Class Project Reviews

Recently in class, we looked at a variety of open source projects. The project that my group was assigned to review was LMMS, a project that I had specifically mentioned earlier in the semester and am familiar with. As for the projects that my other group members looked at, some that caught my eye were Pygame, Godot, VS Code, and Musescore. These are all projects that I have interacted with/heard of at one point, so I believe that they align with my interests well.

Pygame

Pygame is a library that I have used in the past to make some small games, and based on a group’s project evaluation, is also beginner friendly and welcoming. The configuration of the development environment doesn’t seem to be a complicated setup like some of the other projects which I see as a plus. This would be a great project for me to contribute to since it seems like there are issues that are easy to solve.

Godot

I have been aware of Godot for a while and have been interested in using it especially because I saw it gain even more popularity after issues with Unity making people migrate to Godot, and the fact that it’s open source but also has many commercially released games. I think this would’ve been a good project for me to contribute if I had more experience in game engines like this, but I still will consider it if it doesn’t seem too complicated.

VS Code

I use VS Code a lot, so this caught my eye. However, I was already aware that a well established project like this may be above my level, but I was still curious. It seems that the project isn’t beginner friendly, and there are a lot of issues opened and closed at an extremely fast pace which would make it hard for me to contribute.

Musescore

Lastly, Musescore was an interesting project that I saw, since I’m into music. I’m not too familiar with it, but it looks simple enough to understand and use. However, the biggest issue for me is that it uses C++, which I have never really used much, and it also has a difficult installation.

Stepping into code contributions

I’m particularly excited to contribute to open source projects as I feel that having a tangible result of helping out in software that you use is a rewarding experience. I think the biggest challenge will be finding a project that is at my level, and that I can work on without it taking too long or too overwhelming. Also, getting over the hurdle of actually contributing to a large project is another challenge. I plan to try and go through discussions and older issues of projects that I want to contribute to, and see how things were handled so that I know what to prepare for.