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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Contributing to open source while in University has major benefits:

1) skill development through practice and peer review 2) skill development through exposure to "real world" problems rather than the toy problems of school 3) portfolio development for job hunting 4) network building for job hunting

If you're in University, you should be working on open source projects for these reasons and others. I suspect the article author is trying to help spread this meme. Open source contributors really do have a major advantage over their peers, but many students do not realise this.

Others don't know how to start, but that's a different problem.

Besides, open source is fun, and you probably have way more time and resources during University than you will later in life.

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I agree that contributing to open source is a good way to learn many development skills, however:

Besides, open source is fun, and you probably have way more time and resources during University than you will later in life.

Not necessarily, if you are doing CS at a top university and aiming to attain the highest possible grades this requires a huge investment of time and effort to most people.

Also it is not like a 9-5 where you can 'clock off' there is always an uncertain feeling of 'if I put another hour into this , then that might just bump me up an extra grade'

Not to mention that if you just started programming at university your code is probably going to suck pretty hard for the first 2 years at least, to the point where no serious open source project is going to want your patches.

Ultimately if Universities believed that this was important to job prospects in the industry as a whole they would make open source contributions a required part of the curriculum.

"Not necessarily, if you are doing CS at a top university and aiming to attain the highest possible grades this requires a huge investment of time and effort to most people."

I would argue that you're better off with a B and a full portfolio than an A and an empty one. It depends on where you are applying, though.

"Also it is not like a 9-5 where you can 'clock off'"

Until you have kids.

"no serious open source project is going to want your patches."

That's not necessarily true. Often either your patches are small and trivial and can be accepted or they are large and useful enough that the other developers will provide feedback. This feedback is often more useful to the student than just getting the patch accepted.

And nobody can reject your patches if it's your own project you're building.

The pressure that students will get from professors and parents will be to prioritize academic work above all other activities.

Also the majority of "good" tech jobs in the UK usually have a minimum degree requirement of a 2:1 (the majority of students achieve a 2:2) and will just bin anything that doesn't match that.

There is a fundamental choice that the industry really needs to make as a whole here. When you compare CS to a degree in (say) photography, a large component of a photography degree will be to build up a portfolio to show off whereas this is not a priority in CS.

If employers shout loudly enough that they want to see students who have produced real code for real projects then universities can adapt to that. Otherwise there is a very confused message being sent "We want people with an excellent academic record, a big git log of OSS commits, oh and they should also be well rounded with excellent interpersonal skills" , there are no doubt a few people like that but good luck to the companies all competing to hire them.

Most students aren't aware that a "B" and a greater portfolio is better.

Additionally, that is contextual. From my understanding Google would prefer the A. So a "B" with a "look at this side project" might get you iced against another candidate.

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