Grad Student Looking To Contribute To Open Source

An anonymous reader writes "I'm an Applied Math grad student who knows a bit of Mathematics and a bit of programming. C++ is my first programming language — I am decent at it. I wish to start contributing to a numerical library with two purposes — contribute to open source and develop my C++ skills at the same time. I looked at the Boost libraries and joined the developer list. However, I have no idea on how to start contributing. I'm not an expert in template programming, having written only toy programs to understand that concept. I've used some of the OOP constructs like inheritance,but only for very small projects. Do you have any tips on how to get started on contribution? Are there any other emerging numerical libraries to which I can contribute? Are there any other avenues where I can contribute to open source and improve programming skills?"

Comments

Obvious question first

[mike260]

You did try googling for, say, 'open source c++ numerical library' right?
I ask because that yields a fair few that welcome contributions; maybe if you told us what your issues with them are then that would help us find you some alternatives.

Re:Obvious question first

[AngryNick]

What seems pretty obvious is that the guy's question is about how to get involved in an OSS initiative, not how to find one. Cultural barriers aside, the perception from the outside is that many existing communities are closed, elitist kingdoms that are unwelcoming and intimidating to newbies. So, while providing a helpful search query may be clever, it does not address the essence of the question and serves to perpetuate the stereotype.

boost == template programming

[StripedCow]

To understand most boost modules, you definitely need a thorough understanding of templates.

Re:boost == template programming

[sqldr]

last time I read a boost header, I found that an understanding of hardware/OS-specific optimisations and quirks was rather important too. By the time you've read through all the #defines and figured out which bit runs on *your* OS, you've forgotten what you were reading it for :-)

It's not just a useful library, it's supposed to be fast and get its data sizes right too. I'd start with something less industrialised.

Maxima

[JohnFluxx]

The KDE C++ math classes are "eigen": http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
This is just a library (well actually a set of inline header files)

More generally, there are programs like "maxima" (symbolic manipulation, integration, etc) and "octave" (like mathlab).

I would love to see more work go into maxima :)

Re:Maxima

[DMiax]

Eigen is probably the best starting point, since it is quite used (so your work is not too obscured), simple to extend, with good help from main programmers. Another project that would be nice to extend is GiNaC. They have a TODO list with different difficulty levels.

Re:Maxima

[jank1887]

I second this motion. You can immediately start USING Octave and Maxima. You're a math student, so just start doing math. You'll quickly uncover some bugs and limits. And as said above, you can see the bug reports for both. At that point, get to work.

Re:Maxima

[zill]

I mean Lisp is fun for penalizing CS freshmen and all, but seriously?

MIT was forced to cancel 6.001 after SCOTUS ruled that learned Lisp was cruel and unusual punishment.

Fix bugs

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

1. Join a big open source project.
2. Read the bug reports
3. Start churning out fixes for bugs
4. Profit!

Re:Fix bugs

[Anonymous Coward]

4. Profit!

Wait, what?

Re:Fix bugs

[SharpFang]

Definitely yes. Start out with simple, contained bugs. Then move to the bigger ones, that span several modules. Once you get a good understanding of the structure of the project, you can move on to "Feature request" type bug reports.

Re:Fix bugs

[ModernGeek]

Yeah, it's a great way to build your resume and show that you aren't just some lingo slobbering hipster. Most companies would rather hire someone with some code on the 'net with their name on it than someone who is fresh out of school with no real experience.

Re:Fix bugs

[RockDoctor]

FOSS programmers will all receive 72 virgins after they ascent to heaven.

FOSS programmers who learn to check they're spelling the correct word correctly, get 73 virgins, and you get to choose which gender (or genders) they are, because you so obviously pay attention to small details.

Various Resources

[Anonymous Coward]

Boost (boost.org) is broad and pretty fancy. Eigen (eigen.tuxfamily.org) is narrower in scope - linear algebra - and just might be closer to your interests. To learn the details of templates, Alexandrescu's book -- Modern C++ design -- is a way of diving in deep quickly. Reading the Loki sources is also a good way of going about it ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_(C++) ). Those are resources I can come up with off the top of my head. And general advice also hold: try stuff. Make a source repo for yourself (git, mercurial, darcs, whatever) and pick a small problem to solve and hack at the templates there. Use version control so you can come up with one solution and refine it and look over your own development history.

Kinematics

[MichaelSmith]

I work in air traffic control and kinematics are a big deal for us. This is the software which takes care of coordinate systems, motion and transformations. Say you have a vehicle with a particular WGS84 coordinate. Its moving at a particular speed in a particular direction relative to true north. After one hour where will it be in three dimensions relative to its original position? How much distance will it have covered? What happens if its trajectory went within two metres of the south pole? What path in 3D will it follow if it maintains a constant altitude above the datum along the way?

Ok now say it is not allowed to fly into (say) North Korea which has a particular shape. How can you project its path forwards to determine if it goes into the air space over that country?

And so on. Its bloody complicated stuff and I reckon a lot of open source software would benefit from a library which did this. Ideal for a maths guy.

