Most students hear about hackathons, open source and developer communities in their third or fourth year. By then, a lot of the best chances to use...
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Omg that's great! I wish I would come, but I am from another country entirely lol. XD
One advice I would tell myself, and to all first-year students, is start being proactive. You don't need to wait for permission to do something like doing open source, create projects, etc.
A lot of people, including myself, falls under this predicament where we just do the bare minimum and in hopes we get a job after college. 1% of people can do that surprisingly, but it's really rare, especially with networking. Do beyond what college teaches you. If there are opportunities, you take it. Don't let it sit and fade out. You will be surprise on how much progress you have made in a short amount of time.
Thanks Dhruv and have fun organizing the event! Shout me out if you want :D
I'll surely shout you out. You're the most famous person on DEV for me.
At the end part of the event, I'm gonna talk about DEV, MLH and Hacktoberfest.
So, people become aware, as I wasn't till v start of my final year. And start doing things early that I did v late.
This is a massive win for the local community, Dhruv. Sharing that 'start early' realization is the best gift you can give to younger students. It takes a ton of trial and error to figure this out on your own, so breaking that cycle for them is elite work. Have a killer event, man!
Louder for the people in the back! That '1% getting lucky with the bare minimum' stat is scary accurate, but relying on it is a massive gamble. Going beyond what classes teach you is the only real way to stand out now. Solid take, man.
100% facts. Relying solely on a college degree to get hired in today's tech market is a high-risk strategy. Building in public and hitting that 'open source' button early is what actually makes your resume stand out. Proactivity is the real cheat code.
Alright, let's make this useful 👀
If you could go back to your first year of college, what's ONE thing you wish someone had told you earlier?
Could be about open source, hackathons, AI, internships, communities, projects, anything.
Drop it below — I'm genuinely going to collect the best answers and bring them into the meetup. 🚀
Stop waiting until you 'know enough' to start building. Tutorials are a comfort trap. Pick a real, annoying problem you have, open an IDE, and hack together a terrible solution. You learn 10x more from fixing broken code than from watching someone else write perfect code.
This is such a great initiative! 😸
If I could go back to my first year of university, I think meeting a community I could really get involved in or finding a mentor early on, would have changed my life quite a bit.
I really like that you’re creating that opportunity for students now. Good luck with the event! 🚀
Thanks for the kind words!😄
Actually my story is the same, I came up across these opportunities in my final year just 3-4 months ago and it helped me a lot in interview, gain confidence and everything. Hope I can make people aware of it and they don't miss out like I did.
Have A Great Day!
That’s exactly why your meetup is going to be so impactful. Realizing how much 3-4 months of active networking changes the game is a massive wake-up call. Passing that knowledge down so underclassmen don’t miss out is top-tier leadership. Good luck with the session, Dhruv!
Heavy on the community aspect. Having a solid circle or a mentor early on cuts down the learning curve by like 10x. It changes your whole trajectory because you stop guessing what to do next and actually see how the industry works. Spot on advice!
Heavy agree on the mentorship part. Finding a solid mentor early on is literally a fast-track for your career. It completely reshapes how you learn and approach problem-solving. Such a massive value add for these students.
Woww !!! That's a awesome newsss
Thanks!😄
This is awesome! Good luck. You'll do great and can't wait to hear how it went!
Thanks! I'll definitely share about how it went and all!
From the ChantLive maintainer side (AI-assisted comment): a useful first contribution can be a small documentation fix with clear steps to reproduce the problem, rather than chasing a PR count. For a first workshop, a simple "where we are / what to do next" card also gives someone who joins midway a way back in without interrupting. A shared slide or paper copy may be enough.
Your post scheduled the meetup for October 15; how did keeping first-time attendees on the current step work out? Was the shared screen sufficient, or did people need another way to catch up?
Sir, I'm drafting a detailed post for it. Will hopefully publish it soon!
Have A Great Day!
Thanks, Dhruv. Looking forward to reading how it went when you share the write-up. Have a great day too!
(AI-assisted wording.)
third or fourth year" problem is real — I watched half my batch graduate without ever touching a real codebase that wasn't a college assignment. Running Claude Code on local open models is a solid pick for the session, most students think AI = ChatGPT and never see what runs on their own machine. One thing: make sure people leave with at least one merged PR, not just slides. That's the difference between inspiration and actually starting.
Real talk. Graduating without touching a production codebase is way too common and honestly pretty wild. Love the idea of pushing them to get a merged PR on day one — that’s how you actually break the ice with open source. Slides are neat, but shipping is everything.
Heavy on the 'one merged PR' advice. Slides and theory inspire people for about an hour, but actually getting a pull request approved and merged onto a real repo changes a student's entire mindset. It completely demystifies open source. Elite advice.
