I have had the experience to introduce a new programmer to our main application at work. It was quite interesting.
First, I showed him the application myself. I went through all the sections as a user trying to give him the sense of the work flow used in the application. Afterwards, I told him to have a look by himself as a user of the application. I gave him some links to look for to get more documentation about the tools we use for managing the project: version control system, bug tracking, time sheet application.
After a while, I told him to have a look at the code and the structure. He came back to me not long after asking me when he would start working on the application. I think looking at the code was too boring for him. I quickly gave him a simple task, some bugs to check out and correct. I could see that he was more motivated working on something.
This has led me to ask myself how should we introduce new programmers our projects. We will have to find a good way to do it because we are on the verge of hiring many more programmers. It would be interesting if we could get them to be quickly productive.
I think the simple task approach could be a good start. Each new programmers would have to complete a simple task. I think the task should also involves many different concepts like modifying the database structure or using and adding new localized expressions so that they can get more familiar with the whole. This is probably unrealistic because those kinds of tasks are pretty spare right now. We could always create some useless tacks but that will not be much productive and it might not motivate the new programmers. I will have to think about this once more.
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