Experience - NETMF contribution

I had the opportunity earlier this year to investigate the .NET Micro Framework. I really like the idea and think it is a great project. Through the netmf Product Change Proposal  forum I responded to a request for a Hashtable.  I later received an email from the Developer Manager of the .NET Micro Framework team.  It was a welcome on board message that introduced me to three other guys on the MF team. It also outlined the objective and project flow.


The objective:
The target for this effort is to come up with an associative container for the .NET Micro Framework to contribute in source code format to the MF object model for the v4.1 release.

Some ground rules:
You, as the contributor, are entitled to the final technical choices for the component you are developing.  You should work as independently as possible, especially in the coding and testing phase.  The .NET MF team will decide whether to integrate your component code component or not based on its quality.  ... can assist you with guidance: they are your point of reference for any suggestion you may need about best practices, design choices, and so on, please be considerate of their time and use their suggestions and time wisely.  I will assist both you and the core tech team members for anything you might need.  This is our first contribution work from a community member (!), therefore I will ask you to be patient with us if all resources are not aligned correctly from the start.   

with that I started writing a design document and figuring out my plan of attack. I started working on this project a couple hours once a week for the first month then stepped it up the second month. After two months total I submitted my finished code and it was incorporated into the NETMF! An article was posted on the netmf blog here. I feel very privileged to have worked on a little project like building a Hashtable that is now part of something bigger the .NET Micro Framework. Thanks NET Micro Framework Core Tech team! Not only did I have a great deal of fun doing this little project, at the time I had read an article that expresses some concerns I have being a solo, entry-level developer recently out of college. If anyone is in a similar situation I would highly suggest finding a mini project like building a hashtable to increase your experience.