Interview with Angela Byron

We interviewed Drupal core developer and Lullabot team member Angela Byron, apropos of the upcoming O'Reilly Drupal Book titled 'Practical Drupal'.

You can visit Angela Byron's drupal.org profile by clicking here.

In this interview, you will learn about the upcoming Drupal book, and how to learn Drupal most effectively.

How did you become a member of the Drupal community? How did you get to know Drupal?

I was a Google Summer of Code student for Drupal back in 2005, and developed the Quiz module for Drupal 4.7. I hadn't even installed Drupal before that (I had only vaguely heard of it because of the SpreadFirefox.com project), so I needed to jump up a pretty steep learning curve very, very quickly -- my project had to be completed in only 2 months, which meant I needed to not only understand Drupal but also its APIs, how the hook system worked, what the heck CVS was, the whole shebang.

Hands-down, the only way this was even possible was for me to dig in and get involved in the community. It sounds a bit backwards -- how can I get involved in the community when I don't know anything yet? -- but it really worked for me.

• I would idle in #drupal-support and on the forums, reading the questions people posted, and then try and figure them out. This exposed me to a variety of Drupal modules, administration areas, and problems I was likely to encounter, right away.
• I also hung out on the Drupal issue queue and in #drupal, taking the same approach of looking for things I could possibly help with and digging in and trying to figure them out. Like with support questions, this exposed me to much of the Drupal API and internals very quickly.
• Every time I came across something that wasn't documented and I had to figure out myself, I'd write it up in a handbook page. This both cemented the knowledge in my head (since I had to explain it well enough that other people would get it), and made it so that I'd never have to figure that stuff out again. ;)

These things together accomplished what was the most important thing for launching me on my way up the learning curve: they established me as a contributor to the project, rather than a user. This meant that people would spend a lot more time helping me when I had a question, because they knew that the knowledge imparted would end up funneled back into the project in some way. The contribution aspect also made learning Drupal a lot more fun (almost addictive), as I felt that with every new thing I learned, I gained more power to improve things, and I was also making lots of new friends along the way. :)

What major roles are you taking in the community at the moment?

Let's see... I code and test/review patches, I develop modules and themes, I do community outreach kinds of stuff, some graphic design and usability stuff, training and developer/user support, I'm on the site admin team, the documentation team, the security team, and the Drupal Association Board of Directors. Basically, if there's a way to beinvolved in Drupal, I'm doing it, or at least trying. :)

Of those, the two biggest general roles I guess would be quality assurance for Drupal core (I'm that annoying person who finds bugs inperfectly good patches, and chimes in about missing documentation or lack of coding standards ;)), and organizing various efforts that help get new contributors involved, such as Drupal's participation in Google Summer of Code.

What topics are to be dealt with in your upcoming book and from what aspects? Who will be the authors?

Previous Drupal books have dealt with core, either from a super beginner standpoint or from a super developer standpoint. Practical Drupal will be aiming at the middle segment: people who already somewhat familiar with Drupal (though there's the token chapter for those who aren't) and want to know how to extend it with the rich library of contributed modules. It's a hands-on recipe-driven book, showcasing various contributed modules in each chapter like CCK, Views, and Organic Groups, and how to combine them together in order to solve “real world” problems.

Almost all of the Lullabot team is co-authoring the book: Nate Haug, Addison Berry, James Walker, Jeff Robbins, Jeff Eaton, and myself, along with Robert Douglass and Matt Westgate acting as technical authors. We each have expertise in different parts of Drupal and the goal is to combine that collective experience together in one place.

What will be the level of difficulty of the book? Will it be appropriate for beginners too or only for advanced people?

This book is mainly geared towards beginner-to-intermediate Drupal folks, but there are some developer tips and tricks, too. The subject matter is of interest to pretty much everyone though, since the book intends to answer the question, “What modules should I use to do X?” which everyone from absolute newbies to super hackers need to know.

How many pages will the book have?

We're shooting for around 500. Big enough to fend off intruders with a good thwap to the head, while small enough to carry around in a backpack without a great deal of aches and pains. :)

When will it be published? Is there a possibility to order it in advance?

Our final deadline is summer of 2008, though we're hoping to get the book finished sooner than that. I believe it'll go to print a month or two after O'Reilly receives the final manuscript. I'm not sure if it's possible to order in advance, but I'd suggest keeping an eye on The Lullabot Blog where we'll be posting updates as we know more.

Are you planning the actualisation of your book titled 'Pro Drupal Development' to the Drupal 6?

That's actually not my book, that's Matt Westgate's book. ;) But I spoke to him and he said that it's still a bit up in the air whether or not there'll be a Drupal 6 version.

If someone will start learning Drupal now what method and sources would you recommend for them? How much time is it to get to a level where one can take easier Drupal tasks? And what sources would you recommend to an advanced developer who want to get to a higher level?

For developers with a PHP background, I would definitely recommend Pro Drupal Development. This book does a tremendous job of imparting architectural things that are very hard to grasp otherwise. The api.drupal.org site is also invaluable.

For new users, there's the new “Getting Started” guide in the Drupal handbooks which is a nice, concise collection of all the stuff you need to know to start understanding how Drupal works. The handbook in general has some great information in it, though sometimes you have to hunt for it a bit.

As far as a time line for learning all this goes, it's really up to the individual, what previous experience they have, and what they are trying to do with Drupal. I think most people spend a few weeks being really frustrated before they get a nice “ah-HA!” moment and start understanding it and getting excited.

But I can guarantee that whatever your personal time line for learning is, getting involved in the community will shorten it dramatically. See question #1 for tips. ;)

Have videorecordings been made of the Lullabot trainings that had been held earlier? If not, are you planning to produce such videorecordings? The number of the participants of the course is limited but anyone could get access to the recording.

We've had video cameras at our workshops before, but the thing is that watching 60+ hours' worth of video from one single vantage point at the back of the room is not quite as fun, nor as educational, as you'd ideally like to think. :) Training DVDs that are more condensed versions of stuff that the workshops cover are on our radar, however.

What is your favourite new feature in Drupal 6?

Wow, this one is hard. But I guess I'd have to say the new Schema API. This both opens the door for contributed modules to be used with multiple database platforms with minimal effort by the maintainer (no more messy code in install hooks that checks if the database type is pgsql and then runs a different CREATE TABLE statement.. yuck!). And because we now have meta data about tables, we were able to document the entire Drupal 6 database schema right in core, which means we can auto-generate documentation which will greatly increase developer understanding of the internal workings of Drupal going forward.

Thank you very much for the interview! I hope you will remain a member of the Drupal community for a long time.

Thank you! And yep, I'm not planning on going anywhere until they get sick of me. ;)