4 ms·

It’s a shame that there aren’t more university programs that encourage contributions to open source. There’s a lot of senior capstone projects that just go to b

by teeray 3y ago

It’s a shame that there aren’t more university programs that encourage contributions to open source. There’s a lot of senior capstone projects that just go to benefit some random company. If we’re going to pay these students with a grade instead of cash, it would be nice if it benefitted the open source community instead. Plus, it works out well for the students, because their work is entirely public for prospective employers to review.

jruohonen 3y ago
> There’s a lot of senior capstone projects that just go to benefit some random company. That's a solid advice, I think. Your mileages may vary, but I remember a saying from a HR representative about having a good "entry" in GitHub being more valuable to students than having some random company entry in a CV. In a rather similar vein, that's why things like Google's Summer of Code may be more valuable in the long-run than direct monetary support.
artyom 3y ago
There's plenty of open source projects that derived from an university thesis, project, collaboration. Redis and Ceph quickly come to mind -- and somewhat the original Linux kernel, too. But they where very good ideas of a sole student that gained traction, not really "encouraged" by the university itself. After 10 years as an educator myself, I think the main problem is laziness in evaluation methods. It'd be hard, time consuming but totally doable to assess the competency of people contributing to one or various open source projects, even if each one works on a different problem. But if I make everyone build a small operating system or a database, I can evaluate, assess and score all of them with the same method, at the same time. I've seen that laziness taken to the extreme by old tired professors, and it ain't pretty.

4 ms·

It’s a shame that there aren’t more university programs that encourage contributions to open source. There’s a lot of senior capstone projects that just go to b

by teeray 3y ago

jruohonen 3y ago
> There’s a lot of senior capstone projects that just go to benefit some random company. That's a solid advice, I think. Your mileages may vary, but I remember a saying from a HR representative about having a good "entry" in GitHub being more valuable to students than having some random company entry in a CV. In a rather similar vein, that's why things like Google's Summer of Code may be more valuable in the long-run than direct monetary support.
artyom 3y ago
There's plenty of open source projects that derived from an university thesis, project, collaboration. Redis and Ceph quickly come to mind -- and somewhat the original Linux kernel, too. But they where very good ideas of a sole student that gained traction, not really "encouraged" by the university itself. After 10 years as an educator myself, I think the main problem is laziness in evaluation methods. It'd be hard, time consuming but totally doable to assess the competency of people contributing to one or various open source projects, even if each one works on a different problem. But if I make everyone build a small operating system or a database, I can evaluate, assess and score all of them with the same method, at the same time. I've seen that laziness taken to the extreme by old tired professors, and it ain't pretty.