They're a great resource, not limited to python projects though. Besides providing help on choosing a project, they also coach you on how to approach an open source project and what to expect in the open source world. They have a bunch of talks regarding the same which are worth checking out.
Hey could you provide some resources for learning Distributed Computing using Python. I was thinking of using Go but since I know python to a considerable extent, I wanna give Python a fighting chance for making distributed systems.
I'm not one for reading books I think there's more value in just building stuff:
Check out Prediction.IO - http://prediction.io/ it's an out of the box machine learning server, it uses hbase, but hbase in this configuration is sitting on top of the local filesystem, not HDFS -- so the first task I assigned myself was to learn how to setup hadoop, and then configure HBase to store data in HDFS.
Once I have that, I'm going to use PySpark to use spark to query the data. (Thats where the python comes in)
Another cool project (not related to the tech stack above) is Pyro https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pyro4 ... this consumed a whole weekend of mine a few weeks back, building a small distributed search engine for querying compressed DNA sequences ... think a parallel boyer-moore. As a learning exercise try doing that, it's great fun!
Guido has been conceiving the idea gradual typing in python and wants to introduce this into python 3.5. I think this will be a great mix of both weak and strong type checking.
That was what a degree was for in the old days - it was to teach you how to learn. There are other paths nowadays I suppose, but a degree is a tick from an institution (who are experts in learning) that you can learn something and presumably if you've done this you can learn other stuff.
Hey also a Computer Science student here. I know it is no fun hacking alone and sometimes you feel like having your own badass hacker crew crunching code and saving the day. As they say "Charity Begins at Home" Your first step could to show the fruits of your own passion and motivation to your friends on something cool you hacked during the weekend. I am motivated by Python Celeb programmers like Kenneth Retiz and how he made a badass Python library called "requests". It is the innate ability to take charge and do it. If you think you can solve a problem, by the philosophy of open source you are under an obligation to solve that problem and make it available to everyone else. On the other hand it's their freewill. They can choose to hack on side projects or not depending on their priorities. They might have more higher priority obligations to do and pursuing a side project is really not on their list right now.
