David Lord Mar 31, 2024

Got the latest "student was told to make an open source contribution" PR, so I decided to write up the various types of these that I see, and why they're not helpful. https://davidism.com/school-assignment-open-source/ #OpenSource

If your teacher (or tutorial/video/hackathon/etc) says "go do X in an open source project" and then sends you off unsupervised, they haven't adequately prepared you to be a contributor, or thought through the consequences of their assignment. Don't do it.

So your teacher wants you to do open source

If your teacher (or tutorial/video/hackathon/etc) says "go do X in an open source project" and then sends you off unsupervised, they haven't adequately prepa...

David Lord
Show threadGreg Wilson
@davidism I strongly agree that most student fly-by "contributions" are a burden, but "don't do it" can cost a student 10-20% of their course grade, and GPA really does matter for people seeking entry-level coding jobs in an era of robo-screening. "Explain to your prof that they're wrong" isn't a viable option in most situations either in my experience.
Mar 31, 2024 at 11:55amWeb