Re:Kinematics

[phillips321]

You lost me pretty early on, i think after the 2 words "I work". What is this "work" thing you are on about? Fair play though, this would take a considerable amount of effort and time and i doubt anyone in the open source world would benefit from this unfortunately, please correct me if i'm wrong and provide an example of how an ATC system could be used 'at home'

Re:Kinematics

[kinema]

Speaking of kinematics, you might want to take a look at a EMC (Enhanced Machine Controller). EMC is a CNC package originating from NIST. EMC has an active community using and developing it. There are known bugs in the forward and inverse kinematics for PUMA style robots that could really uses the eye of a trained mathematician.

I'm sure there are are plenty of other areas that the EMC project could utilize your math skills. There are many, many users and developers of EMC that would appreciate your skills.

Re:Kinematics

[awjr]

I was part of the team that developed the short-term collision alert system for Swanick, UK. This type of prediction is unnecessary and not very useful to air traffic controllers, particularly in Europe, where each air space has a different way of dealing with traffic.

For example, pilots want to get their aircraft to specific altitudes to conserve fuel (usually around 29,000ft). In the UK, ATC keeps strict vertical and horizontal seperations, in France, they just let them hit the altitude they want, then play a complicated game of checkers with the planes.

In Greece, seperation over certain space is maintained by transponders on the ground, so spacing has to be a lot more forgiving, which also limits the throughput of the aircraft.

So in principle a plane, will fly at an optimum altitude and at a certain speed at that altitude primarily to conserve fuel. However when coming into an airport, control of altitude (and speed to a certain extent) will be handed to local ATC.

Of note, ATC will 'hand off' a plane to the next air space by assigning a new frequency upon which the plane should be communicating. Planes fly with a specifi flight plan.

Now unguided rockets.....that's a completely different matter.

Re:Kinematics

[MichaelSmith]

Lets say you want to build UAV to fly significant distances around the world. It is going to have to fly a great circle trajectory and it will have to understand the volumes of airspace it is flying through. Airspace is a bit like the skin on a apple. It can't be treated as a simple Cartesian volume the way most simple games do it. The curvature of the Earth varies from place to place. This also affects your ground track.

So your UAV will have to follow a route through the skin of the apple, so to speak, avoiding known danger spots, sometimes by flying above or below them. To do this it will need a library which can do coordinate conversions, and that is what kinematics do.

Fix bugs. Make something you'd use yourself.

[redcloud]

Is there a bug tracker on this project? Tracking down and fixing bugs will force you to become familiar with the codebase, and hopefully, expose you to code from which you can learn. Also, find projects that you will use personally on a regular basis--i.e. "scratch your own itch". You'll do better work if the end result is not just some code somewhere, but something that you need and make use of frequently.

Don't ask us, ask them!

[draxil]

You are best off asking this question on the mailing list/irc/whatever of the community you want to contribute to. They'll know what needs fixing, and nurse you through submitting a few patches to them.

Team Up

[Blrfl]

Don't take this the wrong way, but you're in math, not CS. Call the CS department, find someone who's willing to team up with you on this and work together on turning the mathematical end of your contributions into good code. You'll come out of it with a better understanding of how software should go together, your CS cohort will get some insight into applied math and both of you will be better for the experience.

Re:Team Up

[Nemesisghost]

I'm going to disagree with your assessment that just because he doesn't have an IT degree he will be unable to contribute to an OSS project. I've known plenty of people who didn't have an IT degree but were still damn good at anything IT related, including coding. He's not looking to contribute to the next Linux kernel or make improvements to the PERL RegEx engine. He's asking how can he contribute to what he knows, Math. And those kinds of libraries are more about the math(go figure) than memory management & code optimization.

What you are purposing is that the only people who would be qualified to work on the libraries he's interested in are those with a PhD in Math & CS, which frankly isn't going to happen. You might also want to check out the degrees that a lot of CS professors have. You might be surprised to find out that they all don't have CS degrees. Some even have liberal arts degrees.

Re:Team Up

[Blrfl]

I think you completely misread what I'm suggesting. What I propose is that the OP, who describes himself as a neophyte when it comes to software, find someone with some experience in that field to be a mentor and help get him off to a good start.

Here's my rationale: I've been writing software for 31 years and have 25 years of industry experience. For the last seven years, I've been working for a company that is staffed mostly by electrical engineers who specialize in signal processing and are really, really good at it. A lot of what they write works, but software isn't their bailiwick, and it lacks the organization and forethought about how it might be used in the future that people who've been around the block tend to put into it.

By teaming up with someone in CS, the OP won't be figuring out how to do it right by trial and error and perhaps turning out ugly code in the first place, and he gets to spread some of the applied math gospel to the heathens over in CS. :-)

Entry points into Open Source...

[PhrostyMcByte]

The easiest way to enter Open Source to write patches for existing software. Learn how to communicate with other developers, how to be flexible and adopt their coding styles and practices. Chances are this will help you learn the most, because you'll be writing smaller amounts of code and it will always be under review by someone else. Once you've shown your competency, you're usually given commit access to the project.

