Fulfill Your Ambitions with Open Source

Fortunately, there is an answer to your problem: open source. There are thousands of open source projects out there, many of them quite active, which offer you any kind of software development experience you could want. If you love the idea of developing operating systems, go help with one of the dozen operating system projects. If you want to work on music software, animation software, cryptography, robotics, PC games, massive online player games, mobile phones, or whatever, you’ll almost certainly find at least one open source project dedicated to that interest.

Open source provides enormous opportunities for the motivated programmer. First, you get to see how someone else would implement a solution that interests you — you can learn a lot by reading other people’s source code. Second, you get to contribute your own code and ideas to the project — not every brilliant idea you have will be accepted but some might and you’ll learn something new just by working on solutions and contributing code. Third, you’ll meet great people with the same passion for the type of software that you have — these open source friendships can last a lifetime. Fourth, assuming you are a competent contributor, you’ll be able to add real-world experience in the technology that actually interests you.

by Richard Monson-Haefel