Re: [OS:N:] Just joined

[Robert Citek <rwcitek alum calberkeley org>]

On Tuesday, Feb 15, 2005, at 14:41 US/Central, Deadly Earnest wrote:
> I'd like to be of some use programming for Open Source but I'm going to
> be dead weight for a while. My background is about 10 years in embedded
> systems programming for telecommunications and as a result I'm a
> straight C man and have never had a big screen to play with. I'd like 
> to
> do some C++ and Java and then join one of the projects in time but for
> now I'm just finding my feet.

My recommendation is to hop on to SourceForge, pick a project, and help 
answer user questions and fixing bugs.  Advantages:

 - you'll be helping the project along
 - you'll gain familiarity with the software
 - you'll gain familiarity with the project
 - you'll learn a lot in a short time.  Lots of example code to wade 
through.

In addition to the projects on SourceForge, have a look at Mozilla, 
Fedora Core, OpenOffice.org, and MySQL.  Many use C and/or C++ and/or 
Java.

And, of course, there's always the linux kernel itself at 
http://www.kernel.org/

Just my $0.02.

Regards,
- Robert
http://www.cwelug.org/downloads
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