Boost can be a very helpful community. Submitting a new library to Boost typically follows a few steps: gauge interest, put up code/examples/documentation for informal comments, submit for review. It sounds like you've got a lot to learn in C++ so it might be a long road (Boost has a very high bar to meet), but if you've got perseverance and are eager to learn, you can make it happen.

Sage!

[Anonymous Coward]

Applied math student...knows C++...dude. Contribute to Sage.

The goal of the Sage project is to creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab. It is based on Python, but has many components written in C and C++. It has good capabilities for numerical computation, but more help is needed. It's pretty easy to dive in and start fixing bugs, and your work would immediately benefit thousands of mathematicians and mathematics students.

Sign up for the sage-devel list and start with Sage!

Re:C++ is convoluted and hard

[somersault]

Your intended point (while you stated it rather poorly, since it's stupid to suggest someone couldn't be a good programmer in a language simply because it's their first - I am still a "decent" BASIC programmer despite learning many languages since) is understandable and probably something that we all thought when reading the summary, but it does depend on your definition of "decent", and the poster's ability to self evaluate. Usually I take "decent" to mean "average to good". As an "Applied Math grad student" he has already demonstrated good logical ability and therefore probably has the makings of a good programmer.He didn't claim he was amazing, but presumably he can write code that works even if it's not amazingly efficient, and he clearly knows he has much to learn and is looking for avenues to improve.

Rather than simply making obvious criticisms, you could try to help. I unfortunately have very little experience with helping out in open source projects, and have no clue about Mathematics libraries so I can't offer any useful advice, but I'm certainly not just going to sit here and watch while some smug AC takes immature pot shots at a guy who is trying seriously to both better himself and help out other people in the process.

Boost Linear Algebra

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

please contribute to the Boost Linear Algebra library, uBLAS.
You or any other interested in contributing new algorithms can contact me directly on the boost ublas developpers mailing list.
I'm the new maintainer of this library and will be happy to talk about any new contributions you want to make.
This library is great and need serious love.

Re:C++ is convoluted and hard

[somersault]

Which is why I said:

Your intended point is understandable and probably something that we all thought when reading the summary

Still, being decent at a language and it being your first language are not contradictory things. Thinking he's decent at the language and not knowing much about templates is of course more contradictory, but you certainly don't have to be an expert to be "decent" at something.

Anyway, my point was that guy is obviously aware he has more to learn and is humbly asking us how he can do so. It's an attitude that should be encouraged, and it's sad that the first post is someone trying to insult him, with no actual helpful advice.

Re:PATCH DAMN YOU !! LIKE YOU NEVER PATCHED BEFORE

[airfoobar]

Extrapolating from how #2 smells relative to #1, NUMBER TEN must smell really awful.

Well

[ledow]

You're an amateur, like the thousands of others on the net, like me. This is not a programming skill problem - that comes from either practice or aptitude, not pure willing. This is a contribution problem. You're looking for a project that has many skilled users and also has a very, very basic need they have to meet but at a basic level and that they haven't already done themselves and probably won't take too long. See the problem?

You're asking entirely the wrong questions - I would suggest that instead of trying to add something to Boost or similar, that you try to do something yourself and thus work out why Boost and similar projects are quite complex, have certain standards, etc. The problem of patch submission, new features and bug-fixing is not one of people willing to write the code that fixes the problem - that part's easy, and the fun part - it's finding something interesting that fits within the scope of the project and it's the problem of getting that code into the shape that the project would be happy with too. Thus bug-identification and lots of the hard slog-work (test suites, etc.) are much more useful than anything else you can come up with. I guarantee that the first few ideas you have to contribute to a large project will be knocked back because a) they've been suggested a million times, b) they don't WANT to do it that way, c) they CAN'T do it that way for some reason or d) they just don't trust your code and would spend longer fixing it than just writing it themselves.

I would suggest that you do one of the following:

1) Write your own library, for something you know intimately. Publish it on a website, document it well, do it under a loose license. Chances are it will overlap with other projects but they are always alternatives for everything and if your library is BETTER than the others, it will be used in preference, code will be absorbed from it into other projects, or people will ask you to for more of it. Chances are that it will take you a LONG time to make it better than even the bare basic libraries you find on the net.

(I'll use an example that I'm familiar with - SDL has lots of graphics primitive libraries, but SDL_gfx is one of the best despite not being the only "big" one, despite being unofficial, despite being a one-man operation and yet is used in thousands of projects. All it does is draw circles and polygons and rotate images, for God's sake, but it works and it's simple and it's fast and it's documented so it gets followers)

I know that when I go looking for a library to solve my problems, I am happier with something tiny and in my language of preference (C instead of C++) than some huge generic library that does a million and one other things. I have been on hundreds of tiny sites and found some absolute gems where the author just knocked up the exact piece of code I was after and nothing more and then I've used it, extended it, reported bugs in it and it becomes part of my standard toolchain (as an example, I use LodePNG to save PNG images from SDL_Surfaces, not because that's the only way, or even the easiest way, but because I found it easier than trying to get libpng to do it for me - some of my projects actually use libpng for loading and LodePNG for saving PNG's!).

