You already know that one of the ways of improving your skills as a programmer is to contribute to open source projects.

But how do you contribute to open source projects even when you are not an experienced programmer?

What is also the best way to handle bugs in an open source project?

Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to share with you in today’s interview blog post and much more.

Today’s guest is Julien Danjou, and he has contributed to the largest open source project in Python( OpenStack). He is also the author of the book, The Hacker’s Guide to Python.

Here is a piece of the interview:
Godson: What do you mean when you say you hack with Python?

Julien Danjou: Unfortunately, most people refer to hacking as the activity of some bad guys trying to get access to whatever they’re not supposed to see. In the book title, I mean “hacking” as the elegant way of writing code and making things worse smoothly even when you were not expecting to make it.

Godson: How can a programmer without much experience contribute to open source projects?

Julien Danjou: The best way to start is to try to fix something that irritates you in some way. It might be a bug, it might be a missing feature. Start small. Don’t try big things first or you could be discouraged.

Never stop.

Also, don’t plunge right away in the community and start poking random people or spam them with questions. Do your homework, and listen

Do your homework, and listen to the community for a while to get a sense of how things are going. That can be joining IRC and lurking or following the mailing lists for example.

Big open source community dedicate programs to help you become engaged. It might be worth a try. Generic programs like Outreachy or Google Summer of Code are a great way to start if you don’t feel confident enough to jump by your own means in a community.

Godson: How does a team of programmers handle bugs in a large open source project?

Julien Danjou: I wish there was some magic recipe, but I don’t think it’s the case. What you want is to have a place where your users can feel safe reporting bugs. Include a template so they don’t forget any details: how to reproduce the bugs, what they expected, etc. The worst thing is to have users reporting “That does not work.” with no details. It’s a waste of time.

What you want is to have a place where your users can feel safe reporting bugs. Include a template so they don’t forget any details: how to reproduce the bugs, what they expected, etc. The worst thing is to have users reporting “That does not work.” with no details. It’s a waste of time.

What tool to use to log all of that really depends on the team size and culture.

Once that works, the actual fixing of bug doesn’t follow any rule. Most developers fix the bug they encounter or the ones that are the most critical for users. Smaller problems might not be fixed for a long time.

To read more, kindly follow this link: http://coolpythoncodes.com/julien-danjou/