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Open Source as Programming Exp. for College Students?
texatut asks: "With the computer industry in a slump, many college CS students nearing graduation are looking at pretty meek prospects. While 'formally' educated, few actually have concrete experience dealing with development of software. Many would like to have something concrete to put down on their resume or application to graduate school. However, starting their own project is a hard and time-consuming task. Obviously, the Open Source community is a perfect place for us to get our hands dirty. My question is, are there any resources that can help people with varying levels of experience connect with development teams in a way that would benefit both the project and the students?"
If the student is interested, just shoot the lead dev an email and he's in, right?
However, my advice in these troubled times is to continue having Ma and Pa keep footing the bill for education and get a Master's degree. When the tech slump ends, the student will be that much better off with more experience than he could shake a stick at. Another bonus is that his starting salary will likely be higher than a fresh recruit's.
Sorry to reply to my own post. But really, the secret to getting started in the OSS biz (yeah, biz, that's funny....) is to be willing to really get your hands dirty. That is, be willing to fix bugs and such. There are too many people only willing to work on new code. (yes me too) Many projects have too many cooks in the kitchen, too many "neat" little side projects that don't fit into what the main project is all about. Also, they add too many features and the same bugs are listed in each release.
Talk about really making the project lead's day, as for a prioritized bug list and get cracking on that.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
DISCLAIMER: I'm not currently looking for more help.
While my site (db.etree.org) is not (all) open source, I have mentored a student (hey Eric) while he developed code now used on my site.
His school assignment was designing and implementing something from start to finish. He asked to work on top of the work (adding new code) I had done as his project. I hooked him up with a shell and CVS and we had quite a few phone conversations where (I hope) I taught him quite a bit.
We both benefited from the relationship in the end. Eric contacted me directly with a plan to enhance my site. This method worked very well for us...that is, someone looking for experience came up with a plan for an existing project and asked to do itand, in return, I mentored him.
Internship/Co-op with a company.
That's the #1 thing companies look for (next to GPA) when they look at your resume. While coding experience on a project outside of school/work does look nice, the most important thing is to get an internship/co-op at an established company.
A company doesn't want to know if you've worked on a small or large project; they want to know if you've worked (and if so, how well) in a company working in a team environment, problems you encountered/solved, etc.
Coding on an open source or other 'for fun' projects mainly show that you enjoy coding, not that you would be a good employee/coder.