, one could find a way better consensus, and it would allow developers to still choose the project they would like to work at. Most of the time, the projects developers want to work on actually are approved suggestions. But in the rare occasion of a developer bringing up a completely new idea, it usually also turns out quite well.

Also, I would never address as FL as "my client".

2nd chances exist to show that was you did was wrong and regret your actions. But still have the interest of helping my community with the skills and knowledge you possess. Same for me. It's not like I didn't had to earn this trust again.

Even outside enterprise it is important to respect each others expertises and knowledge. If that means it will be safer, its a far better solution. If you don't think thats top priority, I doubt your intensions.

My intentions are good. I've spent an average 6 hours a day for 2 months working on a brand new automated documentation system for the gamemode, so new contributor would find their way around easier. After getting essentially blanked by the "web developers" I literally just gave up. This was probably one of the most disappointing points during my time at FL. I was simply not trustworthy enough to receive web access (tbf: I received FTP web access a few months later, but was fed up then). And this has nothing to do with me not respecting another ones expertise or knowledge. Instead, I respected the expertise and knowledge of the current web developers (which actually was only moderately good).

If you genuinely prefer this "safer" solution, fair enough. But understand that I does not help in motivating free time developers. You should at least give developers that also are experienced in a specific area to branch out into that area.

I'm not saying that there is a lack of shell knowledge. I'm saying that there lies a lot more behind the shell that you might not have enough knowledge of. Setting up and managing a linux server goes far beyond basic shell operations. Mistakes made in this area can cause huge implications (data leaks or failure). When you have people on the team who actually have the knowledge and experience (cause it's their daily job) you'd have to respect that, especially when it's of high importance to keep it secure.

True.

I wad involved with the data recovery process. Most of it went lost or deemed unusable. The actual data recovery was unsuccessful. Almost everything was restored from off-site  backups or was reprogrammed.

Considering the forum and ingame data was essentially completely restored, I'd still call it a successful recovery, regardless whether the majority was restored off-site or reprogrammed.

Everything has it's reasons, being fair or not. We still have a community to serve at the end of the day, and we all have the intentention to this as good as possible.

I totally agree with you. I'm just not sure the way it is currently handled gives the best result.

In order to keep that going well, we all have our own expertises and roles within the team. A role we should stick to. Just because you're an admin, and you can code a little doesn't make you a programmer. But that doesn't mean you can't become one. The most beautiful thing about a community like this is the ability to contribute freely. Learn from each other, extend your horizon. But respect the knowledge one another has. Understand that some can have more knowledge about a certain subject, and it might be better to leave them to the more dangerious tasks.

This sounds like a great vision. Sadly, when I was at FL, this vision was far from becoming reality. Not sure how easy it is to actually get involved in a different area nowadays, but I've heard that admin-developer communication has increased a bit.

I contribute with this belief. I want to create a safe environment where we can connect and collaborate. Respect each other, and learn from them. Where you are free to express your expertise and share your knowledge. That is the community I found 9 years ago, and that is the community I keep fighting for.

Consider running for presidency.

Jokes aside, I like your vision. But literally taking developers accesses away, at least to me, feels more like disrespecting them, if anything.