Contributing to Ubuntu - Languages?

[MovingAlong]

Hi all,

I'm a software developer and I'm interested in contributing to the development of Ubuntu. If anyone can guide me to the right places in order to get started that would be much appreciated...

I'm very much from a Microsoft background (Visual C++ and C#), but have a little Java experience. From brief reading I'm assuming that Python is preferred language? Or is anybody aware of some Java projects that require some help? More than happy to learn Python though...

Any general help or information would be gratefully received...

Cheers,
MovingAlong

[Simian Man]

Almost every common programming language is used in the Linux world. There are many, many projects that use C++ (and more that use C), and many that use C# as well. Java not so much, but there are some.

What kind of project are you looking to contribute towards? Languages are generally easy to learn once you get a couple under your belt, and it's always good to know as many as possible (looks great on a resume if nothing else). So I'd suggest choosing a project based on your interests and then learning the language(s) they use if need be.

[MovingAlong]

Hi SM,

Thanks for the reply. I'm kind of void of ideas for what kind of project to contribute to.

Ideally something thats small would be good to gain a good understanding of all components, or alternatively something thats very modular so I can pick up the various aspects over time.

I've got a lot of experience as a GUI developer, so something with a front-end would be good - but I really don't mind what I get stuck into...

Is there a repository of projects that I could browse?

Cheers,
Greg

[Simian Man]

Is there any application or project that you really like, but know that it has bugs or is missing features? Because that would be the perfect place to begin :).



Is there a repository of projects that I could browse?

Yes! Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/), Google Code (http://code.google.com/hosting/) and Launchpad (https://launchpad.net/) all host open source projects and allow you to search through them, view descriptions, download the code and so on.

There are also sites that list open source projects without hosting the code like Softpedia (http://www.softpedia.us/) and Oloh (http://www.ohloh.net/).