This week I was doing an experiment to see if I could automate a build step in a project I'm working on, which requires binary resources to be included in a web app. I'm building a custom Linux kernel and bundling it with a root filesystem in order to embed…
Since writing my post about good-first-bug vs. good-first-experience I've been experimenting with different approaches to creating useful walkthroughs. I think I've settled on a method that works well, and wanted to write about it, so as to encourage others to do the same. First, a refresher on what I mean…
This week I'm looking at standards with my open source class. I find that students often don't know about standards and specs, how to read them, how they get created, or how to give feedback and participate. The process is largely invisible. The timing of this topic corresponds to a…
I've been re-reading and editing my old blog posts in the hopes of turning them into printed form. I'll write about the process of turning Markdown into a paper book another time, but today I'm looking at this old post I wrote 12 years ago, and specifically: The (lesson) I'm…
I sat down to write a post about my students' experiences this term contributing to open source, and apparently I've written this before (and almost exactly a year ago to the day!) The thing about teaching is that it's cyclic, so you'll have to forgive me as I give a…
Yesterday I was looking at a bug with some students. It related to a problem in a file search feature: a user found that having a folder-name surrounded with braces (e.g., {name}) meant that no search results were ever reported within the folder. "This isn't a bug,"…
I was reflecting the other day how useful it would be if GitHub, in addition to the lists it has now like Trending and Explore, could also provide me a better view into which projects a) need help; and more, b) can accept that help when it arrives. Lots of…
For the holidays this Christmas, our family rented a house near Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. We've had a wonderful time exploring the southern shore of Nova Scotia, eating its food, exploring its beaches (yes, even in winter), and snaking our way along its undulating shorelines. We did all of our Christmas…
This week I got a question from a student: Is it bad that I look at other peoples code when I try to solve problems with concepts I don't quite understand? This is a great question, and I'm glad that he felt safe to ask it. I wanted to write…
This week I had a discussion with my open source students in order to get a sense of where people were at with their work. One of the questions I had for them was, "What are you struggling with, what are you finding tricky?" Here's some of what…