Reccomend an Open Source Project to develop back end skills ?

Matt Markinson

Hi,

Can anyone recommend a few open source projects worth joining, and good for the CV, that would offer good experience in consolidating back end skills, in particular all three of java, linux, and oracle ?

Also I realise this should be a proper long term commitment, so I want to choose carefully, and how many hours per week would you realistically be expected to contribute over the long term ?

Thanks all.

Matt.

L.Jenkins

Have you browsed github lately?

Matt Markinson

I have, but I find the choice is pretty large, and before investing considerable time on randomly trying out and weeding out the good from the bad, I was hoping to maybe narrow it down with a few recommendations from other people's personal experience. I thought it might be worth a shot asking here.

PrzemoF

Find something that is interesting for _you_ and cover the area you want to work in. With open source there are no strings attached - you can submit one patch and that's fine. If you submit more - it's even better. I worked with quite a few open source projects and I was never asked how much time I can spend coding/reviewing code. It's just not important - if you can improve the project in any way - you're welcome to do it.

My usual recommendation would be: find an open source software that you use every day and improve it. However with oracle that might not work well :-)

14ned

PrzemoF wrote: »

Find something that is interesting for _you_ and cover the area you want to work in. With open source there are no strings attached - you can submit one patch and that's fine. If you submit more - it's even better. I worked with quite a few open source projects and I was never asked how much time I can spend coding/reviewing code. It's just not important - if you can improve the project in any way - you're welcome to do it.

My usual recommendation would be: find an open source software that you use every day and improve it. However with oracle that might not work well :-)

I can't agree more with this point. Contributing fixes to other people's software is an ethos sure, but it sure helps to have a genuine interest or even passion in the project you are helping out.

As an example, a very, very long time ago I got interested in getting the GPU to do lots of maths by abusing the then fixed function shader programming language. That led me to contribute bits and pieces to a very early GPGPU programming language, one long predating CUDA or OpenCL. That in turn led to AMD sending me free top of the range graphics cards to help with debugging, and a job offer of $120k if I'd move to their HQ (I refused, I had a Masters to do).

Not bad a summer's pet project. Point is, genuine interest in some cutting edge niche where multinationals have a strategic interest can take you very far very quickly. Or it can take you nowhere at all, in which case it's still a good investment of time through personal development.

Niall

Talisman

If the big bad world of Github is too daunting you could always sign up to TopCoder. Through the contests you will contribute to real world projects hosted on GitLab.com.

It's more structured than diving in to Github but the choice of projects is limited and there is a time limit element.