tips for learning from opensource

Question

Hi there,

Besides practice(practice and more practice) reading books and forums, analyzing others people code is a must in order to have a career in this field.

The problem is that I'm a student(feels like always on learning stage) but sometimes i can't solve the problems by my own. I was thinking that on public open source repositories might be the answer I'm looking for.

My question is how can i find the answer to some of my problems in open source projects/community? Do you have any tips to share for me?

ty

Answer 1

A few things for learning problem solving skills related to software developement (once you've found a project that you are interested in that is also written in a language you feel comfortable with) are:

• Sign up to the mailing list
• Lurk about on the project's IRC channel (assuming they have one)
• Read through bug repots (the open ones to try solve them, and the closed ones to see how others solved them).

and of course discuss discuss discuss, if you think you have a basic grasp of the problem at hand but need clarification on some issues don't be afraid to ask your peers.

Hope this was of at least some help, Welcome to the open source world and good luck!

Answer 2

Ask, ask, ask, ask if you come across a particular problem or solution that you don't understand. Make a good-faith effort to solve the problem or to understand a solution, share your thought process, and ask. SO is an excellent place for that, which you undoubtedly have already discovered. Good luck!

Answer 3

As other said, ask to the mailing list of the project, anyway some of open source developers are not willing to help (unfortunately) for this sort of things.

In this situation I search answers by myself: pick up a terminal and use grep.

Guess naming of classes/functions that involves your problem you will find the way toward the module where the interesting bits are written.

Answer 4

What I've found useful over the years, is to validate your code, go through coding conventions and best practices for various languages. Open Standards are the inevitable part of Open Source Software. In order to maintain a successful OSS project, it has to have some common ground in the community, so for instance:

• if doing some (X)HTML and CSS, always do it by the W3C standards. Passing validation will in itself improve your skills greatly. Use tableless markup (see Benefits of tableless design);
• if doing some PHP, go through PEAR coding standards which is the de facto standard for all OSS PHP projects;
• if doing some Flash Platform coding in Flex/ActionScript, see Flex SDK coding conventions and best practices;
• if doing some Java, see Code Conventions for the Java™ Programming Language.

Lastly, but not less importantly, research Object oriented programming and various architectures used for software development, e.g. the MVC pattern.

Answer 5

... analyzing others people code is a must in order to have a career in this field.

I wouldn't say that is correct. Certainly it is not a must. Reading other people's code doesn't usually explain why they chose to solve a problem a certain way, and what alternatives they considered and then dismissed. Besides, it is not uncommon to find open source code that is badly designed and/or badly implemented.

The problem is that ... but sometimes i can't solve the problems by my own.

Ah. Well the solution to that is to practice, practice, practice, and not be afraid to make mistakes. Be self-critical, but don't let this stop you from "having a go". The more you do your own problem solving, the easier it will become.