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29 ways to get started in open source

29 ways to get started in open source

Easy ways to get started in open source without having to be a programming genius.

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Andy Lester

May 15, 2012
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  1. 29 ways to get started in open source Andy Lester,

    http://petdance.com/ Monday, May 14, 12
  2. Listen & learn • How does project work flow? •

    Who are leaders? Dictator or committee? • What’s being worked on? • What does the project value? Monday, May 14, 12
  3. Listen & learn • Join a mailing list. • Read

    blogs of leaders. • Join IRC channel. • Attend a user group meeting. Monday, May 14, 12
  4. Enhance a bug report. • “I recreated this on Ubuntu

    with the 1.6 release per the ticket. On Mac OS X, it also failed, but with a different error message and with a stack trace.” • (And give the message and contents of the stack trace!) Monday, May 14, 12
  5. Isolate a bug. • “I was not able to recreate

    this under Firefox 11.0, but it does happen on Firefox 9.1 and Safari 2.4.” • If you have a theory, provide it. • “I remember reading that Firefox 11 was more forgiving in handling JavaScript that does X.” Monday, May 14, 12
  6. Isolate a bug. • Be careful you are clear what

    is theory and guessing, and what is fact you’ve proven. • Avoid sweeping guesses. • Bad: “This happens with every template.” • Good: “I tried this on these seven templates: A, B, C, M, N, P and X”. Monday, May 14, 12