Coders

Intro

The coders group at Free Geek is the place you can learn or teach about software programming and development. This is informally organized around various projects, with some guidance from the Technocrats and some spillover with the ASSes. This is not very educationally focused, lacking any structure for shepherding people through the trying work of figuring out how to get stuff done. If you want to contribute to a free software project and you can work fairly independently (or in small, self-forming groups of interested volunteers), go through the rest of this page and find something that piques your interest.

Coding Projects

Here are some projects we are working on at Free Geek:

FGdb -- This is Ruby ( http://www.ruby-lang.org/ ) on rails ( http://rubyonrails.org ) code that talks to a PostgreSQL database ( http://www.postgresql.org/ ).

FGdiag -- Miscellaneous code for testing gizmos. (mostly ruby)

Distro Implementation -- Figure out how to get the software onto the boxes we build, and how to make it work like we want it to.

Other Coding Projects -- There are usually a variety of smaller tasks that need doing, often using shell scripting.

Getting Started

If any of the above projects interest you, you may want to join the coders. we're open to anyone so long as the work you do is done cooperatvely with other Free Geek volunteers and you're willing to let it be licensed under an open source license, preferably the GPL.

To get started:

• Read Martin's stock New Coder Introduction.

In the Portland, Oregon, USA area?

• Sign up for the coders mailing list http://lists.freegeek.org/listinfo/coders (email lists for coders)
  • Post a message and introduce yourself
  • If you're in the Portland, Oregon area, you'll want to come down to Free Geek to meet the other local coders and get started. Ask the front desk to meet a sysadmin or technocrat.

Somewhere else?

• Sign up for the coders mailing list http://lists.freegeek.org/listinfo/coders (email lists for coders)
  • Post a message and introduce yourself
  • Say you're from out of town and we'll contact you about getting set up.
• Coding is one of the few ways you can volunteer at Free Geek from a distance.

Wherever you are:

• Coding is done by editing text files, see Text Editing for Coders for more info.
• Get an account on the appropriate Free Geek Computers for Coders.
• Get an SVN account. (Subversion for Coders)
• Get an RT account http://todo.freegeek.org/ (RT for coders)
• Free Geek coders hang out on IRC at freenode.net ( http://freenode.net/ ) on the #freegeek channel. (IRC for coders)

Big Picture Stuff

• Rethinking Coders -- thoughts on how the coders program can be improved and where it's going.