Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

I think it is very reasonable idea, but time's gonna show how it'll affect maintainers when majority of schools start doing it

>The most common problems faced by the students over their assignment are the inability to build the project

sounds like somebody tried to build llvm

What ever happened to exploring computing through just building small, cool, things? Maybe I'm old now, but this trope has been parroted here and elsewhere as a panacea. Need a job? Contribute to open source for the CV experience. Need something to do? Contribute to open source.

I could see this as maybe something for a small software engineering course to do. maybe. I think in those cases it might even be better to split the class into teams and have them develop a product idea, elect people to various roles, and execute the plan as a semester long project. Midterms, quizzes, etc become sprint reviews and plannings. It would be great if you could get some of the b-school kids to roll over for a combined class where they takeover PMing.

Admittedly I am cynical. But the way I got into programming was many, many years before I started my CS degree. I just built cool things I needed. I got into reverse engineering because being a lazy high schooler I wanted to build trainers for video games so I could get a high level without actually working on it. Call it pathetic - sure. But playing video games is so boring. It's much more fun to get them to play for you :).

What ever happened to just being interested? I hesitate to suggest this but could it because a lot of people are getting into computer science strictly for the job? So that they reach the terminal points in the program and are completely without direction?

I dunno, just rambling I guess. This just strikes me as so odd.

The ability to build any project is a strange thing you learn after a few years as a software engineer. As a jnr. dev I was completely awed at my co-workers ability to understand build/compiler errors. Well you basically get that for free banging your head against a wall long enough, and being paid for it!

> in the 21st century programming proficiency on its own is neither representative of the skills that the marketplace requires from computing graduates, nor does it offer the strong vocational qualifications it once did.

Universities are not vocational education facilities though. Time a student has in university is better spent on getting deeper understanding of things that are hard to pick up in the workplace, and that give you a better picture of the industry in the long run

Conversely, Jira-fu, unit testing, peer reviewing etc. is something a junior engineer learns in their first year at work. And burdening open source maintainers with training students in these issues is hardly a good idea. In my (probably unpopular) opinion, it's better to start contributing to open source projects after having some experience with real projects at work, not the other way round. Just because at work one has a supervisor and optionally a buddy/mentor, which open source projects have no opportunity to provide.

I only hope it would not be some kind of common sentiment "you have to contribute to an open source project to earn better grade or get a job". It will end up as Huawei Linux kernel "contributions" - a lot of pointless commits that are only a pain for project maintainers and bring zero actual value.