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Written by aantn the 13 Mar 08 at 13:28.
Category: Others.
Related to:
Nothing/Others.
Status: New
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Description
Ubuntu is built on the philosophy that every user should be part of the community. Many users help out in various ways, however very few start programming because of the traditional difficulties.
1) Many people just don't know where to begin. Create a developer resource website and a "Beginner Developer Package" as mentioned in idea #4354.
The website should mostly contain articles aimed at new developers. It can link to external resources (e.g. the KDE and GNOME developer websites) for more advanced information.
Both the website and the developer package should be maintained by the general Linux community. Although the project will not be distro specific, The Ubuntu community will benefit greatly by sponsoring the project.
2) Bring back Canonical Code Bounties to motivate new developers.
Integrate them with community bounties as mentioned in idea 1295.
3) Create a Ubuntu Design Rewards website. (Idea 2961.)
Most developers coding for OS X and Windows have never even heard of Ubuntu. Mac OS X in particular has a costant stream of neat new apps. We need to capture their attention and bring them to Linux by way of contests and prizes.
In particular, Canonical should focus on attracting high school and university students. Google has been sucessful in bringing students to open source by using prizes and monetary incentives (GSoC and GHOP). We need to be more welcoming and do the same.
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Comments
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ubby wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 14:55
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This is a very good idea!
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Eldmannen wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 15:49
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Yes, I would like to code something, but I am not very good at coding.
I would like to see a website with some simple "Hello World!" type of software.
That I can download and run, and if it works, try to change it todo something else, and see if it still works.
Microsoft has MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network).
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stormzen wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 16:08
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I think that mention of MSDN is a horrible example. .. but then, I think MS is a horrible example, in general.
I am a potential candidate for this. I've got complex script-writing, Java programming, a little bit of php, perl, python, and C++ in my background. I'd like to help out, but have never had the time to really get involved. That's changing in the near future, though.
I still don't know of a place to start, however...
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XSP wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 17:18
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Summer of Code is one of the coolest things that Google has ever done. I was a mentor last year and I swear I ended up learning as much as the students I was working with.
You're right about trying to attract a younger crowd. Not because of older developers not wanting to help, but because we're essentially teaching a new generation the advantages of free software and the next generation will follow suit.
It's predicted that by 2012, Linux will have 3 times it's current user base. It may not sound like a lot, but to trpile your base in 4 years is astonishing.
The only thing I would suggest is targeting this to a wider audience. Ubuntu's purpose is to attract an every day computer user and not particularly developers. Make it a separate entity sponsored by different Linux distributions. We're all Linux users and despite our distribution, we should all be working towards collaboration to further unify the Linux community as a whole.
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 nand (Brainstorm admin) wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 19:00
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Speaking of the subject, I'm willing to mentor one or two "students" to implement some parts of Brainstorm.
If anyone interested, please contact me at ndeschildre at gmail.
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aantn wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 20:33
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In terms of actually making this idea happen, I don't mind putting in some work myself.
I'm a bit busy with Universal Applets at the moment, but I'll begin working on the website if other people volunteer to help out.
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Redrazor39 wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 21:59
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I can't code for beans, but I do have some suggestions and I would like to help, but I don't have time to learn code until the summer (I'm only a kid). How about an awesome office suite. That's a good start to attract working people and it's always useful. Take OpenOffice.org, and let's improve the hell out of it. First, let's change the UI. It's too much like MS 2003 and that's bulky, inefficient, and just ugly. We need to make something nice and clean like iWork or Google Docs. Also, allow the customization like dragging items from the menus and dialogs into the toolbars. That's it, let's have a "custom toolbar" that lets you drag anything from any menu or office dialog to that toolbar for quick and easy access. Also, put a small button at the top left of every dialog that opens in OOo and allow you to drag that to the custom toolbar so you can open the dialog (when I say dialog I mean a window with options and menus and buttons, not just text) with one easy click.
AHA! I just came up with a better idea! Only have a couple of toolbars. At the bottom of the top is the "standard toolbar", which isn't very standard. It can have font and size and bold, italic, underline, but then it's divided into neat, simple, small menus. "Text", "Pictures", "Other Media", and some other stuff. This can change for word processor to presentation, etc. Then there's the menubar with similar stuff as before for people who like the old, familiar, yet inefficient look, and then there's the custom toolbar (working name) as I explained before.
I think this is an awesome idea! I finally got inspiration! I'm going to design this on GIMP over the weekend! yay!!!!
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Vadim P. wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 23:23
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I agree that getting started to help in Ubuntu process is a bit intimidating. But after reading this page (linked from ubuntu.com):
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment
You should be able to get started, I think.
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scamper_22 wrote on the 13 Mar 08 at 23:29
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There are several barriers to participating.
Learning the language is one thing, but the key thing is setting up the development environment...
I'm a fairly experience developer, but that is the major impediment for me.
