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Is the developer community useful?

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Overview

Open source community

An open-source community (OSC) is a set of contributors from all over the world who share an interest in meeting a common need, starting from small projects to large ones, typically software projects. They carry them out in a high-performance collaborative development environment, allowing the organizational scheme and processes to emerge over time.

A developer community is a group of developers gathered to achieve a common goal. They come together to share their knowledge, improve the skills of participants. The developer community is an OSC, it is one of its many forms(developer communities, user communities,…). The answer to the question ‘is the developer community useful?’ is obviously yes in this article, it will not be for us to discuss the usefulness of an OSC(in our case, it is a developer community), but rather to demonstrate it through two main questions:

  • What does a developer community do for developers?
  • What does a developer community do for society?

Developers join communities

“If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

This sentence alone sums up the principle of a community of developers and its way of thinking, it brings developers together as a family to go beyond what each is capable of accomplishing individually. But it is important to remember that when a developer joins a community, the exchanges must be symmetrical because it’s a give and take to move forward together. This principle is the basis of all the benefits a developer can receive in a community. We can mention the philosophy of the community, the skills it can bring, the network it allows to create, and which will be beneficial to all.

Philosophy of a developers community

Developers join communities mainly if the philosophy is the same as theirs. Otherwise, it would be complicated to work together around the same vision. If all the developers decide that some behavior is acceptable, it becomes acceptable. This philosophy focuses primarily on values ​​such as:

  • Respect:

    Definition of respect here is close to decency, considering that everyone's mistakes do not necessarily define who they are and what they can do, that they can improve without rain of insults and inappropriate reproaches coming, supposedly helping them. My opinion is not to affirm that when one criticizes a person for his work, one hurts him. Constructive criticism is the best way to advance the community without despising the person or his work.

  • Sharing:

    Open-source culture is built on democratic principles and champions the value of sharing. In an open-source project, source code can be used, copied, edited, distributed, and developed by anyone who chooses to contribute.

  • Personal benefits:

    We cannot discount the importance of personal benefits those feelings of being helpful and self-accomplished. It may seem selfish, but deep down in each developer, this feeling exists, and the community is not there only for altruism.

  • Transparency:

    Transparent communities inspire trust in each other, which greases the wheels of collaboration.

Developers growth their skills with the community

The technical skills of a developer are all the things that define his ability to solve problems. He can join a community of developers to improve them. Joining a community is one of the options available to him. By using strengths of the community such as constructive criticism, sharing, hard work, perseverance, he can always hope to grow and grow his skills at the same time.

Community networking

It is defined broadly as a way to create links within and between different organizations and communities, to help people achieve their goals, share information and ideas, and create opportunities. A network can consist of colleagues, friends, clients, and others.

OSC and society

The main characteristic of an OSC is its openness. This gives programmers multiple ways to solve problems and encourages creative solutions. The challenges in our society have always been massive, so we need solutions that have a meaningful impact on people's lives. To make this happen, OSC solves problems.

Solving real-life problems of society

The real problems of society. Society is full of them and has a drastic need for new solutions to improve the lives of its inhabitants. Developers can solve the majority of society's problems. The main point here is not to say that they will solve absolutely all of them, but with technology, make things better.

The advantage of open-source is that it is a decentralized system that allows anyone, anywhere, in the world to contribute, to help people. The idea here is when we have a problem, I bring my contribution. Open-source uses openness, transparency, and collaboration to find solutions and do something that matters. This is the case of initiatives such as:

Very well, dear reader (whether you are a man or a woman) thank you for reading until the end, see you soon in a future article.

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