How can new programmers get into open source project development?

**Interius** · March 2nd, 2011

I'm in college right now majoring in comp sci and currently taking a c++ class. I'd like to get started actually working on a program rather than just homework junk all the time. Is there any help I could be to real open source dev teams? And if so how could I find a team to work with?

**Vox754** · March 2nd, 2011

Originally Posted by Interius

I'm in college right now majoring in comp sci and currently taking a c++ class. I'd like to get started actually working on a program rather than just homework junk all the time. Is there any help I could be to real open source dev teams? And if so how could I find a team to work with?

"New" programmers cannot get into open source project development. First, they have to transition to competent programmers by themselves.

Learn a lot, read a lot (mailing lists, forums, documentation, autotools, Makefile, svn, git, bzr). Program a few applications by yourself (GTK, Qt, WxWidgets, SDL, OpenGL, use external libraries). Afterwards, you will have the skills and experience to crash into any open source project, and say, "I can help with this patch".

That is, very few projects will give you guidance if you don't already know how it works. Few people have time and patience to teach newbies all there is to know about a project. You are expected to learn most of this by yourself, by reading the code and documentation, if any. This means some projects are complete hacks and don't even have sufficient documentation to begin with. Documenting something is always a big task that many developers are simply lazy to take care of, because, you know, they programmed the thing, so they know how it works.

Therefore, the best way to start with open source, is start a project yourself. It may be the case that when you get enough experience you become the mentor of other newbies.

Of course, this is only one piece of advice. The most important thing to remember is that open source is open. Code is there, you just have to take it, and modify it. Have initiative.