Hacktoberfest - A Beginner's experience

Abirami — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 16:09:36 +0000

Hello there,
First and foremost, Wishing you all a great year ahead. I had an amazing start to my new year when I received the Hacktoberfest T-shirt. The best thing that happened to me last year was Hacktoberfest 2020. I’m here to share my experiences about the event so that any newcomers like me would relate to it in the future.

Hacktoberfest 2020

Hacktoberfest is a month-long event happening every October, in which we have to make four or more valid pull requests to public Github repositories. When we accomplish that, we will be eligible to get a limited edition Hacktoberfest T-shirt or we can choose to donate a tree.

Why Hacktoberfest?

I got to know about Hacktoberfest when I saw a tweet from Digital ocean. I didn't know much about open source and github and hence, I was hesitant to register. But, at the same time I wanted to give it a try. While registering, the only thought I had was, ‘I have 31 days to contribute. At the best, I can succeed making at least four valid pull-requests. If not, I could learn about contributing to open source and about github. So, why not give a try?’.

Getting Started on Github

Now that I have registered and understood the participation rules, I wanted to find how to make a pull request in github. First, let’s sign up/sign in to github here. To know about creating a pull request , read through github docs. Also, there is a valuable repository called firstcontributions which will guide us about a few of the basic git commands required to make our contributions and how to use them. When we follow the steps given, we’ll end up making our first contribution to their repository.

Finding repositories to contribute

There are resources listed by the Hacktoberfest team that help us find an issue suitable for a beginner. Among which, I have used Good First Issues in which we can filter issues based on programming language or issue label or repository. In my case, it is easier for me to find issues with the label ‘Hacktoberfest’ and ‘Python’ programming language.

Towards the end of the month, I made five eligible pull requests. Yes, I did it. Since this was my first hacktoberfest, I chose to get the T-shirt and here it is.

It’ll be a bit overwhelming at first, but when we start making our first contribution, we’ll get to know about it. Remember the quote “Don’t let the entire staircase overwhelm you. Just focus on that first step.”

DEV Community: Abirami

Hacktoberfest - A Beginner's experience

Hacktoberfest 2020

Why Hacktoberfest?

Getting Started on Github

Finding repositories to contribute