What would be a prod
[2023-09-27 11:15:46 AM] : What would be a productive way to contribute to an open source free learning curriculum?
Specifically I’m looking at https://www.theodinproject.com/ which is an open source learning curriculum. It popped up in recommendations during Safari and I was looking over it and I see that from the point of just helping my audience, improving an article there would be more helpful than writing my own article on the same topic from scratch. So, I want to do that, it feels like the right thing to do.
But, I’m also trying to ultimately have all my work amount to some revenue. And I don’t really see how this effort can contribute to that.
This is basically the OSS problem at super tiny (insignificant scale). A lot of OSS works does actually go un-rewarded except for the inner self satisfaction of the contributor. Unlike a forum answer, unless you explicitly check git history you wouldn’t even know that someone specific contributed to the part you’re looking at.
I’ll probably still make some contributions just because I like the project but I’m hoping that one of you bright people has a clever angle on how this work can actually be used as a small “brick” (in 30x500 lingo).
1 Reply
[2023-09-27 11:46:19 AM] : You can do both? Submit there, and write it up as article
[2023-09-27 11:49:10 AM] : So, let me be specific, their Debugging section is becoming obsolete because it is covering pry-byebug debugger: https://www.theodinproject.com/lessons/ruby-debugging#debugging-with-pry-byebug
Byebug is not longer maintained and there a new debugger being maintained by the ruby core team. So, I could update it to be about the new debugger. If I’m updating an existing section I don’t feel like it would be right to then also post on my blog. If I wrote the whole article from scratch, sure, but for this, there’s prior art that I’d be basing the work on.
[2023-09-27 11:55:23 AM] : But, hm, you have a good point … I could use my writing as a draft for a different angle on the same topic, maybe something more advanced then is appropriate for the odin project. :thinking_face: And then link to the odin project article as intro in case reader is not up to speed with basics.
[2023-09-28 10:10:06 AM] : Ok, now I noticed that at the bottom of each lesson there are links to other resources and they seem to pointing at various blogs with interesting content on the same topic. So if I do update the article and then also have complementary material on my site it would make sense to propose linking to my site and then that is indeed valuable.