Open Source Projects for Beg/ Intermediate

[Carin Meier]

I have fallen for Clojure. I would love to be able to practice and
hone my skills while contributing something to an open source
project. Do you have any suggestions for projects that might have
some low-hanging fruit for a newish person like me. Any floors that
need sweeping?

Carin Meier
@carinmeier

[Ptr6464]

I'd like to second that. Since I started with Clojure it got me, but I
need some practice, so if anyone needs enthusiastic workforce please
let me know also.
To Carin: Good luck in learning Clojure, should be pretty demanding
but it will be great if we learn it.

[Alex Robbins]

I'm learning Clojure also, and have been working through some of the
project euler problems. (Got started on it from the labrepl
introduction.) It has been a lot of fun and I think I'm learning a
fair amount about how the language works.

http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems

I've got solutions to the first 25 in my github repo. (I'm sure the
code would make more experienced clojurians cry, but I'm excited about
it :)
https://github.com/alexrobbins/Project-Euler-Solutions-Clojure

Alex

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Clojure" group.
> To post to this group, send email to clo...@googlegroups.com
> Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> clojure+u...@googlegroups.com
> For more options, visit this group at
> http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en

[Alan]

dbyrne is writing a sort of interactive "learn clojure by problem-
solving" website at https://github.com/dbyrne/4clojure/. When he
mentioned it to me I tweaked a few things, but it could use another
hand or two. Especially, we're both dreadful web designers and so the
pages look terrible. If someone with experience in that area is
looking for a way to practice clojure while still having familiar
things to work on when something new is overwhelming, this might be
perfect. And I'm sure he'd love the help!

[Carin Meier]

Thanks. Very cool project.

On Apr 15, 5:49 pm, Alan <a...@malloys.org> wrote:
> dbyrne is writing a sort of interactive "learn clojure by problem-

> solving" website athttps://github.com/dbyrne/4clojure/. When he

[Ulises]

Not long ago I was faced with the same dilemma: I am learning clojure
and to practise and improve my skills I'd like to contribute to an
open source project. Which one should I pick?

And then I came across this: http://prog21.dadgum.com/80.html

Enjoy :)

U

[Alan]

I don't see what you're getting at. "I want to implement something big
all by myself, please tell me what to do" is not productive for the
community, and not helpful for the novice asking. "I want to get my
feet wet, could anybody use some basic help?" is good for everyone
involved.

I disapprove of discouraging people from offering to help with OSS:
that's how you get started and how you get good.

[Ulises]

> I disapprove of discouraging people from offering to help with OSS:
> that's how you get started and how you get good.

Well, it's not really discouraging. Or at least, I don't see it that
way. I see it more like encouraging to contribute but not regardless
of personal interest. Personal interest on a project is a great
motivator. Technical interest is likely to get you some of the way,
but not all the way. Just mho :)

U

[Sean Corfield]

When I started with Clojure, I mostly focused on solving problems in
Clojure that cropped up in my day job (not using Clojure) so I was
essentially "double developing" a lot of things. That kept working in
a domain I knew, knowing how to solve those problems in language X and
then figuring out how to solve them elegantly in Clojure. Some times
I'd ask on the #clojure IRC channel on freenode for input - folks are
extremely helpful and the feedback was very valuable (and continues to
be!).

I think the advice to find - or create - a project that interests you
and solves a problem you have is good advice. You need to know the
domain so that you're not trying to learn two languages at once (the
idioms of the domain language and the idioms of the programming
language).

So, questions to Carin, Alex and Alan (and Ulises): What interests
you? What problems do you have that you'd like solutions for? Knowing
that, folks might be able to point you at existing projects to take
part in (or might confirm no such project exists and they'd be
interested in collaborating with you)...
--
Sean A Corfield -- (904) 302-SEAN
An Architect's View -- http://corfield.org/
World Singles, LLC. -- http://worldsingles.com/
Railo Technologies, Inc. -- http://www.getrailo.com/

"Perfection is the enemy of the good."
-- Gustave Flaubert, French realist novelist (1821-1880)

[Phil Hagelberg]

On Apr 14, 6:47 pm, Carin Meier <gigasq...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Clojars could use some help: https://github.com/ato/clojars-web/issues

Here's a thread about possible improvements:
http://groups.google.com/group/clojars-maintainers/browse_thread/thread/d4149ec96316d5b1

Chime in on that thread if anything there looks appealing.

