What will you learn by taking part in open source projects?
It is popular to enumerate soft and hard skills that people need to improve to build a successful career. But not much information on how you can improve it without taking online courses and almost no information about how you get to practice.
The hard skills
- Learn the language. If you are planning to develop in Flutter it is Dart.
- Get to know Flutter framework essentials: building UI, connect backend API, structure date, work with local repositories, utilize device-related libraries, etc.
- Make sure you understand Flutter Bloc architecture.
- Know how to use git.
- Have practical skills collaborating on GitHub or other git related tools.
- Write technical documents that others can understand.
- Basic task management tools.
The soft skills
- Communication.
- Ability to work with feedback provided by other team members.
- Code review (your own or done by others).
- Provide feedback to others.
- Be a fast learner.
- Being able to quickly join the development team or new projects.
So how do you learn it?
You get a job and do your best. Good if you will get to a strong team that will be ready to help you grow quickly. What if you won`t or other team members will not have time to help you or will not be interested in? You learn it yourself.
If you do not have all the skills described above your value to any development team is not that much because the tech guys will understand how much time it will take them to get you to a certain level. There is another thing they keep in mind too. Nobody knows how long will you be part of the team because nothing stops you from leaving the team. After all, you get a better proposal. The time spent on communication is huge and their time is more valuable than yours. Please, respect the time of your current or future colleagues. Spend some time on self-education and add skills you are missing. That will increase your chances of becoming part of the development team you want.
Now let’s get to the topic of this article. How do you improve all the skills? You might be lucky enough to join an open-source team. No matter if you are only starting your career and want to improve your skill or you are a senior developer and want to figure out who is who without losing a lot of time and money of your company being part of an open-source project is a good choice.
To contribute or not contribute?
Well, sometimes contribution is not only doing the development itself. If you are a strong developer providing feedback is also an important part. Pick a feature you enjoy working on and help others do the best they can (with your help of course).
Contributing to Open Flutter Project is not the only option. There are plenty of other open-source projects available there. A lot of great things started as an open-source project. Linux for example. The decisions are made every day. Make your decision and join our team to create a cross-platform mobile app for E-commerce.
Check out our article “7 reasons for a developer to contribute to open-source projects” to learn more about why you should take part in open source projects.
Keep fluttering…
P.S. If you have something to add to this article you are welcome.
