Re:Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source S...
by kandeel4411 on Monday June 28, 2021 @11:16AM
(#27663014)
I agree, personally as a CS Student, I gave contributing to open source a shot and I felt like it really helped me a lot. Joining a project's slack, chatting with maintainers, developing features with docs and tests and code reviewing really makes you feel like you're an actual software engineer. It gave me quite the confidence boost that I can do this after years of internship rejections and never knowing what I was doing wrong.
I'd recommend it for someone/student who feels like their technically competent but never got the chance to work with an already built codebase and a team because it really puts you up to the test.
Open source projects do not, and have never, gone out of their way to teach these things.
Ofc doing it for a grade is silly
But if you contribute to open source, you must follow the etiquette or your PR is denied etc.
What inexperienced programmers get from open source is that experience where they better learn how to fit in effectively, or they get bounced.
In the nicest possible way, open source is a great way for people on the HS/college track to take responsibility for themselves.
It doesn't require much active effort on the part of the open source community to deny a PR or exclude a bad apple if that makes sense.
And I'd say the majority of open source communities long ago put systems in place to deal with bad apples (or should have).