Building Tech Together

If you are an undergraduate student embarking on a semester-long software project as part of a team, this book will give you tools that will help you succeed. Some of these are purely technical, like a version control system or an IDE; others are guidelines to help you form teams, manage people who aren't pulling their weight, cut features when time runs short, and understand who owns the things you produce.

Our aim is to teach you how to be a compassionate programmer: one who cares as much about the well-being of their colleagues and users as they do about their own. This focus is not entirely altruistic—everything you do to help others also helps your future self—but now that we all know how much harm software can do, we hope you'll be interested in some practical idealism.

1. Introduction
2. The Important Stuff
3. Starting
4. Teams
5. Managing Conflict
6. Using Git On Your Own
7. Using Git Together
8. Intellectual Property
9. Communicating
10. Testing
11. Software Design
12. Security
13. Error Handling
14. Debugging
15. Automation
16. Tooling
17. Process
18. Research
19. Fair Play
20. Wrapping Up
21. Conclusion

1. Thinking
2. Research Methods
3. Onboarding Checklist
4. Project Evaluation
5. Personal Evaluation
6. Recommended Reading
7. How to Talk People Into Things
8. How to Make Yourself Comfortable
9. How to Join an Existing Project
10. How to Welcome Newcomers
11. How to be a Good Research Partner
12. How to Handle Being Fired
13. How to Hand Over and Move On
14. How to Get Started Freelancing
15. How to Change the World
16. License
17. Code of Conduct
18. Contributing
19. Bibliography
20. Glossary
21. Colophon
22. Index