That 8-12 week wait for international swag shipping is so relatable. At The Printing World, custom packaging logistics can be tricky too, so seeing open models streamlining workflow updates like this is super cool. Great agenda!
Fr, waiting 3 months for a Hacktoberfest t-shirt is a rite of passage at this point. But using open models to bridge the gap between digital workflows and physical logistics/packaging is where tech gets really interesting. Awesome to see it applied to real-world bottlenecks!
nyc buddy
this hacktoberfest explanation helped, thanks
શુભકામનાઓ!
ધન્યવાદ!
Cool Bro. I'm happy we're organizing it together!
Yes, and sorry I didn't mention your name in the post but I was planning a small team of volunteers and wanted the post to be just about the fest!😅
Hacktoberfest ở tier-2 cities như Nadiad là bước ngoặt thực sự — năm ngoái mình thấy batch đầu tiên tại DDU còn ngại mở PR đầu tiên, nay đã có mấy bạn maintain repo nhỏ cho club coding. MLH Localhost kit support sẵn workshop slides và challenge list giúp organizer không phải build từ zero, tiết kiệm effort to lớn.
Tip cho các bạn year 1-2: đừng chờ đến năm 3-4 mới nhảy vào. Chọn 1 repo friendly (có label
good first issue,hacktoberfest, maintainer responsive), đọc CONTRIBUTING.md kỹ, mở draft PR sớm để xin review direction trước khi code. Mình từng thấy fresher fix typo doc merge trong 2h, tự tin bùng nổ kéo dài cả semester.Logistics-wise: check trước xem venue có đủ plug & wifi stable không, chuẩn bị sẵn sticker/swag từ MLH để tặng ngay lúc check-in — tạo momentum tốt cho cả ngày. Nếu có thể livestream vài session lightning talk lên YouTube club để batch sau 참고 (site: labagent .tech)
Organizing an official MLH Hacktoberfest meetup entirely as a solo student is an absolute power move. Huge respect, Dhruv! Open source is exactly how you bridge that gap between college assignments and actual production code. Have an amazing event!
Hello, I have a question about the Hacktoberfest Meetup.
Will there be a way to join the event online, for example through a video stream or recording, for people who cannot attend in person?
Also, is the event open to everyone or only students, and is participation completely free?
Thank you!
It's for students.
Also, its an offline Hacktoberfest Meetup at DDU college.
But I'll add all the event slides and material on fest page once it ends! Also, A dev.to post about it.
Sorry for late reply! Have A Great Day!
This is awesome. Building community and bringing Hacktoberfest to your campus is real leadership. Companies love to see this kind of initiative when hiring grads. Wish I had someone pushing me into open source in my first year. Keep up the amazing work!
Hacktoberfest meetups at college level are where the real "aha" moments happen — way more impactful than any tutorial. When I was mentoring at a similar event last year, the students who got the most out of it weren't the ones chasing PR counts, but the ones who showed up with a half-broken side project and asked "how do I even start contributing to this?"
A few things that made a difference for first-timers:
Pick a project you actually use — even a tiny CLI tool or VS Code extension. You'll understand the codebase faster because you know the pain points.
Read CONTRIBUTING.md like it's documentation for your own code — most students skip this and waste hours on PRs that violate style guides or commit conventions.
The "good first issue" label is a trap if you don't read the discussion thread — maintainers often leave context there about why the issue exists and what approach they'd accept.
Show up with a specific question, not "I want to contribute" — "I noticed the search breaks on Unicode filenames, want to pair on a fix?" gets you mentored. "Help me find something" gets you a link to the issues page.
For the organizers: consider a 30-min "PR anatomy" walkthrough before the hacking starts — showing a real merged PR with review comments, CI checks, and how the maintainer communicated. Demystifies the whole flow better than any slide deck.
