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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

#101

Post by alisonkisk »

glangdale wrote: post #63
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. Further, to the extent that students need to learn "Jira-fu, unit testing, peer reviewing, etc." they can learn this in a controlled environment run by the university. The problem with trying to have all students (not "some exceptional students", but all students) going out and engaging with the real world of open source is that the degree of difficulty in navigating different open source projects is enormou…

the students should be supervised by their teacher.

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

#102

Post by atxbcp »

em-bee wrote: post #51
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…

Universities are not vocational education facilities though the problem is that this doesn't matter, because all the industry expects is programming skills, and while any fachhochschule, french engineering school, or even a US community college could provide those programming skills, the university provides them too, and as a result, a university graduate has more job options than a graduate from those other schools.…

The french "engineering schools" are actually considered the elite scientific education in France. They are infinitely more selective than universities and provide much better job options. Equating french engineering school with US community college makes no sense whatsoever, and saying "a university graduate has more job options than a graduate from those other schools" is plain wrong (in France).

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

#103

Post by sumtechguy »

Ensorceled wrote: post #80

How would this work? How many project maintainers would sign on for this? "Hey, can you merge this PR? I'll fail if you don't review and merge this by tomorrow morning. I'm sorry I left it until the last minute but I had a bunch of work do to in another class and couldn't get to it until today." "Hey, I ran everything through flake and black and spent the past 72 hours getting my test coverage (and the coverage of th…

I have also seen some projects where the maintainers do not suffer fools lightly. Pick the wrong project and you would be in for a bad time.

I for one wish my university had a few extra classes that were 'practical'. I eventually picked up those skills because I had to. I am not talking 60+ hours of it. Like 5-10 would have been more than plenty. Those skills would have been directly applicable to everything I did while I was there as well. Something simple like 'what is source control', 'practical examples of code organization and refactoring' would have saved me more than a few times in college.

But yeah picking an opensource project to dump these skills classes onto will end up as a bad time. Unless the prof/ta is in the mix and helping that project. From my exp from some profs, that is not going to happen.

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

#104

Post by sumtechguy »

rbanffy wrote: post #53
yoz-y wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the only contributions that could be useful in this case is tests.

Not even that is 100% sure. You still need to vet the tests. Documentation is also a good thing to add. The perspective of a fresh user is precious and only lasts so long. Documenting the onboarding process can point to documentation shortcomings that are great to fix.

I have seen a few big bang 'lets test everything' go horribly wrong. Where you were unsure if the tests or the code were broken. Test code is code. It needs to be reviewed too. It is also dead easy to go too far with it (I know I have fallen into that trap more than once).

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

#105

Post by skohan »

Ensorceled wrote: post #80

How would this work? How many project maintainers would sign on for this? "Hey, can you merge this PR? I'll fail if you don't review and merge this by tomorrow morning. I'm sorry I left it until the last minute but I had a bunch of work do to in another class and couldn't get to it until today." "Hey, I ran everything through flake and black and spent the past 72 hours getting my test coverage (and the coverage of th…

Yeah I think this is a huge issue. It might be good for the students to get this experience, but it would be horrible for the projects. People working on a project to check a box is not going to lead to good outcomes.

A better option would be to require students to work on projects which depend on eachother, and practice pull-requests on eachother's student projects.

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

#106

Post by Bayart »

em-bee wrote: post #51
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…

Universities are not vocational education facilities though the problem is that this doesn't matter, because all the industry expects is programming skills, and while any fachhochschule, french engineering school, or even a US community college could provide those programming skills, the university provides them too, and as a result, a university graduate has more job options than a graduate from those other schools.…

In France, an engineering school graduate has far more prospects than a university graduate at masters level. Completely different systems. Schools are for engineering, universities are for science.

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

#108

Post by [deleted] »

bluenose69 wrote: post #59

Skilled students can make some very fine PRs when they are working on something that intrigues them enough that they get very immersed in the code. But not all students in training are skilled, and making code contribution a required part of a program seems certain to reduce the average quality of PRs. The problem is that somebody has to review those PRs, and often interact with the proposer for quite a while, to tea…

[deleted]

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

#110

Post by [deleted] »

arp242 wrote: post #82
matsemann wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]
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