CSCI-UA 480 Student, Spring 2020. Currently a third year student at NYU majoring in Computer Science.
This semester is slowly winding down and coming Spring 2020 is coming to an end. This was the last full week of classes. This week during lecture five groups presented their projects and what they’ve worked on for the last third of the course. My group (group 2) were one of the five that presented.
On Monday’s class we had another round of group stand up reports. Through the stand-up reports we had the opportunity to hear the progress various groups have made on their contributions to their chosen projects. I thought the different approaches each group took was interesting. Some groups were making new pages for the project’s websites, adding lessons and tutorials to the site, and other translating the site. I also started translating the website as a part of my individual contributions.
In the last week, my group and I made significant progress in our contributions to OpenFoodFacts. We finished up on a new dark mode feature. During a group meeting, we divided up the roles and responsibilities for each member. I was responsible of working on the CSS file that changes the website’s style and layout. I am very new to CSS and HTML, making working on this project challenging at first. The biggest challenge was not writing code that works but reading and understanding already existing code that is a part of the project. We all had trouble finding the HTML files that created the website. After searching all files unable to identify the files we needed, I decieded to reach out to one of the administrators of the project. I found that the main files that builds the website was not a HTML file but a Perl file. I don’t know any Perl, and it was very challenging to understand what the code was doing. The file lack proper documentation/comments. After reading and syphering the code for hours, I was able to make the CSS files. Our goal to finish this feature was April 27, and we meet the goal. We opened a pull request to have our changes merge.
For Monday’s lecture, we were assigned with the task to look for any type of open efforts for COVID-19. Initially, I did not think that there would be too many open efforts for this topic. However, I was proven wrong when I did a simple google search of “Open Efforts Coronavirus.” I choose a visualization tool Real-time COVID-19 visualization. This tool tracks the number of cases globally. I thought it is useful and interesting to see the relative spread of this virus, and how countries are flattening the number of cases. Seeing the visualization really allowed me to see how rapidly the virus spread.
On lecture Wednesday, we had group standup reports. Most groups discussed the projects they will be contributing to this semester and the progress they have made so far. I thought all of the groups are working on really interesting projects. A really interesting thing the I observed during the standup reports was that there are different ways that groups are communicating with the admin of the project. My group and I are communicating with them solely through their slack channel. Other groups are emailing, slacking, and using disscussion forums on the project website. One group also mentioned that they had the opportunity to video chat with some of the admin to discuss ways to contribute. I though that was very interesting that every group had their own way of reaching out and staying in contact with the admins of the project. Another thing I found interesting is that gtwo groups are doing the same project, but have totally different ideas on how to contribute. Even though they are working on the same projects, each group has different skill sets allowing them to get involved in the project in different ways. Overall, it was very exciting and interesting to see what other groups are working on and their prigress.
The essay Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond was a very interesting read. At first, I found the language and terms being used to be a little difficult as I was unfamiliar with a lot of verbadium he is using in the piece. This caused me to constantly lose focus on the main points of each sections. After reading it through carefully, I found the article to be very insightful and interesting. A quote that I really liked that was discussed in class was “Every good work of Software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch.” I think when the developer is interested in a project and it is their “passion Project” they are more invested to get good results from the project. I think every developer, including myself, can relate to this.
### Remote Learning
This week was Spring Break, and the first offical week we were told the rest of the semester will be held remotely. Certain anxities and worries came with the idea of doing all my classes online. I took this week to familiarize and normalize the idea of doing online classes. I think this class, Open Source Software Development, will be faily the same remotely. A lot of our work is online. The class focuses on group work, and class-activites, rather than being too lecture dependent. Also, the class lectures are well designed and can be easily done online.
This week has been a very interesting, challenging, and long week. On Monday’s lecture we breifly went over project evaluations. Then went over git version control. Wenesday was the first day of online classes through Zoom, where we were assigned group mates for the final project.
This week we learned about the importance of software preservation and how to start contributing to open source projects.
This week in class, we learned the measures to take when choosing an Open Source project to get involved with. We also had a wonderful guest speaker from Bloomberg terminal come to us about.
On Wednesday’s lecture, we had two wonderful guest speakers Professor Deena Engel and Vicky Steeves, who gave an overview of what open data is and how to use it. Both Engel and Steeves seemed like they were very knowledgeable in the subject of Open data and were really effective in displaying the uses of proprietary data. Going into this lecture, I was not really too familiar with what open data is, and the protocol of using open data and databases. Before taking this Open Source Software Development course, I did not have any experience with open source projects or open data and had very limited knowledge on the subjects.
This week we presented our first Open Source project, which was a Firefox browser extension. My group and I decided to do a light switch extension that Th detects the time of day. If it is day time, the decoration (a sun) that lights up the website is turned on. During the night time, the decoration (a moon) is turned off. The extension works both automatically (the computer will periodically check the user time) and manually. WE were able to finish the project on time and present it in frron of the class.
This week my group and I worked on a FireFox browser extension. This was my first time working on an open source project. This was also my first time working on a CS project with other people. At first I was a little intimidated. I dont know how to code in JavaSCript and I never was involved in an Open Scource project. Howevr, working on this extension this week allowed me to get the hang of the concept of contributing to group projects and open source projects.
I first heard of the phrase “open source” was in my first ever programming class at NYU. My professor had just briefly mentioned the phrase while talking about sharing code and ideas for software. Ever since then, whenever I thought of an open source project, I thought of freely sharing code/software.