Introducing Students To the World of Open Source

paulproteus writes "Most computer science students never see a bug tracker, and very few learn about version control. Classes often don't teach the skills needed for participation. So I organized a weekend workshop at the University of Pennsylvania. Total newbies enthusiastically spent the day on IRC, learned git, built a project from source, and read bugs in real projects. I learned that there's no shortage of students that want to get involved."

Comments

In my experiance...

[daid303]

Most computer science students don't know how to write code. So it doesn't matter at all.

Re:In my experiance...

[spiffmastercow]

That's okay, most professional programmers don't know how to write code, so they'll fit right in.

Re:In my experiance...

[EvanED]

I'd argue that trackers and version control should not be taught in a CS curriculum.

Trackers... OK, I don't see those as essential. Version control? Disagree vehemently. There might be a couple programs in the country where you can specialize in theory enough to avoid all heavy programming, but most programs require you to do at least some practical courses (OS, compilers, etc.), and even in programs where you could avoid such classes probably most students don't. And IMO, if you're teaching a programming-heavy class and you don't at least strongly recommend using version control and give a quick overview of what that means and why you want it, you're doing your students a big disservice.

I'm not saying "spend a week going over CVS, SVN, Git, and Mecrcural" or anything like that, but a 15-minute quick intro to one of them of your choice is definitely not out of place in many CS classes.

Re:In my experiance...

[Monkeedude1212]

In high school, they don't have Computer science teachers (usually). They have a different teacher, who gets handed a text book on how to teach programming. They don't bother reading it, they probably teach language arts or Math - so they just kind of dole it out to the kids and try to help where they can.

At least, thats been my experience. I didn't reach anyone with programming experience till Post secondary.

This has always been one of my gripes

[SirGeek]

I've been a professional software developer for over 20 years and this is one area that I really think would benefit the REAL world so much.

I would also love to see a 2 semester class where 1 semester is where they learn how to write software specifications for fictitious business software package.

Then the 2nd semester is where it has to be implemented by a different group of students.

Re:Version control

[cforciea]

It isn't really that surprising to me. Computer science and software engineering are not identical disciplines. Computer Science programs on a core level are about data structures, algorithms, and the theory behind why we program things the way we do. The actual specifics of a development cycle, while obviously important if you want to put any of that to practical use outside of research positions, are disjoint from those concepts.

You can make an argument that more people should be learning Software Engineering instead of Computer Science, but that's really a different discussion.

If you want to help run a similar event...

[paulproteus]

Hey all! I'm going to be working on organizing more, similar events going forward.

If you want to stay on top of that, or try to organize an event near you, join the mailing list for OpenHatch events: http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/events

This is part of the OpenHatch project, an ongoing effort to help new contributors get involved in open source. If you want to stay in touch with OpenHatch, join us on #openhatch on irc.freenode.net or follow the links on our "About" page, http://openhatch.org/about/.