[Haskell-cafe] open source project for student

Osager Prairie osagerprairie at gmail.com
Fri Apr 13 11:55:01 CEST 2012


Hi Dan:

Just to share a little bit of my humble experience.
I'm also a beginner and I'm intrested in "directory manipulation" related
code.
Tasks such as printing directory in a tree form etc.

So I search on Hackage and found several projects, most notably the
Directory.Tree project. It's a very modest size project and could be an
easy entry for some hacking.

I'm sure you have your own interests in a specific type of problems.
and I'm sure you can find a similar small project from Hackage.

Happy hacking


On Fri, Apr 13, 2012 at 11:41 AM, Dan Cristian Octavian <
danoctavian91 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Hi Jeremy,
>
> Thank you for your encouraging reply. I understand your points and agree
> for the most part, especially with the mentorship discussion that you made.
>
> I wasn't too sure about attempting to work on a more sizeable project
> (although I preferred that) but if you are saying that it's a reasonable
> thing to do, I might as well try that. I have already started checking out
> the larger Haskell projects.
>
> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Jeremy O'Donoghue <
> jeremy.odonoghue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Dan,
>>
>> I am the maintainer of wxHaskell, but please don't let that worry you, as
>> I'm actually not going to go on and recommend wxHaskell as an Open Source
>> project for a relative beginner - it is architecturally complex, and you
>> need to know as much C++ as you do Haskell. You might choose to *use*
>> wxHaskell in any project you undertake, but that is a different matter.
>>
>> I'm also a software engineering manager in my day job, so I have a lot of
>> experience of what a good intern (those who come to me have generally
>> completed their second year of undergraduate studies in the UK) can achieve
>> - usually in fairly hardcore embedded C++, but that's beside the point.
>>
>> On 11 April 2012 22:52, Dan Cristian Octavian <danoctavian91 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I am a second year computer science student who is very interested in
>>>  working on a haskell open source project. I have no particular focus on a
>>> certain type of application. I am open to ideas and to exploring new
>>> fields. What kind of project should I look for considering that I am a
>>> beginner? (Any particular project proposals would be greatly appreciated).
>>>
>>
>> Long experience of many types of software project tells me that before
>> everything else you should choose something which interests you. You need a
>> reason to want to understand, analyze and generally get stuck into a
>> codebase, and having an interest is what gives you that motivation.
>>
>> At the same time, please don't let being a 'beginner' be too much of a
>> barrier. I tell new interns that by the end of their internship they will
>> be debugging multithreaded kernel-mode C++ code on an embedded target
>> confidently and they look at me as though I am mad. However, they have all
>> (so far) managed to succeed in doing just that kind of thing. Don't
>> underestimate your ability to understand new concepts when you have a
>> reason to focus hard on them.
>>
>> What will help you a great deal is good mentorship. Working on a project
>> where the development team can take time to explain to you how (and why)
>> they think things should be done in a particular way will accelerate your
>> learning to a remarkable degree. Far more than 100 lectures, in fact. You
>> should also try to choose a project which is well documented - this will
>> help you to understand how everything hands together.
>>
>> Is the entry bar too high for most projects out there for somebody
>>> lacking experience such as me so that I should try getting some experience
>>> on my own first?
>>>
>>
>> It is amazing what you can do when you actually make a start! I'm
>> assuming that you are somewhat familiar with Haskell at this point (e.g.
>> worked your way through most of Learn You a Haskell or Real World Haskell,
>> and felt like you grasped at least 50% - if you haven't, do that first).
>>
>> The key is to start with something fairly small and then use it to build
>> up to something bigger. Most sizeable projects (wxHaskell, Gtk2Hs, Darcs,
>> Yi, Yesod and many others) will have things on the 'to do' list which are
>> not too large and maintainers who should be able to help.
>>
>> Would it be a better idea to try to hack on my own project rather than
>>> helping on an existing one?
>>>
>>
>> I think you would learn more by contributing to an existing project.
>> Whether that is of overwhelming importance is a question only you can
>> answer.
>>
>> Regards
>> Jeremy
>>
>
>
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