Contribute to projects

When working on existing projects be sure to coordinate with peers working with the same project. In particular make sure that changes you make do not adversely impact others.

As you browse existing code this is a good opportunity to make minor changes to make the code more readable. Reformat code that is cluttered or is not evenly lined up. As you learn how the code operates add comments so the next person does not need to reverse engineer it again.

If the project does not have any tests then it is a good idea to add some. This way after you can see that your changes did not have damaging side effects. A simple smoke test is a reasonable start and will catch obvious errors.