SproutCore Mentoring

Interested in SproutCore mentoring for your team? Contact me at erich.ocean@me.com to get started. You can also reach me by phone at (323) 482-3204.

Since 2008, I've been doing SproutCore mentoring as a follow up to the SproutCore training classes I teach. Every project I have mentored has successfully shipped apps. I can help your team too.

What is mentoring?

Mentoring has three components: continuous code review, just-in-time help, and SproutCore fixes.

I review all SproutCore code and provide written feedback. This is a cost-effective way to solve the most difficult problem developers have with SproutCore: code that "works" but is nevertheless wrong. By having an experienced developer review code regularly, problems can be fixed early — before they infect the rest of the codebase.

Answering specific SC questions on-demand trains your developers when they are best able to learn. In my training, I teach how SproutCore code is developed at a high-level, but it's not possible to cover each individual situation a developer will encounter in a four-hour class. Mentoring provides targeted guidance to developers right when they need it.

If a bug needs to be fixed in SproutCore, I will fix the bug and submit a patch to the main distribution for possible incorporation in SproutCore. As one of the architects of SproutCore 1.0, I have a deep understanding of how SproutCore is supposed to work. Unfortunately, architecture and the reality of the codebase are not always in alignment, but your developers won't know when that happens. Instead, they'll spend enormous effort working around a SproutCore bug that would take me 5 minutes to discover and fix.

How much does mentoring cost?

Generally speaking, mentoring is a replacement for a junior SproutCore developer during the mentoring period (usually 1-3 months). Mentoring is billed at an hourly rate of $225/hour, though most days involve only around 10 minutes of actual mentoring per developer (and only 10 minutes would be billed). For a typical SproutCore team, plan on spending around $4K the first month, and less in subsequent months.

Once daily mentoring is no longer necessary (usually within 6-8 weeks), many companies choose to keep a mentoring contract open indefinitely with on-demand mentoring only.

Does my team qualify?

I only mentor teams that have already taken my SproutCore training class. It is essential that we have a shared vocabulary and understanding of how to develop a SproutCore application. If your team has not taken the class, we can do a special training session where we also examine your current codebase. This is usually very helpful to developers.

If your team has an existing SproutCore application, in some cases, it may be necessary for me to quickly re-factor the application in order to make forward progress. In my initial review of your codebase, I will provide a time estimate if this is necessary. Most apps can be refactored in about a day.

Questions?

Contact me at erich.ocean@me.com with any additional questions or to get mentoring for you or your team. You can also reach me by phone at (323) 482-3204.