2) Meld into the community - hunt for bugs, be active on discussions, suggest features (after reading the FAQ's about what not to ask for, etc.), maybe even implement a few test routines to show how useful your feature-X would be. Produce test suites (horrible, horrible job that's incredibly boring but serves a useful purpose). Run valgrind, or some kind of mathematical analysis, on the code and report your fixes for anything found back to the community. The hard-slog but useful stuff that nobody really wants to do.

Everybody would love to be chosen to just insert thousands of lines of code into a big famous project - it very, very, very rarely happens. More likely is that you have a small project of your own that others find useful (because it avoids t

Re:Well

[Lusa]

Mod this up! This is so insightful it should be a tattoo!

octave

[gatzke]

Octave is a Matlab clone that now works pretty well. Go make a toolbox or two for octave.

Don't write software, write documentation

[petes_PoV]

Are there any other avenues where I can contribute to open source and improve programming skills?"

The internet is drowning in code and starving from lack of decent documentation on how to use it. if you want to transform a mediocre, existing OSS project into a world-class, standing head and shoulders above everything else in its field piece of exemplary work, then take ANY numerical library and write some examples for it, write explanations on how it works, what its limitations are (hell: even comment some of the source code itself). Write user guides, API guides, put together a FAQ or a Wiki. List the mistakes and create some workarounds.It's not sexy, but it's what we need most.

The other thing that inspecting other people's work will do (apart from really honking-off some of the more protective - read; poor - software authors) is to show you, close up and in the real world, some of the constructs and techniques that are employed. For better or worse, this will give you a lot of experience in good and bad techniques and will give you a much larger palette to choose from when you decide to endow the planet with yet another piece of OSS of your won making.

I could use your skills...

[znerk]

I am not a strong programmer, although I can at least code my way out of a wet paper bag, if given enough time. Similarly, math is not my strong suit.

I have a personal programming project which I will eventually end up releasing to the open-source community for several reasons;

• I think the possible benefits to the information industry would outweigh any profit potential in it.
• I can't figure out how to monetize it without massive litigation in our current patent system.

  The idea may actually already be patented, but I have a 1970's science-fiction story that contains the "prior art" if anyone wants to challenge me. I don't actually think there are any patent issues, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm correct, especially since I haven't done any actual research along those lines. I can say without a doubt that I don't believe the concept is currently in use in any field that I'm aware of.

• My programming and math skills are not sufficient to bring it to fruition in a reasonable amount of time.

I haven't released the details "into the wild" yet because I want my name attached to the end product (for portfolio reasons, I guess, or maybe I'm just proud of the idea). I'm not entirely sure how to go about protecting my interests in this matter.

It deals heavily with prime factors of extremely long numbers (so long, in fact, that I believe I will eventually require 128-bit computing for efficiency with my current algorithm ideations; it appears that it would be best to work with 120 binary bits at a time (or some multiple thereof, but quantum computing is still a good ways off from consumer-grade products, I fear). I will still need to work with strings (as opposed to pure numerical constructs) due to the immense size of the numbers involved. I initially came up with the concept while reading about a related idea in a sci-fi novella from 40 or so years ago, and I started toying with it as a... well, I guess the best thing to call it would be an informal feasibility study. After some research and some limited testing, it seems to be holding up to my initial ideations, other than length of time involved to actually perform the process. It seems the process is a bit cpu-intensive, and my initial estimates of "several hours" for completion appear to have jumped several orders of magnitude. Distributed processing should ease that quite a bit, although threads are a bit out of my scope. I do have some good ideas on how the process might be parallellized (is that even a word?).

I have a basic grasp on most of the algorithm, but I am (go ahead, laugh) primarily a VB coder, and I believe this project would be better suited to C, or perhaps python (I have heard something about sci-py?) I am not going to trumpet about my skill set, obviously, but I do believe I can eventually finish this project on my own - I've bounced the idea around in my head for several years, and only recently started actually working on the code. Unfortunately, as I said earlier in this post, I think I'm using the wrong language; and I'm not currently in the best position to be learning a new one. I also seem to have some sort of mental block for languages other than VB (even .NET is problematic, most of my coding has been VB4 and VB5) or so-called "scripting" languages.

I'm not sure how best to get someone to contact me via slashdot, but if anyone is interested in a (probably) not-for-profit endeavor, and can throw me some contact info, I would cheerfully find a means of communication to give this project a productivity boost. I would be requiring an initial non-disclosure agreement, of course, but am totally willing to share credit (and any profit that may arise) from any actual release.

Re:I could use your skills...

[znerk]

All I'm saying is that before you start hiring employees, you should probably invest a lot more effort in vetting your idea.

I'm not "hiring employees", I'm asking for help with a project that might have some form of profit associated with its completion. That profit may or may not be monetary, and is much more likely to be the bragging rights of being able to point at the finished project and say "I helped build that". Whether the project is brag-worthy would be something that could be discussed after an NDA is signed, at which point more details about the project would be forthcoming. If it's not a worthy project, then the NDA won't matter. If it is worthy, the NDA allows me some legal means to protect myself, should you decide to "fork" the project before I am ready for that to happen. I will say that I have been "kicking around" this idea for several years, and I believe it to not only be a worthy project, but an actual innovation.

