Mentoring tips (#426)

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Author: bobahop

mentoring/README.md

@@ -8,3 +8,4 @@ Welcome to the Exercism Mentoring Team. Follow the links below for guides on how
 - [How to give feedback on representations](/docs/mentoring/how-to-give-feedback-on-representations)
 - [How to use Markdown in mentoring](/docs/mentoring/markdown)
 - [The Mentoring Mindset](/docs/mentoring/mindset)
+- [Mentoring Tips](/docs/mentoring/tips)

mentoring/config.json

@@ -53,5 +53,13 @@
     "path": "mentoring/mindset.md",
     "title": "The Mentoring Mindset",
     "blurb": "An examination of the mentoring mindset"
+  },
+  {
+    "uuid": "2a0477c1-9638-43ac-a5bc-8b82826caaed",
+    "section": "mentoring",
+    "slug": "tips",
+    "path": "mentoring/tips.md",
+    "title": "Mentoring Tips",
+    "blurb": "An assortment of tips for mentoring"
   }
 ]

mentoring/tips.md

@@ -0,0 +1,219 @@
+# Mentoring Tips
+
+## Mentoring Notes
+
+One of the biggest helps to mentoring can be to have a file to hold notes for each exercise you mentor.
+You may find that many solutions can benefit from the same suggestions, so, by keeping notes,
+you don't need to keep writing up the same suggestions from memory.
+And, by having the suggestions in one place, you can keep refining them over time to make them clearer.
+
+If you're not sure how to get started with your notes, you may find a `mentoring.md` file for your track's
+exercise under [exercism/website-copy/tracks][website-copy].
+If it exists, it may include examples of reasonable solutions, along with common suggestions and talking points
+to prompt further discussion.
+If it doesn't exist, you may want to go back and create one after you've made your own file of notes for that exercise.
+
+Also, even if you only mentor one language now, you may mentor more in the future.
+It may help to organize your mentoring notes by track as well as by exercise name, as different tracks will likely require
+different suggestions for the same exercise.
+
+Mentoring notes are handy, whether you mentor the exercise frequently or infrequently.
+If you mentor the exerise frequently, it saves a lot of typing from scratch, when you can just copy-and-paste from your notes.
+If you mentor the exerise infrequently, it can remind you of suggestions to make that you may have forgotten in the weeks or months
+since you last mentored it.
+
+It's okay for mentoring notes to differ between mentors.
+Here is one way to structure them, but it is not the _only_ way.
+
+Congratulate the mentee on passing the tests (if they passed them).
+
+If the exercises has been sitting in the queue for a few days, maybe address that with something like:
+
+>Sorry it took a while for someone to get back to you.
+>There is currently a shortage of active JavaScript mentors for `Resistor Color Duo`.
+
+Itemize what you like about the mentee's solution.
+For example:
+
+- I like this solution is succinct and readable.
+
+- I like the use of `indexOf`.
+
+- I like this uses the `(first * 10) + second` approach to avoid casting between number to string back to number.
+
+- I like this does not use looping/iteration.
+
+- I like the destructured parameter.
+
+Next could come your frequent suggestions.
+
+~~~~exercism/note
+It can be very helpful for the mentee if a link is provided for each new language feature you introduce.
+For example:
+
+>It's not necessary for this exercise, but perhaps consider converting the function to an [arrow function](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Functions/Arrow_functions).
+~~~~
+
+Although we don't want to give away the solution, sometimes a mentee learns best by example.
+To put a snippet of code in a collapsed details section can provide that example, which the mentee can choose to expand or not.
+For example:
+
+<details><summary>Spoiler Example</summary>
+
+<pre>
+
+export const decodedValue = ([firstColor, secondColor]) =>
+  COLORS.indexOf(firstColor) * 10 + COLORS.indexOf(secondColor)
+
+</pre>
+
+</details>
+
+Toward the end of the notes you might include a link to a published solution which represents the suggestions in full.
+
+At the very bottom of your notes you may want to put extended explanations that mentees sometimes ask for.
+These explanations don't come up often, but it can still be good to record them the first time you use them,
+so the next time, which could be weeks or months away, you won't have to come up with the explanation from scratch.
+For example, sometimes a mentee will ask about how the multiplication approach would work for Resistor Color Duo
+if black was the first band for a leading zero:
+
+>Black for a first band is a good point to consider, so let's consider it.
+>The resister color is meant to represent the amount of ohms for the resistor,
