some big Open Source projects, Wikipedia and more

This week, we had one class and one presentation lecture. We were able to learn about the projects other groups are working on, and give a brief introduction to our project, Gatsby.

Finishing where we left off last week

In Monday’s lecture, we first discussed our impressions on the two lectures last week. Many of my fellow classmates mentioned how they enjoyed the guest lecture both in its form and the content, and I felt the same. It seems more informative and abundant in its content, plus all the suggestions and hints given to us by Gil, I felt like the guest talk was very helpful. In terms of its form of presentation, many of my classmates talked about how they liked the form of presentation better than the previous guest lectures, because though it was remote, it seems more casual, and clearer. Gil was able to see all the questions we had in the chat box, and he could choose which ones to answer to at specific times of his talk. He was able to select the ones that are the most helpful and relevant, and answer them in the time they fit the best. This could not be conducted during a normal guest lecture in class session before, as we had to ask our questions in person. I am glad that hough we are in the pandemic, we could find some silver lining and enjoy the way we are learning now

The greatest Open Source project ever

When Professor Kluskowska posted the question: what is the biggest Open source project? there were many answers that came up, including Android, apache, linux, etc. Though these are big, useful open source projects, the correct answer of this question is Wikipedia. It is interesting, as Professor Kluskowska mentions, that when Wikipedia and its concept of having no ads, all free service provided by all people first came out, many challenged the idea, and said that it is not going to work. They probably could not imagine how many people are using Wikipedia now. As a side-note for myself, I should not be too subbjective to judge any new tech projects in the future — as modern and impossible there ideas might seem for now, they could become the next wikipedia.

Projects we are working on

In Wednesday’s lecture, we had a chance to talk about our projects briefly. I got to hear about many interesting projects that my fellow classmates are working on. There is one project that I think is very interesting. It is called Oppia. It is a free site for sharing knowledge via interactive lessons called explorations. I think it is a great way for us to share our knowledge with others, help other in ways that are not too difficult to achieve, but also efficient for many of our generation to achieve. I think I would contribute to this site outside of class time, simply out of my interest and curiosity.