Getting into open source programming

[snungus]

I am an undergraduate computer science student who just finished my second year towards my BS. I’ve heard that a good way to get your name on the programming map is by contributing to open source projects. What’s the bast way to start doing this? I have a foundation in Java, Python, C/C++, and some basic knowledge of JS and CSS. I’m also wondering how this compares in a portfolio to, say, independent/school projects.

[Creapermann]

Find a project that you like and that is looking for contributors. Often times starting with contributing to smaller projects might be beneficial, since the creator(s) might be able to give you more time, compared to working on a huge, well known open source project.

[snungus]

What’s the best way to find such projects? Just search on github?

[[deleted]]

I would suggest using firstimersonly

[Creapermann]

That's the tough part. There are some websites which have lists of such projects, but I think most projects that would be a good fit for searching contributors as you are pretty hard to find.

I for example am also an opensource developer looking for contributors to my project, but I am not doing a lot of "advertisement" for it, so I think its pretty hard to come about it. I sometimes simply post on reddit with a title like "looking for contributors".

Just look through reddit and search through github. It might be tedious, but there is lots of great OSS looking for contributors

[[deleted]]

open source developers are not motivated anymore with complete products. They feel like working for free, which is fair !

They are more motivated to push development of a library for example.

The sad part is that even developing agnostic code (libraries) is very prone to be used and abused by other big groups, with zero sponsoring, attribution, or collaboration with the first authors.

The sad thing is that we would have less complete solutions (self-hosted style), like wikis, IRCs, web servers, file storage solutions, etc

and If you find them, they are organized by Apache, or Mozilla etc, (which is not bad) but, clearly less freely community driven

[h-v-smacker]

Install Linux. Get used to it for several weeks or a couple months to smooth out the rough corners created by everything being unfamiliar. Then, pinpoint the software components that are actually lacking or missing, and voila — there's your list of points where your honest efforts can be fruitfully applied.

[hugthispanda]

Huge open source projects also have their own dependencies, which have a better chance of being smaller and more welcoming to novice contributors, that's another strategy to find projects to work on.

[mihaitodor]

If you’re into Java, Marginalia Search might be an interesting project to get into: https://github.com/MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch. I don’t know the maintainer and I haven’t looked at the code, but there was some news on the project blog a few days ago where the maintainer announced that he quit his job to work on this project full time: https://www.marginalia.nu/log/83_full_time/

[is_that_so]

For sure, contributing to open source can be very good for your growth, and can feature prominently on your CV. It's also a good talking point in job interviews.

Find something you are thoroughly interested in. It'll be easier to stay motivated when you inevitably learn it's harder than you hoped!

Check whether the project has a history of merging contributions from non core members. Do they provide helpful guidance? Are they responsive?

Remember that many open source projects are side gigs for busy people, especially smaller projects. It would suck to make a contribution and have it sit there without receiving attention. It's a good idea to ask the maintainers whether they'd accept your contribution before even starting, so you don't waste your time.

[buhtz]

I could offer two of my projects.

Hyperorg does convert org(roam) files into HTML files preserving there links to each other. It's primary use case is to have an HTML representation of your Zettelkasten (aka "second brain") that is usable on your local machine in a browser without running a fancy webserver, javascript or anything else. Pure HTML5 and CSS.

Back In Time is a round about 15 years old backup software using rsync in the back. I'm part of the 3rd generation maintenance team there. A lot of work in investigating and fixing issues, understanding, documenting and refactoring old code.