Long story short: I see your point, but you're not helping.

It's pretty common for us to have ideas that seem great and innovative, but because of our lack of expertise in a given field, we don't realize that the idea is either flawed, or has already been refined and applied. I expect this is especially true with difficult math problems, such as large-number factorization.

You are absolutely correct, and looking back at some of my ideas, they were awful. On the other hand, I have a habit of coming up with ideas, mentioning them to someone who has something to do with the field most appropriately aligned to produce something from it, and then watching something "come out" a year or two later. Simultaneous ideation is not something I am unaware of, nor am I so arrogant or ignorant to believe that mine was the only idea in the field, but I do tend to have good ideas and simply lack the means of expressing them in a manner that guarantees my own profit. This particular project is, in my opinion, something that is not in the same vein as my "ooh, shiny!" ideas of the past. The scope is breath-taking, for one thing.

Bah, now it sounds like I'm all self-important, and I think this project is the best thing since sliced bread. It's not. It's a significant advancement in a particular segment of information technology, and one that I'm not aware of anything in the field that has anything within several orders of magnitude of the apparent efficiency of my method. More testing is *obviously* required, either to disprove my theories or to produce a working prototype of the process. You're aware of the "cheap/fast/good; pick two" business rule, yes? Well, this is supposed to be free and excellent - speed is the issue that I'm having with my current Procedures, and I don't have enough of the appropriate education to "fix" it myself. Shame on me for not finishing college.

Suffice it to say that this idea has been (at least preliminarily) vetted to my own satisfaction, and that I will be completing it regardless of whether I receive any assistance. It may take me several years, perhaps a decade, to do it on my own, whereas someone who already knows an appropriate language and already has an affiliated skill-set could help me to implement it in a matter of months.

Again, I'm not "hiring" anyone - I'm a poor broke slob like the rest of us, and the economic downturn combined with an unfortunate date of moving to another state (and the already saturated IT field in my destination) has been harder on me than some others. When I say I'm broke, I mean exactly that; I'm about to start losing possessions due to being unemployed. To be honest, I'm looking for work, myself. I'm hoping to get something in the fast-food industry in the next couple days, before I lose my phone and/or car.

I was under the impression that the original poster was looking for an open-source project that would welcome a "decent coder". My project isn't currently "open", but only because I don't want to lose control of it before it's "re

Have a look at R

[G3ckoG33k]

Have a look at R, http://www.r-project.org/, which is math related.

Their developers page is at http://developer.r-project.org/

The R Project has again participated in the Google Summer of Code during 2010 http://www.r-project.org/soc10/index.html which had several projects in C++

I think R could be nice as it combines a high level approach with the lower level of C++.

They also have forum at http://groups.google.com/group/gsoc-r/topics

a word on the matter

[mariuszbi]

As a C++ developer and boost user, I advise against starting to code for it. API design and implementation are quite hard as opposed to "normal" programming, as you need to factor several other problems: building a easy-to-use generic interface, mandatory in a library, is much more difficult to code than in project that works with specific data models. Also, I had specific problems with boost::filesystem API so I can tell you getting a bug acknowledged and fixed in a particular version might be frightening at first(no, I don't want to update my boost version to get it... I want it backported). I suggest you find a piece of code that you are interested and find useful and follow this simple roadmap:
1.Install it and use it
2.Subscribe to user/devel mailing lists
3.Write missing documentation and unit tests for components
4.Offer to implement features/fix bugs that have been appearing for some time but have a low priority.

An Alternative Software Project Suggestion

[digitalderbs]

In addition to BOOST, you might want to consider looking at other projects. Some that might be a good fit, and might need developers are :

- GSL : The GNU Scientific Library is a scientific toolset for C and C++. These tools are quite modular, and you might be able to find your own module to code.

- Plotting software : Help to any of the plotting programs would be a real boon for all scientists. This could involve developing non-linear fitting algorithms, GUI, or statistical analysis. Look at SciDAVis and possibly GRACE.

- non-linear fitting : C++ Minuit, or a CERNlib project may be a good match--I'm not sure whether these are only developed internally.

good luck!

Re:C++ is convoluted and hard

[mwvdlee]

Knowing a bit about the Boost libraries, he's probably talking about template METAprogramming instead of mere template programming. The former is quite a bit larger of a bitch than the latter. You can be a quite decent C++ developer without ever having done template metaprogramming.

Re:C++ is convoluted and hard

[Joce640k]

C++ doesn't teach you anything, you study it.

From the summary it sounds like he learned C, not C++. There's a huge, grand-canyon-sized difference between the two.

C++ is a safe, expressive, modern language - like Java but without all the horrible limitations. Yes it takes a bit of study and it's not for casual programmers, but the results are worth it.

C is much lower level, unsafe language. Good for what it does but dangerous and a very bad choice for large projects.

