The class that we had in irc was different to say the least. At first the silence was really weird for me but after a little bit of time in irc the conversations seemed to flow well and the class seemed to become quite normal, if anything with a little less clutter since everyone’s points are written out and become much easier to track. I thought the readings were quite interesting, i wave worked doing some it support in the past were they really focused on their ticketing system and good documentation. I was happy to see that some of these same things are used in open source development since it is something i feel i can do very well. I also like the part on the life cycle of the bug tracker i didn’t realize there were so many steps to be taken before the problem is even addressed.

From the blog Dhimitris CS Blog » CS401 by dnatsis and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I really enjoyed the IRC chat class. I thought that the silence was excellent, and that the logs were a good way to get everyone on record for what they said. As far as the readings go, I felt that the most interesting one was the “14 Ways to Contribute to Open Source” article. I felt that the author hit on many important, easy, quick ways to contribute. One way that stuck with me was creating a real world example. Personally, I always look at the usage examples when learning a new cli utility. 

From the blog ckelley6 » CS401 by ckelley6 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Doing the github activity I learned that I can also use a gui for commits, and other git commands. I am used to the command line however one great benefit I got from the activity was through the gui it is very easy to see the diffs between the files commited to git.

From the blog tbruceblog » cs401 by tbruce731 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This class seems like it is going to be a lot different then some of the Computer Science classes that i have taken in the past. Up to now i feel like we have been doing just a lot of busy work type programming nothing that i feel is actually too practical. I think it will be very interesting to work on something a lot larger and more practical then in the past. I am also interested to see how the open source aspect will play out.

I feel like a lot of the ideas in The Cathedral and the Bazaar where things i was already familiar with but it was still a very informative article. Seeing the author first getting into this open source project and him starting to see all of the benefits of open source programming really helps reinforce some ideas that i was already familiar with.

The free vs. open article although interesting was not something that i particularly worry about.  The only difference that i could really see was that in some cases software under Open source initiative might have restrictions on who can release the executable version however the source code is still available. I see that free is more of an ideology versus open which is more about just getting a better piece of software but at the end of the day for me the differences are not really big enough to concern me.

I really liked reading the OpenMRS developers guide because it gave some background to what where going to be working on. Seems like the project is for a good cause and beneficial to many. The project is also very large containing 40 thousand lines of code and being used in many parts of the world. These things all seem very exciting and i am looking forward to working on this project

I haven’t used too much of Git or Irc however i did get both setup and working. I am interested in seeing how these things work more closely since both seem like great tools for making your life as a programmer and especially as programmer that’s part of a team much easier.

From the blog Dhimitris CS Blog » CS401 by dnatsis and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I hope that this class gives me a better idea about how working on a large scale project is, especially working with others who are all remote. I agreed with the beginning of the cathedral and the bazaar, with how it would make sense that large scale programs should be more closely controlled so that they work better together. Linux operating systems seem to be the exception to that rule though. 

From the blog ckelley6 » CS401 by ckelley6 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I am looking forward to working on this open source project! I am very excited to see how we can develop the project as a team and maybe make a real world impact. I am a big fan of open source projects, I use them at work daily and at home as-well. I have never worked on an open source project and I cannot wait to get started on this one!

From the blog tbruceblog » cs401 by tbruce731 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I thought that the git activity was interesting. I have been doing tons of work through the command line and liked that it could be done that way. Almost everything seems quicker and easier to do through the cli then a gui now.

From the blog ckelley6 » CS401 by ckelley6 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.