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Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

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Re: Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

#81

Post by chakkepolja »

oytis wrote: post #8

> 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…

I agree with most of your points. But disagree with the fact that universities should teach only theoretical aspects.

Apart from the top ivy league schools, many schools are not going to teach the theory stuff well anyway.

And teaching the tools (not JIRA but, say git and docker) are not dry carpentry, there are concepts which a computer science student should be equipped to understand.

Last time I remember, an MIT course on programming tools gained traction on this site.

As for not contributing to OSS projects right away, I agree, universities should rather have a project after each course completion so that students get to exercise the concepts.

Re: Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

#82

Post by arp242 »

matsemann wrote: post #15
piokoch wrote: post #10

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.

I think a better description would be how Hacktoberfest turned out, with lots of inexperienced people spamming simple PRs to lots of projects.

You'd hope that in a more guided environment where people are actually rated on the quality of the contributions things wouldn't be quite so bad.

But yeah, I'm not looking forward to a future where every inexperienced student needs to be guided through the basics. There is already quite a lot (too much, IMO) being put in the shoes of volunteer maintainers with very little concrete in return, and this will only add to that.

To put it bluntly, I am not your unpaid teaching assistant, and would consider it dubious if I was used as such without consent.

Re: Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

#83

Post by speters »

tester34 wrote: post #28
DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with both points. 1) No, universities shouldn't waste too much time preparing people for the job; they should prepare give people the more scientific types of skills that one doesn't really pick up on the job: Data structures, algorithms, paradigms like OOP and FP, etc. 2) Unleashing a horde of yet incompetent newbies on the open source world with a mission to contribute won't be helping FOSS; what…

but there's already significant amount of ds, algos, OOP in academia, also I don't see how those are "scientific types of skills" I do also wonder what people *precisely* mean when they talk about "data structures and algorithms" in context of academia You talk from perspective of competitive programming?

For DS and algos, formally proving properties of things would definitely be considerd an academic activity.

Re: Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

#84

Post by schaefer »

asamant wrote: post #29

On similar lines I had a course on software architecture [0] during my Master's in which students had to choose a sufficiently complex open source project and analyze it from an architectural perspective, summarizing their findings in the form of chapters to be compiled in a book [1] inspired by [2]. We were also highly encouraged to raise PRs though it wasn't compulsory. Most student groups did end up raising PRs an…

Wow. The Architecture of Open Source Applications series of books has been a long time favorite of mine. So the premise of this course, that each student will produce a chapter for a similar book, is absolutely fascinating!

Thank you for sharing, and I am really excited to dig into the 6 (and counting) books the students of this course have produced.

Re: Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

#85

Post by arp242 »

5350-uiop-1130 wrote: post #30

How can I leave this industry. I've been a web dev since graduating in 2007 and no longer have the desire to compete in an oversaturated, increasingly complex industry. If i have to work for someone else, I'd rather take the path of least resistance. Try to be on easy mode. That's just me. I lost my passion for all of it. We recently started hiring for a junior front end, and I had to review the test results. 95% of…

> I blame this on all the bootcamps and learn to code courses. There is a flood of unqualified people in this field and it's just tiring for me to imagine the future. One where my experience has zero value and I have to keep proving myself over again. Who needs it.

It's been like this for as long as I remember, and was probably even worse 20 years ago before the dot-com crash where anyone who could sum up numbers in Excel was a programmer and anyone who knew how to defrag their C:\ drive was a sysadmin. I am exaggerating only very slightly with this.

The essential problem is that the industry has been growing so fast and there are never enough senior programmers to train the junior ones. This is a field that has been doubling in size every 10 years or so for the last 40 years. You're bound to have problems with growth numbers like that :-/

Re: Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

#86

Post by urthor »

oytis wrote: post #8

> 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…

YMMV, but isn't it the complete opposite?

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).

Re: Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

#87

Post by undfg »

pjmlp wrote: post #75
em-bee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

france has a lot of engineering schools, which are not universities. autoconf is one famous project from a french engineering school. likewise germany has the fachhochschule, which is also expressly for vocational education at university level. i would not call those equivalents to lamda school, mostly because lambda school is private profit oriented startup, whereas french and german engineering schools are establis…

Same applies in Portugal and Spain, actually I think most European countries follow similar models.

Not in Spain.

Re: Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

#88

Post by urthor »

Tade0 wrote: post #27
oytis wrote: post #8

> 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…

> 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. Or don't start by contributing code . There's a lot of work to do in areas like bug triage, reproducing issues or creating setups which do that. I used to be part of a commercial, but open-source project. Unfortunately we didn't have the reso…

Docstring PRs. So many docstring PRs to be done.

Re: Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

#89

Post by pjmlp »

undfg wrote: post #87
pjmlp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same applies in Portugal and Spain, actually I think most European countries follow similar models.

Not in Spain.

I people that took their degrees at universidades and politecnicas.

Re: Why Computing Students Should Contribute to Open Source Software Projects

#90

Post by 7steps2much »

em-bee wrote: post #40
pjc50 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Universities are not vocational education facilities though I see this argument a lot; universities would like to not be vocational education, but unavoidably they are. Certainly for all the older class of professional job: engineer, actuary, lawyer, doctor. For those you absolutely have to go to university to even begin your vocational training. Programming is different in that the degree is less of a hard require…

france has a lot of engineering schools, which are not universities. autoconf is one famous project from a french engineering school. likewise germany has the fachhochschule, which is also expressly for vocational education at university level. i would not call those equivalents to lamda school, mostly because lambda school is private profit oriented startup, whereas french and german engineering schools are establis…

Austria has the Fachhochschule as well! Same thing as in Germany pretty much.
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