+>and a leading zero would not be used for a multi-band resistor.
+>So black would not be a first band.
+>Besides, `parseInt` or `Number` will also remove the leading zero.
+
+An optional cateory of data to keep in mentoring notes is a record of benchmarks for various solutions or approaches.
+
+## Benchmarking
+
+A common concern for mentees is how performant their solution is.
+This is especially the case for "lower-level" languages such as C, C++, Go, and Rust.
+Along with how idiomatic their code is, mentees of other languages are also often concerned with the efficiency of their code.
+
+~~~~exercism/notes
+Benchmarking is not something that a mentor is _expected_ to do.
+However, mentees are often particularly impressed by how a benchmark of their solution compares with other approaches.
+~~~~
+
+Go is a particularly friendly track for benchmarking, as benchmarks are often included in the test file.
+Other languages may require some research to determine what method would work best for you.
+For instance, if you only use the online editor, then you would be looking for a place to run benchmarks online.
+For example, [JSBench.me][jsbench-me] is an online benchmarker for JavaScript.
+
+If you run code locally, then you have the option of downloading benchmarking software you can run on your machine.
+For example, Rust can use [Criterion][criterion], or [cargo bench][cargo-bench] with [benchmark tests][rust-benchmark-tests].
+
+There are at least a couple ways to keep track of benchmarks.
+One way is to keep a running list of all the ones you benchmark, but that can get unwieldy if the list gets long.
+Another way is to keep a list of repesentative benchmarks for different approaches.
+Mentees often want to see the code for the faster approaches, so if a faster approach is published,
+it will likely be much appreciated to provide the link to it.
+
+~~~~exercism/caution
+If providing a link to a solution you benchmarked, be sure to provide a link to the published solution and not to the mentoring session.
+Not all solutions that are mentored get published.
+~~~~
+
+## Mentoring Notes That Are Not Exercise-Specific
+
+There may be some features of the language that you find addressing for more than one exercise.
+When about to copy-and-paste a suggestion from one file to another, perhaps consider putting it into its own file instead.
+Again, a benefit for keeping a suggestion in one place is to make it easier to refine over time.
+It also makes it easier to find when using it for an exercise you haven't used it before.
+Rather than trying to remember in which exercise you addressed the suggestion before,
+you can go right to the suggestion's own file.
+
+## When a Mentee Has a Question
+
+Mentees are encouraged to specify what they expect to get from the mentoring session.
+They will often express that in the form of a question.
+If the question is something for which you don't know the answer and are not interested in,
+it is okay to leave the mentoring request for another mentor.
+
+If you don't know the answer but want to find it, then it may be best to not pick up the mentoring request until you've learned the answer.
+If the mentoring request is gone by that time, at least you've learned something and didn't make the mentee wait.
+
+One exception to this may be if the mentoring request has already been in the queue for several days or longer.
+In that situation you may want to pick up the mentoring request and give what feedback you can,
+and let the mentee know you will get back to them on their question.
+Of course, it is important to follow up on that, either to inform the mentee of the answer, or to let them know you couldn't find it.
+If you couldn't find the answer, it may be helpful to the mentee to describe what ways you took to try to find the answer.
+The mentee may respond with other ways to try to find the answer.
+Between the two of you, the answer may be found.
+
+If you have exhausted every way you know of to find the answer, you can suggest the mentee end the discussion and resubmit their request
+on the chance that another mentor may provide the answer.
+If they care to, the mentee can post on the ended discussion to share the answer with you once they learn it.
+And likewise, if you learn the answer later, you can go back to the ended discussion and let the mentee know.
+
+If you do know the answer and want to address it, a good place to do so is in between telling the student what you like about their solution
+and offering suggestions for other approaches.
+
+### Failing Code
+
+Code can fail either because it does not pass all the tests or because it doesn't compile or satisfy the interpreter.
+
+Different mentors will have varying inclinations and/or patience for dealing with failing code, which may somewhat depend on how it is presented,
