They're pretty annoying. If they want to get feedback, maybe make it prominent on the front page, but to have it right there on every single page - occasionally covering up other things - it's really obnoxious.
Yes. Don't be a jerk. Even knowing that it isn't technically difficult, it can be socially difficult, and this is a useful guide. Knowing the social protocol of how to get started in the community lowers the mental barrier substantially.
Stereotypically it's not very easy. Open source projects are frequently schizophrenic about the code they will accept, saying one day that it's a great idea and the next day rejecting your patch because it's not something they want to do. (This is standard for multi-agent systems, but it's still quite discouraging.) And then there are the attitudes involved. To say nothing of the overall difficulty of writing software.
It's not merely a question of needing to be told that it's easy to contribute. That's not even the right way of looking at it. The question is whether it is easy at all, and I say no. If someone told me it was easy to contribute to open source software I'd know they were either lying or delusional.
I've found few projects that are even close to schizophrenic.
I think the thing that people often miss is that getting a patch that works is really only 50% of the process of getting a bug fix/feature merged into an Open Source project.
In a company, the hiring process is an initial crap filter (or at least is supposed to be). In an Open Source project, the filters work very differently. You won't find a lot of (community driven) projects that spend a lot of effort putting together detailed documentation about how to build a project and submit patches. That's because figuring this out is the first level filter.
The second level filter is figuring out the architecture of the project. This can be difficult in a subtle way. In a company, you can usually sit in a conference room and have someone explain to you all of the details of the project such that you have a pretty good idea of how a patch or feature should be implemented.
In most Open Source projects, you generally have to code up an initial version of the feature and then you'll attract enough eyes that you'll get the feedback about how to do the feature properly. If you're a long term contributor, you skip most of these steps and the process is fast. If you've never contributed before, it's almost certainly going to take a lot of effort.
It's all about scalability. Open Source projects significantly reward people that are self motivated and can figure processes out without a lot of hand holding because that's the type of person you need to build a successful project when there aren't any managers, program managers, or formal architects.
I think that's probably the biggest value of the proposed plan. If someone has gotten 50 patches into a major project, it says a lot more about the individuals personality and motivation than it does about their programming skills.
That's because figuring this out is the first level filter.
Absolutely not. It's because it's boring and it's time for bed now so let's do that tomorrow. Eventually it does get done, though; all the big-name open source projects have this sort of documentation available.
(And now, thanks to Github and the implicit fork-and-pull-request model, so does almost everything else. Reuse++!)
Don't get me wrong, I think the plan would work just fine. I just don't buy the view that it's easy contribute to open source projects. It's not, nor should it necessarily be.
Not really. You are confusing code and ideas. People like to discuss what they "will do" or what they are "almost done" with, and these ideas get approved and rejected fairly arbitrarily. But small, simple, easy-to-understand patches that come with a test case? Thanks, applied. Always.
If you are getting a lot of pushback on your changes ("it's not indented right"), there is probably something else that's wrong. And sometimes, there is administrative triva to deal with.
(The other day, someone sent me a patch for ibuffer-git via a github issue. I'd prefer a pull request, but fine, whatever, easy to apply anyway. The problem is that I need to keep a list of contributers in case I decide to contribute the extension to the emacs core. This person had no contact information, so I couldn't just apply his patch. I really needed the fork-and-pull-request so that the author information would be properly recorded. Annoying for a 2 line patch, but a necessary evil. And even then, the patch is applied in my repo, it's just not pushed yet :)
yes, it is necessary to be told it is easy to contribute top open source when it is against a backdrop of being told how difficult it is to produce good code, and the difficulties around software development that are frequently reported
The door close button in my previous apartment worked. Then again the door stayed open for an unreasonably (for a guy in his 20's) long time because of the number of elderly people in the building.
My previous building in Miami had it connected, but possibly to allow more capacity per elevator. Four elevators is not enough for 21 floors of ten units each.
Yeah I'm pretty terrible on the phone, and I have over 5 years of professional experience (plus coding since I was about 15). So when I get to the part of the phone call where they ask computer science questions I haven't thought about in a bunch of years, I usually just fumble about, get concepts confused, and generally completely blank out.
The better ones are the companies who ask you to do a coding assignment (and I'm not talking FizzBuzz). Sure I wouldn't want to end up having TOO MANY companies ask me to do it since it would be very time consuming, but certainly if you're taking your time to go through the process you should be able to put some time into writing a small demo app for companies you're passionate about joining.
Could somebody help me out here - I was under the impression (and perhaps this is just the case for Canadian schools?) that you need a student number to register for courses. If you're not admitted to the school, how can you get a student number to register for courses?
They generally don't let people audit courses (ie, non-credit) for free. Maybe if you're an employee of the institution, or have a connection, but if you go through the registration process you'll have to pay.
I audited a course at Harvard Extension, and the professor said she wouldn't grade the work of auditing students. You could do the assignments, and attend the lectures, but you'd get no feedback.
hmmm that makes sense, why would she want to do work for free? she is paid to teach paying students and help them improve. my parents are both college professors, and they get paid for online courses based on the # of enrolled students i think.
Yeah really, I was kinda hoping to read through some relevant posts, but it's just been taken over by a bunch of tards concentrating on his SWTOR comments.
That was probably the main thing that killed the game. Personally I loved the RvR aspect of WHO (the few times you actually had enough players from both sides on the same server and in the same zone to actually make a decent fight out of it). Easily the most fun I've had with any MMO game. Had they focused on that and really made that the core of their game, it could have been something great.
I wonder how many more Armstrongs can show up on HN's front page? Maybe get something about Hellcat Records on here and we can have two Tim Armstrongs!
