I always see:
- people being told they can contribute to KDE with C++/QML
- people being told they can contribute to KDE without code
But I don't often see:
- people being told that they can contribute to KDE with code that is not C++
I like C++, QML, and even CMake, but you might not be interested in them or you might just not be willing to spend time learning another language, and that's perfectly fine.
In this blog post I list a few KDE projects that you might not know about that might be written in your preferred language or in a specialized format you have expertise or interest in.
By far, the most popular programming language actively used in KDE other than the expected languages is Python.
We also have stuff that would interest sysadmins (containers), packagers (snap/flatpak) and web developers.
That's not really true. You can do that, but with most IDEs (and some text editors) you really don't need to do that. You can do everything from the IDE.
It depends on the IDE and how it handles project files. Nowadays Qt Creator for example can just create your source code files and automatically add them to the generated project CMake. I'm pretty sure other IDEs or text editors have this functionality when paired with CMake or Meson too.
It must be noted that if the IDE has some custom project file manager (like Visual Studio does with sln and vcproj files) and you use it exclusively, you'll likely restrict your project to one platform and one IDE. Using something like CMake or Meson will make it easier to do crossplatform development and will let your users build the project without needing that specific IDE.
Personally I like modern CMake, the problem is that you'll see a lot of projects in the wild doing old CMake style, which is awful. Meson is okay, although it feels very Pythonic to me and lacks some features I use for Qt stuff.