How to start contributing to Ubuntu development?

Question

I'd like to contribute to Ubuntu development some day. If you're a developer of Ubuntu could you tell me/us what are the prerequisites to start?

What languages and technologies are needed to know, how to make familiar with development (overview over the project) and development process? I am interested in the core of the distribution, the main parts, not writing applications.

I'd like to read some advice from the developer who has already some experience and can say the main points of his learning path and difficulties (that are general enough for typical Ubuntu distribution developer) he had to overcome.

Answer 1

For contributing directly to Ubuntu as a developer you can start with these guides:

• Ubuntu Development
• Ubuntu Packaging Guide
• Ubuntu Design Guidelines
• Ubuntu wiki

Answer 2

For mobile development (phone apps), see Ubuntu app developer: Go mobile.

Basically (summarized, not copied from that page, except commands, which are copied):

• Install Qt5 and the Ubuntu QML toolkit:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-qt5-edgers/qt5-beta1 && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install qt5-meta-full && echo 'export PATH=/opt/qt5/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc
  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-sdk-team/ppa && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install qt-components-ubuntu qt-components-ubuntu-demos qt-components-ubuntu-examples qt-components-ubuntu-doc notepad-qml
  

• Optionally, install the qtcreator integrated development environment (recommended).
• Make the currency converter sample application.
• Check out the API docs.
• Develop your app, ask questions, sign up to get involved in Ubuntu mobile development (step 4 here).

^{References/Acknowledgements:
     ‣ Canonical, "Go mobile"
     ‣ David Planella and SDK Team, "Create a currency converter phone app"
     ‣ Canonical, Ubuntu User Interface Toolkit
     ‣ This answer is inspired by maggotbrain's comment on this duplicate.}

Answer 3

You may check this page out. It's a official introduction.