It is generally considered to be a bad omen if there is anyone who is a developer, an open source contributor, who has not heard of HacktoberFest, let alone participating in them.
Enthusiasts, from the fresher to the seniors who has graduated from universities years ago, still look forward to October for the contribution madness to begin. These days, there might be other open source-encouragement programmes open all throughout the year, but there are a few of them which match the calibre of the former.
I am here to share my personal journey- how I managed to complete my Hacktoberfest- the 2022 edition.
Preptember rules--
Seeing others flex their swags (Yes, it is what it is-the open secret) on social media, I decided to take a look at what actually was the things to do before jumping headfirst into contributing. It was during this this phase, came to know about the new rules- which allowed documentation & designs(call it UI/UX) to get counted into consideration.
Went through the full website, scouting for more perks, & found out that I could host an Intro to Git & GitHub workshop in my college- which I did ( & yes my dms were filled with queries on the topic & obviously hacktoberfest) for a few days- Also my very first workshop in my life-thanks to the competition for pushing my limits!
The main contribution period--
Contributing to a programme during Durga Puja is exceedingly Hard- a struggle only Bengalis would understand. None wants to waste the biggest festival of their region, even though it means that contributing days would be lost from their account. But, I kept on adding my bits & pieces, to places whenever I found some free time. The review period seemed to last for a decade, with more & more projects getting cancelled just because they were apparently spam DSA codebases. Felt really bad for friends who worked on those repositories.
Towards the end of the month, had the opportunity to be an additional moderator of a repository taking part in the festivities, & had to witness quite a lot of new things during that stint. Spams were evident, with people trying to secure the coveted t-shirt before time ran out. Man, the rewards do really have an encouraging effect in our brains, don't they?
Claiming the swag, & the later parts--
Well, i was glad to get the holopin badges along with the sweet news of having made it- now it was quite a baffling part to choose the dark or the light mode. Well, in the pictures, it seemed that the light mode would be entirely white with the dark one being greyish- so I opted for the dark one considering that my life was already dark at that point (Don't mind the dark joke).
When it arrived, was shocked to see the black edition, with no resemblance to the graphical representations. Lesson Learnt from that. Anyways, something is better than nothing, innit?
Had the opportunity to attend a Hacktoberfest event in Kolkata in real life at Narula Institute of Technology. Had a great time(Could not win the quiz as I was over excited & hurriedly tapped the wrong answers-its okay, things happen!)
Would post about it as an extension, on popular demand!
NB- Pictures would be updated later, & this was a very concise writing considering that I was writing this when my end-sem exams were knocking at the door.
Hope you liked the little story of mine that I typed at the speed of an airplane. Cheers.
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