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Auzy wrote on the 14 Mar 08 at 00:29
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Good idea.. Although, maybe next time break up the ideas. Lucky for you I approve all ;)
If you vote for this, maybe you should also consider voting for hosting annual Ubuntu Design Awards, which would showcase new projects, and the best of what we have:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/2961/
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pt123 wrote on the 14 Mar 08 at 01:38
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You need a bounty system, where can users contribute to the bounty of a certain idea. When it is implemented by a developer they get the bounty.
That way the current awful gnome-screensaver might get fixed.
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cbx33 wrote on the 14 Mar 08 at 06:53
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Though on the surface it doesn't ppear to be, this idea I put forward is intended to bring documentation up to scratch so that people do find it easier to join in the fun.
http://www.progbox.co.uk/wordpress/?p=512
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Pc_Madness wrote on the 14 Mar 08 at 07:12
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I was going to get started with Linux programming (python) a while back but couldn't find a decent editor which compares to visual studio. :( Apparently Eclipse is the way to go, but the version that was in the repositories at the time didn't support python gui's or something. Tried to download the version of the Eclipse web site and entered a world of nastiness. :(
So yes, I'd love a beginners guide with decent tools. :)
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studentz wrote on the 14 Mar 08 at 12:43
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I'm no a professional IT, however because of my work I ended learning VB and MSSQL. Now I'm a happy Linux user, I do not boot Windows long time ago, and I'm doing stuff in C++. The point is that a lot of rookie non IT people need to make tools for a particular task.I think that MS have a good learning experience for newbies non IT but I believe that we can do better in Linux.
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fragro wrote on the 18 Mar 08 at 00:10
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The main issue is to have actual Development tools!!! When i want to develop things there are not an actual IDE like eclipse is outdated and the libs i need are not available.
The best IDE so far is Monodevelop, but this is one the evil .net things! *rolleyes* Anjuta is often unststable and Netbeans (i must use it for study) is quite ugly.
KDevelop is for KDE, i don't try it.
I have a friend, who is developer too. But he uses VisualStudio. He was very interested in concept (protability) of GTK+ (he said the MFC is quite ugly and i can confirm it ;-) ) but there are no (integrated) GTK+ editors for VisualStudio, like in Monodevelop. When Monodevelop has been worked on Win32 in this time he had tried and evaluate Gtk+ (positive i think). Now he use WinForms and .Net for his GUI needs and C/C++ for performance programming. In this time he works with CUDA[wich is not available as Ubuntu Package too this time] to encode h264 with GPU. ;-) And this is what i mean... that could be the power of Ubuntu to install needed development packages, without need of setting pathes or large config tasks. But when you add a request for packaging first, you don't know when/if it will be included. But as developer you need some things just in Time. (whats often ending in quick and dirty installation tasks)
PS: I my mind VALA is a really good thing and should be promoted!
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w3stfa11 wrote on the 19 Mar 08 at 05:42
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#1 is huge. Microsoft has the easily identifiable MSDN. Linux has...
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guyminuslife wrote on the 25 Mar 08 at 15:49
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Me, I've been trying to learn as I much as I can so that I could hopefully do some development one day, but yes...finding the tutorials and resources and so forth is sort of hit-and-miss. A central resource that gives an overview of every part of the default Ubuntu system and also a links or more in-depth coverage of specific components would be extremely helpful. (You could expand it to include other distros, of course.) Seems like most of the information is already out there, it just could be centralized and organized.
Wikis are nice, but most of them lack good structure and readability.
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brettalton wrote on the 4 Apr 08 at 15:27
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I'd personally like good documentation how how to build a .deb for my shell scripts... AND how to build .deb files for other software that needs updating...
THAT will help (future) Ubuntu developers I'm quite sure.
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rmf wrote on the 16 Apr 08 at 17:31
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developers Website can promote a development patterns policy to prevent so many forks
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loki wrote on the 25 Apr 08 at 14:00
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Beginning to help with the development of Ubuntu is way to difficult. Please look at the example below how simple it can be.
Oké recently I wanted to start helping with the development of Ubuntu. After (finally) finding the development page, I had to jump endless from one to another page.
After a while i've stopped reading and went on doing some real programming on a other project...
Look at the chaos:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment)
Look how simple it can be:
http://quality.kde.org/develop/howto/howtohack.php
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loki wrote on the 26 Apr 08 at 07:40
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oke, did some reading, looked around... for starters I will improve the developers quickstart page.
If anyone has suggestions, please let me know by passing it to an related idea (do not vote it duplicate):
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/7601/
I will take all the time needed to improve the page and meanwile begin helping developing Linux. I've twelve year of experience in java and c#, so need to learn some stuffe about c++. this combination should make me an effective quickstart writer (i will run into the same trouble as other beginning linux programmers.
I'll make this weekend an newgroup thread about this one, so we can discuss about the best way to make this happen.
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iyank4 wrote on the 12 Aug 08 at 07:19
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The most crucial is the Development tools. where Anjuta, Glade or other IDE seems not ready for newbies.
Ubuntu must have an Visual integrated Development tools, That tools can be a key to attract Developers.
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