Re:C++ is convoluted and hard

[wrook]

Not taking the side of the parent, but from reading the summary I get the idea that the person asking *isn't* decent at C++ (at least by your definition of average-good). I base that only on the statement that they've used "some" OOP concepts in toy projects. To be decent at C++ you need to be able to understand the implications of the fact that it is statically bound. If you don't, you're not going to be able to write decent C++ code. You might be able to "make things work". A good programmer in C++ should also be able to grok most of the template code in Boost.

Having said all that, I think this person has picked a good project to work with. They can move from being a beginner in C++ and move through being decent to even being good. This is especially true because they are likely more than decent in the subject matter in the Boost library.

For advice, I recommend to keep following the development list. Check out all the changes and read them. Try to understand what they are doing. If you don't understand, it might be possible to ask specific questions to the person who wrote it (be diplomatic, though, as they may be tremendously busy). Try to fix a bug yourself. Send in a patch with the disclaimer that you are a beginner and would like feedback. There are many people who will be happy to help you.

There are some good books that explain how to do the template stuff that Boost is doing. Unfortunately it's been a donkey's age since I did any C++, so I can't remember the names of any. Perhaps someone here can help. If not, I'm sure you can post on the Boost mailing list that you want to find a book on C++ templates and are looking for suggestions.

Re:C++ is convoluted and hard

[mcvos]

C++ is a safe, expressive, modern language - like Java but without all the horrible limitations. Yes it takes a bit of study and it's not for casual programmers, but the results are worth it.

C is much lower level, unsafe language. Good for what it does but dangerous and a very bad choice for large projects.

It's good you've been rated funny rather than insightful. C++ is every bit as unsafe as C.

Yes, they are very different languages, as C is intended for low-level systems programming, managing individual memory locations and stuff like that, whereas C++ has modern OO concepts badly tacked on top of that in a wrong way. It combines all the problems of Java with all the problems of C, and then adds some more. The end result is quite powerful, but not something I'd ever dare to call "safe".

Easy Question

[JambisJubilee]

The answer to your question is quite easy. Take whatever your thesis is, and create high quality software tools to help you to that end. Work where you're (trying to be) an expert. If tools already exist, expand those tools in the direction of your thesis.

FIND bugs!

[Dr. Manhattan]

If you know the math, you should be able to come up with regression tests and find corner cases and invalid approximations and so forth. In other words, you should be able to find bugs, or prove that certain bugs aren't present. This is a very valuable service, and you can get familiar with the code by writing the tests that use it and understanding the ways it implements the algorithms involved.

You're giving him a bit too much credit

[MikeRT]

Most projects love off-loading working onto eager, but inexperienced, contributors. You can't go wrong with most groups by going to them with a good attitude, stating what you can do and asking what you can do to help out. If you get grief from them for that, you can safely write them off as terminal assholes because no reasonably well-balanced human being would slap down someone who approaches them like that.

I've been contributing to a project for a while where the core contributors are far better and more knowledgeable than the average contributor. The community has an elitist reputation, but what I've found from watching how others are treated is that those core contributors will treat the small time contributors very well if they contribute according to their abilities (meaning they don't flood the core contributors with trashy git commits for obviously complicated problems) and work as a team.

Part of the problem is that a lot of people don't like hierarchies and resent the hell out of them. The fact is, however, that they not only exist, but are necessary for social organization.

Re:C++ is convoluted and hard

[Joce640k]

everything that was "unsafe" about good old C is still there.

So, um, don't use those bits...use std::vector and std::string instead.

This is where 'learning' C++ comes into play, as opposed to just hacking around and copying/pasting C source code until it works.

If you're doing it right the only problems you should have in C++ are null pointer exceptions - just like Java.

Any real safety still needs to come from the experience of the programmer

That, and having a teacher who smacked you down every time you tried to use a C-style array or didn't do RIAA.

Some more math-specific ideas

[GlobalEcho]

I see a lot of posts from non-mathematicians here. Most are correct and useful, but not necessarily fitted to your situation. As a fellow mathematician who has dabbled in this stuff over the years, I can think of a few projects where your particular skills may be helpful:

(1) Work on the GSL. This is the highest-quality numerics library out there. I'm not aware of particular weaknesses - it's really great - but I'm sure there's something.
(2) Work on the open-source spreadsheets. These are basically OpenOffice, Gnumeric and KSpread. All three lack some numerical routines that could be useful.
(3) Work on Scipy/Numpy, R, Octave or Maxima. The numerics routines in these libraries are not always GSL-quality, particularly special functions. The built-in optimization routines tend to be basic and sometimes light on features. Even translating unit tests between packages would be a useful, enlightening and somewhat interesting project that I believe no one has ever undertaken.
(4) Work on an open-source optimization library, such as OpenOpt.
(5) Performance/accuracy comparisons of existing spreadsheets, libraries, and programs.

