OSSD Project Presentations

This week we were able to learn about some of the Open Source projects that have are classmates have contributed. It was interesting to hear about all of the projects and the diverse range topics they covered. So far, from the presentations it seems like a lot of students have been able to contribute by doing translations for their open source projects. This seems like a great way to contribute especially if you are familiar with other languages. I think my favorite part of the presentations was learning about what everyone learned and how they solved the problems they encountered. I think we have all learned that it is extremely important to talk to the maintainers of a repository before working on a pull request or creating a new feature. It is always good to get confirmation on something you are working before you start.

Updates on Wireframes

In the past week, we have been receiving updates on our wireframes for the desktop and mobile site from members of the Oppia team. Over the week, we have been all working on incorporating these changes on the wireframes.

Evaluating Social Good Open Source Projects

This week we had the opportunity to learn more about open source projects that were for social good. I was surprised to learn that so many open source projects are actually focused on humanitarian needs. In my opinion, open source, due to its collaborative and transparent nature, is the perfect platform to build software for social good. During class, I had the opportunity to work with some of my classmates on evaluating Hospital Run. From our evaluation, we were able to determine that Hospital Run would be a great open source project to contribute to since they had decent documentation and it seemed like a friendly community.

COVID-19 Open Efforts

This week we had the opportunity to research open efforts for COVID-19. While doing my own research and hearing about my classmates’ research, I was able to see how the tech community has been able to contribute to the efforts of COVID-19 research. I was surprised to see so many new open source projects have started as a result to the pandemic. Many projects that were not originally created for the purpose of tracking or researching COVID-19 have now converted their own projects to be related to the virus. Many of the projects we saw were similar. For example, there were multiple tracking software for keeping count of COVID related cases. There were also a few hardware related efforts that were related to PCR and other biological reactions. During a crisis like this, it was great to see how the tech community is doing its parts to contribute to the research efforts.

Group Project Presentation

This week we had the opportunity to hear about our classmates’ open source projects and their experience working with open source communities. I enjoyed learning about everyone’s progress and hearing about different ways they are contributing to the projects they have chosen. One thing that I found very interesting was that people were making various kinds of contributions, some people were working on fixing small issues while others were working on making one large contribution. It made me realize that there are various ways to contribute to an open source project.

More Thoughts on Cathedral and the Bazaar

This week in class we discussed Cathedral and the Bazaar and focused on the main lessons found in the essay. Last week, I mentioned in my blog post that I found the Cathedral and the Bazaar analogy to be extremely interesting. This week, as we were discussing the essay with everyone in the class I started focusing more on the implications of this analogy at a company vs. at a smaller company, like a startup. Having worked at a startup, I feel as though the bazaar model is easy to see here. There are of a few engineers usually working together to build a product. Since there is less of a hierarchy at smaller companies, people can find an aspect of the project they are interested in start making progress in that particular area. I feel as though this may not be the case at a larger company. Since there is more bureaucracy at larger companies, there might be less opportunity to branch out and prioritize what you think is important for a company’s success. From our class discussion, I thought it would be important to understand how this model may fit into the real world.

Weekly Overview

This week in class we focused on learning how to rebase with an in-class activity. We were able to work in small groups over Zoom to complete an activity and help each other if we needed to. The first time we started this activity, I found it a little tricky because I was unfamiliar with using Git through the command line. Also, I thought we needed the activity logs formed by the terminal to be exactly like the one we were given in the activity. Getting the activity log’s to be an exact match was a little difficult and time consuming. By the end of the activity, I was able to understand Git a lot better and had a clearer understanding of what rebasing was.

Overview of the Week

Vicky Steves

This week we had the opportunity of having Vicky Steeves come talk to us for the second time. I really enjoy having her come to our classes not only because her talks are extremely informative but also, I find her area of work to be fascinating. Before these talks, I never knew that librarians were also computer scientists. It has been extremely fascinating for me to learn about how tech is used to manage a library and its resources. During her talk, Ms. Steeves spoke about how a great deal of code is no longer available to us because it is outdated and cannot be run on our machines. She also spoke about how some code will not function the same way on different machines. This was an issue I was aware of, however, I did not realize the implications it would have. From this talk, I was able to broaden my understanding of computer science and also learn about areas studies I was unaware of.

This week was a busy week in class; we covered how to evaluate a project and had a guest speaker from Bloomberg. While discussing project evaluations, I thought it was interesting the different aspects that one should check to assess the health of a project. I think it’s important to start at open source project’s website before going to their repository. Many of the websites for the projects we looked at had links to other useful information, such as the link for the how to contribute and link to the Github repository. One of the most important things I learned was that if a project does not have a Code of Conduct, we should be weary. It was a rule that I would probably not have realized on my own. When it was mentioned in class, it made me realize that not having a Code of Conduct could suggest that the open source project community may not be as friendly.

This week I had the opportunity to hear a lecture from Deena Engle and Vicky Steeves about open data. They covered many topics ranging from the challenges of using proprietary data, cleaning data, and popular tools used to handle data. In the past, I have never worked with open data or with any sort of data handling platform, so this talk was a great way to learn more about the field.

This week we presented on our Firefox Extension. We built an extension that displays the weekly weather forecast for NYC. The image that appears is the abc7 weather forecast for NYC for the week. Working on the extension allowed me to learn a lot about building an extension, Javascript, GitHub, and team work. Since everyone in the group came from different backgrounds and since my team members were more experienced than me, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to learn from my groups members.

For this week, Ben, Daniel, and myself have been working on creating a Firefox Browser Extension. In class on Monday, we were able to learn the basics of building an extension. When we started the group work, I was a bit overwhelmed since I am not so familiar with building extensions and with Github. However, whenever I seemed to run into a problem my group members were extremely helpful, and we were able to quickly complete the tasks. We also were able to decide on an idea for our browser extension. We plan on building an extension that will change the theme colors of the NYU website. Even though it is a very simple extension, I believe that the process will allow us to collaborate and allow us to improve our teamwork skills.

By definition, open source is a form of source code which allows any user to change and improve the code. Furthermore, open source also means that any person can distribute the code for any purpose. In my opinion, this format of allowing anyone to modify the source code can create a sense of community among those enhancing the code. Having multiple people come together to improve code allows coders to learn from one another and collaborate on a meaningful and impactful project. This demonstrates one of open sources biggest advantages - collaboration. By having many people working together, bugs can be quickly fixed by anyone who comes across an issue. Since many people are analyzing the code, bugs can be fixed efficiently creating secure code. Another major advantage of open source is that it is generally free and can save companies and people a great deal of money.