OSD600 - Recap
Tags: opensource, programming, beginners
Published: 2021-12-12 19:49:31

## Introduction

Hello everyone, it’s Thanh again. This blog post will be about my experience about the course Open Source Development (OSD600). I will express my opinion about this course and some suggestions about why should you choose OSD600 in your path of programming.

## OSD600 - what is it about?

Through active involvement in big open source projects, this course teaches us to the technological, social, and pragmatic elements of building open source software. We will learn how to leverage open source developers' tools, tactics, and strategies. This is a programming course with a project component.

In my opinion, the priority of this course is our ability to communicate with others when working on open source projects. The more you communicate, the faster you can figure out what you are facing, and what do you need to do in order to accomplish tasks. Some of the platforms we can communicate with others are *Slack*, *Github*, *Wiki*, etc. It would be better if you always follow the flow of the conversation, keep getting updated to see what is going on. Some times you might find some issues that you are struggling, but others do too.

### Open Source Development

Always working **OPEN**

**YES**. It’s **open**, and open here, in my opinion, is open yourself to talk with each other, help them out, and solve the problems **together**. I am part of the OSD600 community, and I feel like I am not alone, I am not the worst that I used to think. 

No one would has the ideas of how the open source project is built, and what functionality does it have when their first time take a look at it. We are expected to spend time on it, to know what is the project about as well as finding the solutions for its issues.

Furthermore, learning how to use `git` properly and professionally plays a vital role in open source community. I have met some `git` issues when doing the projects, and my professor [David](https://github.com/humphd) helps me learn a lot of new stuffs in `git`.

## Advices 

The first thing I want to tell myself (if I have the ability to reverse the time) as well as other new students when their first day get into OSD600 is that **being active, do not be shy, you are not alone in this community**.

Some students would be unsatisfied with their coding skills, and how are they going to solve a certain issue. And that is the reason why they would feel they are not good enough to help others. Conversely, this thought is completely wrong, no one in the community is going to criticize about your skills. However, they will ask you “Why don’t you learn how to get it if you don’t know about something?”. This is totally my personal thoughts for those students thinking themselves are not good enough to contribute to open source projects.

## Conclusion

What a great experience when taking OSD600. I have done a ton of things that I would have never thought I will do it one day. I am so lucky that David could be my professor in Seneca teaching me OSD600, he is amazing and his fans in this community is *huge*. I would love to further take his course if I have any chances. I wish you all the best David (from one of you big fans with love)