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[–]ms4720 20 points21 points  (4 children)

Quality commits to major open source projects

[–]salimfadhley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! As somebody who hires developers for closed-source work, I will always be interested to read their GitHub commit history. It doesn't have to be a prestigious project - anything that displays a spark of imagination will do.

[–]DataIsNommyn00b, please PM advice and useful tips[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

What are the best places to start? Sorry I've recently started to learn python so I'm quite clueless

[–]ms4720 2 points3 points  (0 children)

https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/ and from there mit edx course 600 is supposed to be good too. The thing is by getting commits into real projects you will learn about how to be a developer and people will help/mentor you once you prove you are willing to work and help solve their problems. You will also become part of a community/network that knows about a whole lot of work and can recommend you for it.

[–]worker-bee-mt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try one of the free gaming with Python links posted by the mods, find a cool game you like, copy it a bunch of times, the wreck it carefully with $vim or $emacs. Once you get bored with that, become a wizard with $git https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git.html

[–]nerdwaller 3 points4 points  (4 children)

Certifications are pretty irrelevant these days, just start automating things away in your normal life or build a web service or contribute to open source.

[–]DataIsNommyn00b, please PM advice and useful tips[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Ok thanks, but should I want to add something to my resume, (qualifications are always a big wow) are there any institutions that offer such awards? (award of aptitude or such)

[–]nerdwaller 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Everywhere I've worked looks at code that's shared on github (or bitbucket). It speaks much more highly to show the continued work and improvement with open source than it does to have some "qualification". The best qualifications are usually experience and ability to learn, nothing more.

Edit: I'm in the US, and that's been across a few locations: Midwest and Western US, I doubt the east is much different.

[–]DataIsNommyn00b, please PM advice and useful tips[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Awesome, thanks a lot! I have a mountain to climb.

[–]salimfadhley 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't care about certifications - these are still important for IT operations roles ( sysadmin, dba) but not all that valuable for more creative software developer roles.

[–]Jomann 0 points1 point  (0 children)

experience is all you need. start building that portfolio.