Merge pull request #280 from cnonnet/master

Create Report-Clement_Nonnet-21632100.md

projects/projects_2021_22/Report-Clement_Nonnet-21632100.md

+# Open Source Contribution Project
+
+*Author* : Clément NONNET
+
+*Year* : 2021-2022
+
+*Noma* : 21632100
+
+*Selected project* : [Desktop Shop](https://github.com/rbaltrusch/desktop_shop)
+
+*Pull request* : [Pull Request](https://github.com/rbaltrusch/desktop_shop/pull/12)
+
+## First approach
+
+Since I was new to the open source software development I did not really know what to look for. 
+I decided to search for something I enjoy : video games. 
+It was fairly easy to find on GitHub. 
+One caught my attention, it was an open source project aiming at recreating the game RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, which is a game I know and like.
+
+This project is massive, it has around 500 contributors and over 20.000 commits.
+In the README, it was indicated that "Chat takes place on Discord" so I joined the Discord server to see what was happening there.
+It was even bigger, there are about 4.000 members in the server, and it was really active. 
+Without really knowing to whom I could ask my questions, I contacted a member labelled as a Developer and 
+I asked him if there were issues with which I could help as a beginner.
+
+He told me to look to the issues on the GitHub. 
+Indeed, there are about 1.200 issues listed. Unfortunately none of them was labelled as "easy" or "good first issue". 
+The developer told me that easy issues do not stay very long because they are quickly solved.
+So the only issues left are long and complex ones. 
+I looked closely to some of them by investigating the code, but it honestly seemed out of reach, mainly because the code is written in C++
+(and I barely know this language) but also because these issues require a good understanding of the global context to be solved, and 
+obviously I do not have this understanding.
+
+I asked the developer is there was any other way I could help with this project, and he told me that I could maybe help to translate the game to my language. 
+Unluckily, the work was already done, a complete French translation of the game was already done, so there was nothing I could do.
+
+## Making a Contribution 
+
+Even though, I was glad that I found such a cool project with a very active community, it was still an unsuccessful attempt 
+since I did not really help on this project.
+
+So I went back to GitHub, but this time I directly looked for issues, I filtered the result using the "good first issue" label, 
+and I found an issue that seemed solvable by a beginner like me.
+The project is a shop application working offline on a desktop, it uses Python and SQL which are 2 languages I know very well.
+I contacted the project owner, and I asked to solve the issue.
+At first glances, the issue seemed trivial : whenever a customer registers or updates his personal information, 
+his first name and last name need to be standardized by applying an uppercase to the first letter and a lowercase to all other letters.
+
+It was a fairly quick fix requiring only 6 lines of codes. 
+To be convinced that my solution was good, I downloaded the project to see if the problem was solved.
+After running the application on my computer, I tried to register as a new customer, and it was fixed, the first name and last name
+were standardized and saved in a database as wished by the owner. 
+However, when it comes to updating, another problem appeared.
+The updated names were correctly saved in the database but the displaying on the User Interface was still using the previous names.
+
+![image](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/75025185/144954178-28849af2-d7d2-4910-b7ac-61b22523b8cd.png)
+
+I investigated on this bug, and I found the mistake :
+The function responsible for displaying the user information is called before the one updating the names of the user, 
+so the display remained the same even if the user information in the database had changed.
+To solve this problem, I simply applied the standardisation of the names before the displaying and the trick was done.
+It was not very hard, but I spent some time finding where the problem was.
+Obviously, it is not easy when you are not the one who wrote the code.
+
+I wrote an explanation to the project owner, and I made a pull request.
+
+I am still waiting for an answer, and I hope I will be merged (should be granted as my fix is working just fine).
+
+## Conclusion
+
+It was a lot of fun discovering these two projects, I am still frustrated I could not help on the first one since it was really
+what I wanted to do initially. However, it helped me to realise that contributing to this kind of huge projects require 
+at least a small experience on working in such an environment and is very time-consuming.
+Still, seeing a massive community working on an open source game was really cool.
+
+Regarding the shop application, it was a much more humble project, but it was really satisfying to feel that I am able
+to fix some minor issues and be helpful to someone.
+
+I was not aware of this "issues" thing on GitHub and I find this feature of solving other people problems really awesome.
+Maybe I will keep looking for some of them in the future.