-Phil

[Sam Aaron]

It feels to me that in addition to asking which open source projects would be useful/beneficial for novices to hack on, it would be useful to have a list of open source projects that are useful/beneficial for novices to read and understand.

One thing that Clojure has taught me is that code reading is both possible and highly valuable. I think that having a list of approachable and idiomatic code bases would be a beneficial asset to our community.

Sam

---
http://sam.aaron.name

[Ulises]

> So, questions to Carin, Alex and Alan (and Ulises): What interests
> you? What problems do you have that you'd like solutions for? Knowing
> that, folks might be able to point you at existing projects to take
> part in (or might confirm no such project exists and they'd be
> interested in collaborating with you)...

I've started doing exactly what you did: double coding at work. And
that has kept me going for a while. Just as you said, because I didn't
have to learn 2 things (the domain and the language) I could
concentrate on one (the language) and hence made progress much faster.

As for interests, mine are too varied to say and this is exactly what
has stopped me in the past from doing anything at all (as I like
everything). I still think that trying to scratch your current itch is
the best thing to get you going at least for a while.

U

[Carin Meier]

First, much thanks to everyone for the feedback and suggestions. It
really helps.

One of my interests is sharing my enthusiasm for Clojure by exposing
it in an accessible, educational and fun way to developers. From this
standpoint, the 4clojure project is very interesting to me. Clojars
makes everyone's life easier, so of course that is of interest too.

Other areas that I have an interest in right now is the Semantic Web.
There is a vast amount of data out there out on dbPedia. Tapping into
it and integrating to other sites/ services (like twitter) would be
quite exciting.

On Apr 16, 6:36 pm, Sean Corfield <seancorfi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Railo Technologies, Inc. --http://www.getrailo.com/

[Carin Meier]

I would second this.

On Apr 16, 8:43 pm, Sam Aaron <samaa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It feels to me that in addition to asking which open source projects would be useful/beneficial for novices to hack on, it would be useful to have a list of open source projects that are useful/beneficial for novices to read and understand.
>
> One thing that Clojure has taught me is that code reading is both possible and highly valuable. I think that having a list of approachable and idiomatic code bases would be a beneficial asset to our community.
>
> Sam
>

> ---http://sam.aaron.name

[Ambrose Bonnaire-Sergeant]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 9:37 PM, Carin Meier <giga...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Other areas that I have an interest in right now is the Semantic Web.
There is a vast amount of data out there out on dbPedia.  Tapping into
it and integrating to other sites/ services (like twitter) would be
quite exciting.

Check out clj-plaza for Semantic Web with clojure. https://github.com/antoniogarrote/clj-plaza

The developer has moved on to other things but there are still improvements

to be made. You might want to fork it and try and fix some of the bugs. Great way

to learn the library.

Or it could be a bit of a jump, but either way clj-plaza is a great library.

Ambrose

[Sean Corfield]

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 1:34 AM, Ulises <ulises....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've started doing exactly what you did: double coding at work. And
> that has kept me going for a while. Just as you said, because I didn't
> have to learn 2 things (the domain and the language) I could
> concentrate on one (the language) and hence made progress much faster.

That's great to hear. I wasn't sure how many folks try that approach.

> As for interests, mine are too varied to say and this is exactly what
> has stopped me in the past from doing anything at all (as I like
> everything).

My interests are things I've never been inclined to program solutions
around in any languages because, well, they don't really lend
themselves to programming... So I sympathize on that point!

[Phil Hagelberg]

On Apr 16, 5:43 pm, Sam Aaron <samaa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It feels to me that in addition to asking which open source projects would be useful/beneficial for novices to hack on, it would be useful to have a list of open source projects that are useful/beneficial for novices to read and understand.

Possibly maintainers of projects are reluctant to suggest their own
projects because it would sound self-congratulatory. So I'll start by
doing the opposite: don't read the swank-clojure code; it is pretty
messy and not idiomatic since it's a fairly literal port from Common
Lisp.

I would say that Radagast and Robert Hooke might be fun to read for a
better understanding about how alter-var-root and metadata work. They
are both very, short, (~ 1 page) but juicy: https://github.com/Seajure/radagast
and https://github.com/technomancy/robert-hooke

-Phil