Open Object Rexx

[dashley]

Perhaps you might be interested in a smaller project where the number of developers is also small, but quite open to new blood. All of the current developers would be very happy to get you started with the ooRexx project. The source code is mostly C++ and we do not use templates, mainly because we have no need of them for our requirements.

ooRexx is an interpreter for multiple platforms and has a very interesting math library. All interpreter calculations are done in floating decimal, not binary. The current library supports most typical math functions (add, subtract, divide, multiply, remainder) but it lack higher order functions such as trig functions.

If this sounds interesting to you feel free to use the contact list at http://www.oorexx.org/contact.html to email one of us and we can get you started or supply you with more information.

David Ashley
Project Leader, ooRexx Project

Re:C++ is convoluted and hard

[Joce640k]

The end result is quite powerful, but not something I'd ever dare to call "safe".

C++ is as safe as you want to make it.

eg. Did you know that Visual C++ operator[] does range checking in all standard container classes/strings?

If you do stuff like that and ban raw pointers (ie. all pointers have to be objects and thus subject to RIAA) then most of your traditional C++ problems disappear. It just takes a bit of practice and getting over the C mentality.

In return you get multiple inheritance, timely freeing of resources, operator overloading and much more expressive power than Java.

A good portion of Java code is just copy/paste because you can't inherit implementation and try/finally blocks to get your files closed at the end of functions, not just when the garbage collector feels like it (which might be 'never'). In C++ you write code once in a library and it stays written.

Join/inherit my audio compression project

[n01]

Hello, anonymous submitter,

About I year ago I've started a small project with a friend, written in C++, that does some improvements to lossless audio compression (currently to FLAC). It calculates the autoconvolution of the audio signal to find similar parts in the audio. Especially for electronically generated music, this can be used to predict other parts in the audio, and thus reduce the entropy of the signal (i.e. compress the file better).

If you (or anybody else) are interested in further development, I would open-source the project, and may be start working on it again a bit myself. Just drop me a line, at polarspaceflo (at) googlemail (dot) com.

Re:C++ is convoluted and hard

[Joce640k]

Did I really type RIAA instead of RAII? Oh, dear...

Octave. ARM.

[cfriedt]

Improve Octave. Specifically, for ARM. Remember that open-source does not necessarily mean architecture independent. Practically all software is written with the perception that the compiler optimizes any poorly written C / C++ code and that the target is a PC. While this is good for x86, relying on hardware instruction rescheduling to make code more 'efficient', it's pretty awful for anything else. Having done a lot of work with ARM / NEON optimizations myself, I can tell you first-hand that gcc does not do a great job of optimizing C code at all. This is going to become increasingly important as ARM outpaces x86, so please do everyone a favour, and write the code correctly the first time. There are several books about why this is so important, e.g. this one, but you'll probably find that its easier to just dive right in. Look at the Android source code, that's always a good example. uClibc / uClibc++ are also good examples.

C++ is hard or easy based on knowlege and skill

[Zero__Kelvin]

" ... In return you get multiple inheritance ..."

OK, you had me until there. If you are using multiple inheritance you have a flaw at the architectural level. There is a saying among Software Engineers: "Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should do it." Multiple Inheritance is the poster concept for this statement.

Other than that, as a SE versed in numerous languages of all types, including C and C++, I can attest that every person saying "C" is better, or "C++" is better, or "C" is unsafe, etc. are simply people that lack a basic understanding of software engineering on some level, and completely lack an understanding of the language they are criticizing. Neither is "safe", or "better", or "implemented incorrectly", etc. (I promise you if you are one of these critics that Bjarne Stroustrop, Dennis Ritchie, and Brian Kernigan are smarter than you, and know much, much, much more than you do about language design.)

I especially love it when people cite bad code as proof of poor language design. It is like saying you can prove that English is a horrible language by referencing a Rap song. Any good language can be misused, misunderstood, and abused and said abuse is not proof that the language itself is inferior or flawed.

Re:C++ is hard or easy based on knowlege and skill

[Joce640k]

OK, you had me until there. If you are using multiple inheritance you have a flaw at the architectural level.

That's just a knee-jerk reaction.

You could make a coding rule that forbids multiple inheritance of classes other than base classes, I'll accept that, but multiple inheritance is needed.

nb. Java tries to enforce that rule by only allowing "one base class plus interfaces". That's OK as far as it goes but it forces you to copy/paste the default implementations of interface classes all over the place which is stupid (and can lead to some major editing sessions if the design ever changes). Much better to let the programmer decide for himself - he's the one with knowledge of the job at hand, not the compiler.

Re:C++ is hard or easy based on knowlege and skill

[Joce640k]

e.g. humans just aren't good at always getting tedious details right.

This is where C++ really towers above C - all those tedious details can be handed to the compiler and the compiler never forgets them.

Fix memory leaks in existing programs or libs

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

Trying to implement new functionalities is not easy if you're not an experience programmer.

I recommend starting with an existing program or lib and try to fix the memory leaks. By doing that you will look at many lines of code, learn about coding standards, and still be able contribute. You'll also learn how to debug, which is the hard way to learn. And write proper code. Use valgrind.

Hint: start with libxml2. And good luck.

Re:All good languages are "unsafe"

[stanlyb]

Next time you start your car, try to not to think of all these ECU using pure, clean and unsafe C code.............

