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On Jun 8, 1:17*pm, jackOrip <I...@home.com> wrote:
> Are there places where budding programmers (not
> newbies) like me could go to join in on something without being
> expected to produce massive amounts of quality work. I just don't
> think I'm at that level yet.
>
There is a huge amount of work to making an open source project work,
much of which is unglamourous. If you're willing to start by doing
the unglamourous but necessary work, I'm sure your efforts will be
very much appreciated, and you will learn. So find a project, one
with a first release and some users, and with some forum traffic, and
a bug list. Check out the code, and learn it, thoroughly. Follow the
forum, and see if you can contribute answers. Offer to work on
documentation. Monitor the bug list, and see if you can contribute
fixes to bugs. Lastly, once you've established something of a
reputation, ask about becoming a developer.

-- Daniel

"Daniel" <> wrote in message
news:442181a0-5475-40fa-8868-...
On Jun 8, 1:17 pm, jackOrip <I...@home.com> wrote:
> Are there places where budding programmers (not
> newbies) like me could go to join in on something without being
> expected to produce massive amounts of quality work. I just don't
> think I'm at that level yet.
>
> There is a huge amount of work to making an open source project work,
> much of which is unglamourous. If you're willing to start by doing
> the unglamourous but necessary work, I'm sure your efforts will be
> very much appreciated, and you will learn. So find a project, one
> with a first release and some users, and with some forum traffic, and
> a bug list.

> Check out the code, and learn it, thoroughly.

Which is surely going to be a waste of time in itself, as most open
source is horrendously hard to grok. Another thing is that "learning"
from it perpetuates the mantra rather then encouraging and nurturing
fresh ideas. Oh, and another thing, working on open source may leave you
"tainted" so that commercial developers won't hire you (if that is your
goal). You thought GPL was only viral to source code?

> Follow the
> forum, and see if you can contribute answers. Offer to work on
> documentation. Monitor the bug list, and see if you can contribute
> fixes to bugs. Lastly, once you've established something of a
> reputation, ask about becoming a developer.

"jackOrip" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Thanks Daniel. That is precisely what I've decided to do after reading
> most of what has been discussed here. I don't mind starting at the
> bottom. That only leaves one place to go... UP, UP, UP!

Not a good way to learn IMO, as you get into nitty gritty details and the
surrounding complexities and dependencies and pretty soon you're not
doing much thinking about how to program at all. You will get familiar
with some of the processes though, such as source control, distributed
development, project management (ha!), etc. I don't know what your level
is, but writing entire programs that utilize existing libraries and
bringing in a little more (or a lot more) each time (not the same
application please) is the way to go. THAT sounds more like "bottom up"
to me. Injecting yourself into a large open source project sounds "inside
out" where learning will quickly stagnate. Consider that the "coding
standard" on the project may very well be so idiosynchratic that those
idiosynchracies is what you'll spend most of your time "learning", and
maybe not for the better either, as it is harder to UNLEARN than to
learn.

>
>
> On Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:22:11 -0700 (PDT), Daniel
> <> wrote:
>
>>On Jun 8, 1:17 pm, jackOrip <I...@home.com> wrote:
>>> Are there places where budding programmers (not
>>> newbies) like me could go to join in on something without being
>>> expected to produce massive amounts of quality work. I just don't
>>> think I'm at that level yet.
>>>
>>There is a huge amount of work to making an open source project work,
>>much of which is unglamourous. If you're willing to start by doing
>>the unglamourous but necessary work, I'm sure your efforts will be
>>very much appreciated, and you will learn. So find a project, one
>>with a first release and some users, and with some forum traffic, and
>>a bug list. Check out the code, and learn it, thoroughly. Follow the
>>forum, and see if you can contribute answers. Offer to work on
>>documentation. Monitor the bug list, and see if you can contribute
>>fixes to bugs. Lastly, once you've established something of a
>>reputation, ask about becoming a developer.
>>
>>-- Daniel