Starter development projecs.

[ljhwang]

At 2025 CIG TNG, there was a discussion about how to transition from a software user to a software developer. Are there easy first development tasks to become familiar with the code, e.g., creating tests, etc.?

ASPECT has a "starter project" tag. Should this be a best practice somewhere? Is there a way to make this more obvious as a place to start if you are looking to contribute to a project? How do I begin contributing without going to a hack?

I was not part of this discussion, so I cannot zero in on the first contributor issue here.

[baagaard-usgs]

PyLith also has issues tagged with starter project. Alternatively, a well-defined development plan could identify starting projects.

In terms of "best practices", things that come to mind (not sure how well these are already covered):

1. Development section of the manual describing the data structures, code layout, any additional instructions for building the code for development and testing, development workflows, and how to contribute.
2. (GitHub) issues to make people aware of software development needs.