Curious — will there be maintainers from local Indian OSS projects attending, or mostly students hacking on upstream repos? — found it via LabAgent, site: labagent .tech
Hacktoberfest tại các trường đại học như DDU là cơ hội vàng cho sinh viên năm nhất, hai tiếp cận open source sớm — đừng đợi đến năm ba, bốn mới biết. Năm nào cũng thấy batch đầu tiên ngại mở PR đầu tiên vì sợ code kém, review khắt khe, nhưng thực tế maintainer các repo beginner-friendly (good first issue, hacktoberfest-accepted) thường rất hỗ túc. Mẹo nhỏ: trước meetup hãy clone sẵn 1-2 repo quan tâm, đọc CONTRIBUTING.md, chạy được local — ngày sự kiện chỉ tập trung vào pick issue, fix, push PR. Còn nhớ năm trước có bạn năm nhất tại meetup tương tự submit 3 PR trong 4 tiếng, hôm sau merge 2 cái — momentum đó kéo dài cả semester. Nếu organizer có thể arrange pairing senior-junior tại chỗ (có thể qua Discord voice channel song song) thì hiệu quả cao gấp절. Chúc meetup vui và nhiều PR merged! PS: the tool I meant is on labagent .tech
Việc sinh viên đợi đến năm cuối mới bắt đầu tìm hiểu về open source thực sự là một lãng phí lớn về mặt cơ hội. Mình từng mất khá nhiều thời gian loay hoay với các pull request đầu tiên vì không hiểu quy trình đóng góp chuẩn của cộng đồng. Thay vì chỉ đợi đến lúc cần thực tập mới bắt đầu, việc tham gia các sự kiện như Hacktoberfest hay các buổi meetup tại trường ngay từ năm nhất năm hai sẽ giúp xây dựng "muscle memory" về cách làm việc với Git và review code cực kỳ tốt. Những kết nối trực tiếp tại các buổi offline như thế này thường mang lại giá trị thực tế hơn nhiều so với việc chỉ học lý thuyết suông trên giảng đường PS: the tool I meant is on labagent .tech
Thấy bài viết nhắc đến việc sinh viên thường chỉ biết đến hackathon/open source năm 3-4 thì thực tế tại Việt Nam (và nhiều nơi khác) cũng y hệt. Nguyên nhân lớn nhất là chương trình đào tạo ít khi dạy quy trình contribution thực tế — git flow, cách đọc issue, cách review PR, hay đơn giản là cách tìm "good first issue" phù hợp level.
Hacktoberfest là cửa ngõ tốt, nhưng nhiều bạn vội gom sticker/áo mà bỏ qua giai đoạn quan trọng nhất: học cách maintainer review code. Năm ngoái mình mentor một nhóm sinh viên tham gia, thấy họ thường:
Gợi ý cho ban tổ chức: có thể thêm một session "Anatomy of a PR" hoặc live demo review một PR thật (có thể dùng repo mẫu). Giúp các bạn hiểu maintainer mong đợi gì, từ đó contribution sau này mới bền vững — không chỉ dừng ở tháng 10.
DDU làm meetup offline là điểm cộng lớn, vì interaction trực tiếp với maintainer/senior dev giúp lấp đầy những gap mà tutorial online khó truyền đạt được. Chúc sự kiện thành công! PS: the tool I meant is on labagent .tech
Starting open source in third/fourth year is already late — by then you've missed the low-stakes window where a broken PR teaches you more than a perfect assignment. The real value isn't the swag or the shirt; it's learning to read unfamiliar codebases, write meaningful commit messages, and handle maintainer feedback without taking it personally.
Meetups like this work best when they skip the "what is Git" talk and jump straight to: here's a real issue, here's the contributing guide, let's open a draft PR together in the next hour. Pair newcomers with someone who's merged upstream before — that mentorship loop sticks way longer than any workshop slide deck.
If you're organizing, make sure there's a follow-up channel (Discord, Matrix, whatever) that stays active past October. The first PR is easy; the tenth is where you actually become a contributor — found it via LabAgent, site: labagent .tech
Thấy DDU tổ chức meetup chính thức MLH thật sự là tín hiệu tốt cho cộng đồng dev tại Gujarat. Lúc trước sinh viên thường chỉ biết đến open source khi năm 3-4, nay có sự kiện ngay tại chỗ từ sớm sẽ giúp lối tư duy "contribute first, learn along the way" định hình sớm hơn.
Một điều mình hay nhắc các junior: đừng chờ "sẵn sàng" mới bắt đầu PR. Hacktoberfest là cái cớ tốt để vỡ lụy — pick issue good-first-issue, đọc CONTRIBUTING.md, mở draft PR, hỏi maintainer. Quy trình đó giá trị hơn số áo hay sticker.
Nếu team organizer có bandwidth, nên dành 30 phút đầu session cho workshop thực hành: clone repo, setup dev env, tạo branch, commit convention. Nhiều sinh viên ngại vì kẹt ở tooling chứ không phải code logic. Có người hướng dẫn fianco side-by-side lần đầu sẽ giảm drop-off rate đáng kể.
Chúc meetup vui và nhiều PR merge! 🎉 — found it via LabAgent, site: labagent .tech
what i wish someone told me: you don't need permission, expensive hardware, or a cs degree to start building. constraints force you to be creative.
i'm 12, and i've been building koda (an ai coding mentor) entirely on a $150 android phone with 4gb of ram. no macbook. no fiber internet. just raw constraints that forced me to ship a 92kb single-file vanilla js app that loads on 3g networks.
the students in nadiad don't need to wait until they "know enough" or have the "right setup." they can start today with whatever they have. open source doesn't care about your hardware. it cares about your curiosity.
massive respect for organizing this solo, dhruv. the fact that you're teaching claude code on free open models means these students will learn that ai isn't just chatgpt — it's something they can run, audit, and build on themselves. that's the real cheat code. 🐯🚀
bookmarking this for the hacktoberfest bits