I want to get involved, i just don't know where to start

[What The Deuce]

Hello,

I am a sophomore in the field of computer science. I have just finished 2 C++ courses where we ended the course off with Binary Trees. Since thats were we ended, i would say i have a good understanding of pointers, recursion, loops, classes, inheritance, fuctions, friends, a good deal of SDL, a bit of STL, sorting, etc...and I would say I have a real apptitude for this stuff and what I learned i have mastered. Not to toot my own horn, but I wrecked those two courses and found them very unchallenging (i first learned Python, but only the basics, and have almost completely forgotten it. I also took Java in HS - that helped).

I am looking for a challenge and a way to keep up my c++ skills.

I have always wanted to get involved with open source programming, but i either come across things way too challenging/advanced or in a different language - and sometimes very unexciting.

Does anyone have a good suggestion as to where I should look? anything Ubuntu related? Do you think i could learn stuff just by studying the kernel? Any advice what-so-ever. Should i work on another language that might work well with c++?
I am all ears.

Thanks!

[slavik]

I suggest getting the K&R book and looking at raw C (as most things are written in C).

then, find an app which does do something you want it to do and start reading the documentation/source code and hang out in the app's dev channel. "scratch your itch"

[sonofusion82]

you can try contributing to various open-source projects.. i suggest going for smaller projects.. bigger ones are quite overwhelming and rather steep learning curve. maybe contribute to some linux games and apps that you like but it has some little bugs that irritates you.

to sharpen your C++ skills, try reading Effective C++ by Scott Meyers that teaches stuffs beyond syntaxes, pointers and basic OO.

If you want to take your self to the C++ advance level, try Exceptional C++ by Herb Sutter, it blew me off when a senior engineer colleague borrowed me the book. it was an eye-opener that raises my respect for c++ as a powerful and capable language but had to truely master.

[pmasiar]

Excellent book with tasks to solve to sharpen your skills is "Etudes for programmers", links to reviews here (http://learnpython.pbwiki.com/FrontPage#Solvingproblems)

Find a project which would feel interesting like a hobby - because it will drain lots of your free time :-)

One of *my* pet favorite is Midnight Commander (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_commander), excellent visual (but non-GUI: try it, it *is* possible) file manager/swiss army chainsaw tool. Needs some loving care for Windows version.