open-source and me: tips for a career in software development

a talk aimed at computer science students, about participating in open-source and building a career in software development

Transcript

1. Aman Gupta Karmani · github.com/tmm1 open-source and me tips for a career in software development
2. • programming for 20+ years • full-stack polyglot dev + ops • 10 years in silicon valley building my career • founded multiple startups • early engineer at GitHub • consulting for AirBnb, Twitter, etc • thousands of open-source contributions • moved to sunny Santa Barbara in 2018 Aman Karmani · @tmm1 about me
3. about me 2003 - high school
4. tips for a career in software development master a scripting language pick any one you like and get really good at it
5. tips for a career in software development invest in your development environment experiment with di ff erent code editors like vim, emacs, intellij, vscode to fi nd what makes you most productive
6. tips for a career in software development learn web technologies html, css, javascript http request/response + headers
7. about me 2006 - college
8. about me 2008 - San Francisco
9. 2009 - conferences about me
10. tips for a career in software development engage with your community attend conferences, talks and meetups about the languages and frameworks you’re using
11. about me 2010 - rails performance consulting
12. tips for a career in software development learn to use debugging tools when you’re stuck, fi nd a tool which will dig deeper
 
 pro fi lers, tracers, inspectors, debuggers for example: chrome web inspector
13. about me 2011
14. about me 2012 - pro fi ling tools
15. tips for a career in software development think about how and where your code will run writing code is only half the battle.. maintenance + operations resilient software saves you sleep
16. about me 2013 - ruby-core team
17. about me 2014 - RubyKaigi Tokyo ! Aman Gupta (@tmm1) VP Technical Infrastructure GitHub, Inc. Ruby 2.1 in Production How I upgraded github.com from 1.8.7-p72 to 2.1.2 http://bit.ly/ruby21-in-production
18. 2016 about me
19. 2017 about me
20. 2018 about me
21. 2021 about me
22. what is open source?
24. pick your battles why open source? 
 Operating System 
 Device Drivers Framework Libraries Proprietary Business Logic } } closed source trade secret speci fi c to your product/business open source shared infrastructure community adding features edge case bugs found and fi xed credit card
 processing http
 webserver tcp/ip
 network stack memory management
 
 process scheduling
25. open-source is a super power control your own destiny • look behind the scenes, instead of getting stuck • every change documented for future devs (+ you) • who changed it and when • what lines changed where • why why why
26. how does open source work? code
 (version control)
 discussion
 (code review)
27. case study open-source software for tax returns
28. OpenTaxSolver 20 years old! • written in C • subversion source control • hosted on sourceforge • GPLv2, contribute patches via email • mailing list + facebook group for discussion
29. since 1996! excel1040 • written in excel macros (!) • no source control
 no license • can it be called open- source? • hosted on google sites • contribute bug reports via email
30. • written in TypeScript and React.js • git for source control • AGPL3, hosted on GitHub • discord discussions • automation: CI, codecov, dependabot, code formatting newcomer UsTaxes.org
31. let’s contribute!
32. • with the project • README, contribution guidelines, coding style • recent discussions, upcoming releases and goals • with the code base • look at open and recently closed issues • read through open and merged pull requests • what libraries, languages and frameworks are used? • how to setup a development environment? familiarize yourself let’s contribute
33. start small let’s contribute
34. documentation and project planning not all contributions are code let’s contribute
35. let’s contribute setup development environment
36. let’s contribute setup development environment
37. document for the future let’s contribute
38. document for the future let’s contribute
39. copy existing patterns and style let’s contribute
40. code review and scope creeeeeeeep let’s contribute
41. code review and scope creeeeeeeep let’s contribute
42. code review and scope creeeeeeeep let’s contribute
43. bug fi x: follow the open source let’s contribute
44. bug fi x: follow the open source let’s contribute
45. bug fi x: follow the open source let’s contribute
46. bug fi x: follow the open source let’s contribute
47. fi x bugs that a ff ect you let’s contribute
48. tips for a career in software development participate in open-source! build your skills and your portfolio scratch your own itch
49. newborn project taxes.cue
50. questions? Aman Karmani aman@tmm1.net · github.com/tmm1