Sergey Dolin, who writes for Hacker, a widely acclaimed publication for IT enthusiasts, published a tutorial about how he edited and helped improve our small legacy RAM View utility by building it from source code with an old compiler, fixing errors caused by encoding problems, and sending a pull request to the original repository to add his changes.
It's always nice to be able to make the world a little better.
The tutorial starts with the author wanting a memory viewer for DOS and looking for one. He eventually stumbled upon our 25-year-old RAM View project but found that it contained errors. Undeterred, the author set out to fix the errors and make the utility more user-friendly.
The tutorial goes on to describe the process of building the utility from source code using an old compiler, Borland C++ 3.1, and testing it in DOSBox. He also walks us through how he fixed errors caused by encoding issues, offering tips and tricks for handling these kinds of problems.
The most valuable part of the tutorial is perhaps the author's discussion of how to contribute changes to someone else's project. He talks about what he has learned and gives advice on how to make changes and work with the repository owner.
Making changes to someone else's project: This is the main task for which this article was written. I would like readers to not be afraid to create pull requests to other people's repositories and fix other people's mistakes or write additions. Plus, this is a very useful experience for beginners.
People can improve their programming skills and learn from more experienced developers by helping with open-source projects. In Sergey's tutorial, he shows how his experience with open-source projects and GitHub helped him make useful changes to a program that was already out there. By doing so, he not only improved his own expertise but also helped improve the functionality of the software for others to benefit from.
Whether you're a seasoned programmer or just starting out, Sergey's tutorial is a great resource for anyone interested in software development and open source projects. It's also a reminder that even small projects like RAM View can be the subject of interesting and informative tutorials that offer insights into the world of programming.
So thank you, Sergey!
Check out his tutorial or see how you can contribute to RAM View as well.
Posted on November 7, 2022
Last updated on March 2, 2023