Re:It depends how you define complicated

[pjt33]

It's actually uglier than "just trigonometry and vectors". If you're willing to use a spherical approximation to the globe then yes, but WGS84 is an ellipsoid. To get an idea of how complicated it is, check out this paper (and note the references to numerical analysis).

Re:boost != template programming

[StripedCow]

Good points. But we're talking about the actual programming, and then it really boils down to doing a lot of template stuff.

The ideas behind Boost are great, but I really hope that somebody, somewhere, will sooner than later invent a new generic-programming language that will allow an implementation of the Boost ideas without the major ugliness of abusing C++ templates to the max.

Example of Parent's Point

[ari_j]

Here's an example of what the ledow is talking about with point #1. Or at least a corollary of his point in action. About a decade ago, I wanted to play with XML files in C++. There were no good, small libraries to do that. There were a couple of ridiculously large, complicated libraries that would handle XML files, but you'd lose more time learning the library than you would ever put into your actual code. So I created libxml++, to scratch my own personal itch. It was, at the time, a small but useful wrapper around libxml. Very basic, and demonstrated mostly that I knew less about either C++ or XML than I thought I did.

But people used it. (They also used my CLI Yahoo Messenger client, but that became defunct after I handed it off to other developers, due to the then-rapidly changing Yahoo protocol. The single most touching e-mail I have ever received was from a user of that client.) One of them submitted some patches, and eventually in 2002 I passed off ownership of the libxml++ project to him. I don't code in C++ much anymore, so I don't use my own library, but I do check in on it every so often. There are regular commits, including one last week, and an active mailing list, with several thousand messages. It's in Debian's main package repository and a number of diverse other packages depend on it.

All of this is the result of an itch I had ten years ago. Don't let anyone tell you that this kind of thing never happens and that there are just a billion useless libraries and programs half-written out there. There are a billion of those, but if you have a need for something that nothing on the market seems to fill, the chances are good that you're not alone in that unfilled need. Fill it and make it easy for others to use it and contribute to it, and see where it ends up in 2020.

Not that closed, but also not the local pub

[Anonymous Coward]

What seems pretty obvious is that the guy's question is about how to get involved in an OSS initiative, not how to find one. Cultural barriers aside, the perception from the outside is that many existing communities are closed, elitist kingdoms that are unwelcoming and intimidating to newbies. So, while providing a helpful search query may be clever, it does not address the essence of the question and serves to perpetuate the stereotype.

Most communities seem closed because the internet is vast and there are a lot of idiots and trouble makers out there who at best waste time and at worst wreak havoc with a project. Since FOSS projects don't have employment processes and hiring forms, they need mechanisms to make sure they are working with the right people for the job.

Here are some hints to help you get through the initial barrier of egotism end rudeness that many projects use to protect themselves:

1. Join the mailing lists.

2. You may if you like, send an introduction to the mailing lists, but do not say anything else until you get an idea of the culture of the community, what netiquette guidelines do they follow, who is who, and the general tone that people use to address each other. Aslo try to figure out if there is certain sorts of questions the project doesn't like to answer. It's possible they deliberately obscure certain configurations, etc. in order to guarantee consulting income. If you think this wrong, and you want to be some kind of maverick coder vigilante, call them out and publish the tricks widely. If on the other hand you want to be a dev on the project, accept that this is the real world, and these devs are doing enormous good giving this volume of code away, free to use for anybody smart enough and interested enough to figure it out and at small once of consulting fees to those who aren't so inclined. Be kind to them, don't answer questions that seem to fit into this category, don't publish the fixes anywhere, think of it as a gift and keep it in your pocket for your own consulting career.

3. How long you lurk varies greatly from project to project, but it will always be longer for dev lists than for user lists. Once you have figured out the community a bit, start showing your worth by being helpful on those questions that come in to the user list that you can answer. A community is not going to accept code contributions from someone who can't figure out the part of their project that they expect users to be able to understand. So show you understand what they are doing.. At this point, it's probably best to be friendly and helpful, but if it is one of those lists where a lot of the popular (not to be confused with profusive) posters are boastful and have a bit of a bite, it's probably safe to start showing a bit of a swagger already.

You can also use this time to start climbing into the code, get to understand the architecture of the project, the existing coding culture (is code readably formatted, is code commented well, are they cowboys or nazis? When reading about fixes or changes in the dev list, look at the code, try to understand what they are talking about, how it all hangs together.

4. Once you have demonstrated that you understand their project well, are helpful and involved. You have mirrored their preferred modes of behaviour! You already seem like one of them just waiting to be adopted! You start contributing to the dev lists when you've understood the code sufficiently to make a contribution. It doesn't have to be a particularly brilliant contribution. It could be something a 5 year old could have spotted, and you just happen to be the first one to see the incoming mail. Don't write out the full function in perfect code with every excpetion caught, all nicely commented and logging in all the right places. Don't try get commit writes to the project, just formulate a solution, implement rought it in your local copy to make sure it works and describe it on the mailing list. If you've solved the problem correc