How open source has made me and the stuff I make better
Kent C. Dodds
Utah
wife, 4 kids, & a dog
PayPal, Inc.
Please Stand...
if you are able ❤️ ♿️
What this talk is
- How open source makes me better
- How open source makes my software better
What this talk is not
- How to write open source software
- How to make your project super popular
Let's
Get
STARTED!
How has it made me better? 😎
Improve my development skills 🤓
- Understanding and learning from code I did not write
- Integrating my code with code I did not write
- Using various tools, language features, and frameworks that I would not otherwise have taken the time to learn
Improve my interpersonal skills 🤠
- How to communicate effectively with a team of distributed locations and priorities
- How to ask proper questions
- How to get answers from those asking questions
Has helped to get me noticed! 👀
How has it made the stuff I make better? 👍
Documentation is WAY better. 📚
Finding and fixing bugs is improved! 🐛
"given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"
- Eric Raymond in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"
Ideas come from others to greatly improve the software 💡
Learn where to draw lines in an abstraction 🙅
It's MUCH easier to say "no" now and "yes" later, than to say "yes" now and backtrack later.
Easier to build and test the component in isolation. ⚠️
With fewer concerns, comes a simpler setup and improved coverage.
Also, it makes you feel good. 💙
Join me for my KnowJS.org training and more!
Resources
Thank you!
How open source has made me and the stuff I make better
By Kent C. Dodds
How open source has made me and the stuff I make better
The open source community and ecosystem have made me a better software developer and helped me develop better software. I get to see how other people work. Other people get to see how I work. It encourages me to put forth my best effort, think critically about the software I'm creating, and ensure it has great documentation. It's also easier to develop software in an isolated environment like an open source project. In this talk, we'll see how open source can help improve your skills and improve the software that you create. This makes you a much more skilled, marketable, and gives you work that you can share with the public and contribute to the open source ecosystem.
