I often hear from people who want to know how to test, where to find ideas for programs to write to become better developers, and how extreme programming works. It's pretty easy to give advice, especially since the answers are similar.
I also have too many ideas for interesting projects to write anytime soon.
Conventional open source wisdom says "Write some code yourself. Make sure it solves a real problem. Release it with sufficient cleanliness and documentation and utility that other people will find it useful but not so that they won't write patches." That's good advice.
I'm starting to wonder if both of my problems might solve each other. Instead of simply giving advice and saying "Good luck finding a place to use it", could I provide a real project where people could apply my advice? Instead of having all of these ideas but not enough time to implement them sufficiently to attract helpers, could I write story cards and acceptance tests to guide helpers into implementing things?
If I wrote up a couple of ideas for a small game project and broke it up into small pieces, could I attract enough people to implement a couple of tasks apiece? It seems like the idea is worth a try.
