Hi! I'm a senior at NYU majoring in Computer Science.
Open source projects and business have two goals that seem to be in conflict, however the in class discussion helped provide nuance to how the two things can exist. There can be a mutually beneficial relationship. Although in a very simplistic way,
This past week Christopher Snider came to talk and again I really enjoyed it. He’s a really charismatic speaker and his story/Tidepool’s story is really inspiring.
My favorite lesson from the Cathedral and the Bazaar is “Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).” Part of me always wants to feel some type of complete ownership over what I write and create - however, learning computer science and completing projects for school and work have taught me to appreciate the opposite.
After submitting our design for the flyer, we got a lot of positive feedback as well as some edits before we settle on a final version. However, we also got a code related issue assigned to us as well, which is exciting!
At this point, our group has been able to connect with one of the leads of the MAPLE project to make a more formal introduction and get a better feel for where we may be needed. There are a lot of exciting things happening for the project itself - for example, it has received more funding and achieved 501(c)(3) status. We explained our goals of helping out with frontend and backend and he said he would assign us some issues soon.
We’ve just been assigned our groups for the rest of the semester and our group has settled on an open source project called MAPLE (Massachusetts Platform for Legislative Engagement). It seems a little random, but there were many considerations going into this project.
Although I have used git before and have had experience working with these commands, it has been a while and I appreciate the refresher. I enjoyed the guided activity and it reinforced some of the ideas about version control that have become fuzzy: for example, I haven’t used remotes/forks very often so my understanding of the work flow wasn’t very clear, but the diagram that professor drew on the board was really helpful visually. Additionally, it was helpful to know these commands for the group project.
I had never really used or heard much about the Internet Archive before this course but I’m so glad to have been introduced more to it; moreover, that we got to have a discussion with Mek and hear him talk in detail about the mission of Internet Archive, the challenges of maintaining such a huge database/resource, future plans, and more. I really admire the goals of the Internet Archive to make resources more accessible for people who lack the access to books/resources. Before the internet became more algorithmic based and money/attention driven, it was a knowledge sharing platform and so it’s really cool that Internet Archive is doing the work to keep this alive.
The project to make a browser extension was a cool opportunity to work in a group on something useful and/or creative. My group had a good dynamic and was open to changes/adapting when needed.
After looking at a variety of open source projects, I feel more understanding of the range in open source projects regarding setup, types of contributions, community culture, and overall complexity. Though this may be an obvious fact, it was only after looking through project repositories and completing various project evaluations that I really comprehended that no open source project is necessarily the same. I saw a lot of great examples that I would like to emulate in my own. For example,
After taking a look at the Code of Conduct for Go, it is clear why these kinds of documents are necessary for open source projects.
A buzz word that has been floating around for years, I was very intrigued by the opportunity to take a class on this topic and I wanted to get some hands on experience. I have looked at open source projects but often found it to be intimidating to dive straight in as a contributor and so I thought, what better way to do this than in a supportive setting such as a classroom.