+as failing code is not always presented in the same way.
+
+Sometimes a mentee will try say that they tried another approach and it didn't work, and they will ask why it didn't work.
+The code may not even be provided, or it may be posted in a practically unreadable comment instead of in an iteration.
+
+A solution tested in the web editor can only be submitted for a mentoring request if it has passed all the tests.
+One of the reasons is so the mentor can focus on suggesting improvements or other approaches to the existing working code.
+_Debugging_ code is not necessarily something a mentor wants or is expected to do.
+However, a failing solution submitted through the CLI can be submitted for a mentoring request, with the student asking for help to solve it.
+
+If the failing code has not been provided, and the described failing approach does not sound like a good one, it may be enough to suggest that,
+instead of using the failing approach, another approach could be one that is neither the failed approach or the one they used that did pass.
+Or it may be enough to explain why the approach they used is better than the failed approach,
+without getting into the details of what bug was in the failed approach.
+
+For example, a common occurrence is mentees having trouble with Robot Name.
+Either the tests time out or they fail to generate enough names, and they want to know how to fix it.
+If you have the inclination and the patience, you can certainly analyze their code and suggest how to address the problem.
+Or you can explain that checking randomly generated names causes more collision as more names are generated,
+and suggest that another approach could be to generate the names sequentially and then shuffle them.
+
+If the failing code has been pasted into a practically unreadable comment,
+you may want to give what feedback you can on the passing solution,
+and suggest they submit the comment code as another iteration.
+You can also suggest that the mentee then check the errors for the failing iteration as a guide to where the problem is.
+
+If the code is in a failing iteration, then it can be helpful to direct the mentee to check the errors for the test run.
+Some languages need a bit more guidance on how to read errors or test results than others.
+It may be helpful to quote one or more parts of the errors and explain to the student what is meant.
+
+Ultimately, it is not the mentor's responsibility to fix the mentee's failing code,
+but the mentor, if they want to, can suggest ways to the mentee for fixing it themselves.
+
+## Dealing with the Queue Continuum
+
+It may be that you sign on to mentor a track, but you never see any exercises in its queue to mentor.
+You may think that something is wrong, but there are at least a couple reasons for this.
+One reason is that people may not be requesting mentoring on the track for now.
+Sometimes a track may have periods of inactivity.
+Another reason is that other mentors may be picking up the requests before you see them.
+This is likely to happen for a popular track that has many active mentors.
+
+If there are many requests in the queue, there are a few ways to approach mentoring them.
+You may want to work from the oldest to the newest, so those who've waited the longest are dealt with first.
+Or, you may choose to work from the newest to oldest, especially if the oldest have already been waiting a long time.
+That way, people who have been recently active don't have to wait for the backlog to be handled.
+
+If there are multiple requests for the same exercise, you may want to work through them in batches of the same exercise to maintain focus,
+as opposed to going from exercise A to exercise B back to exercise A.
+
+It may be that a request for an exercise that you are not interested in has been sitting there for days or weeks.
+You can choose to not address it in hope that another mentor will pick it up, or it may serve as motivation to give the exercise a try yourself.
+One thing that may be helpful is to look at the submitted solution.
+It may use an approach that you hadn't thought of, and that approach may make solving the exercise more attractive to you.
+But, if you look at the code and are still not interested in solving the exercises, there is no harm done.
+Just because you look at a mentoring request doesn't mean you have to click the "Start mentoring" button.
+
+[website-copy]: https://github.com/exercism/website-copy/tree/main/tracks
+[jsbench-me]: https://jsbench.me/
+[criterion]: https://crates.io/crates/criterion
+[cargo-bench]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/commands/cargo-bench.html
+[rust-benchmark-tests]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/unstable-book/library-features/test.html