Projects/Promo/Happy newbies

=What's your advice to people who want to get into KDE development-type stuff but don't know where to start?

1. Figure out if you want to "develop-develop" or if you would be better at non-coding but still important types of tasks. I got my start in KDE doing documentation even though I knew coding at the time. When I decided I wanted to help with JuK the first thing I did was fix the documentation as much as I could, which helped me learn the codebase, that proved useful too.
2. If you do plan to do coding and you don't know programming, start learning now. You can learn KDE and programming in parallel but you can't start on C++ (or Python, etc.) too soon.
3. Learn Qt first.
4. Finally, absorb information. :) You can do this by lurking on mailing lists, by hanging out in IRC development channels, and by reading TechBase. You'll find out there's more you need to know than just programming, but many skills will translate well even to non-programming tasks so it doesn't hurt to learn.

(mpyne)