DEV Community

Cover image for CONTRIBUTING: Igor Rončević on Sharpen
Christian Schwendtner for For Devs community

Posted on

CONTRIBUTING: Igor Rončević on Sharpen

Leading up to (and during) the month of October, we want to help you discover open source projects to work on, and put your Hacktoberfest contributions to excellent use. Meet Igor Rončević, creator of the Sharpen project .
Check out this page regularly for more interviews with contributors & maintainers

What can you tell us about your project?

Sharpen is a Visual Studio extension that intelligently introduces new C# features into your existing codebase. What is it about and why did I create it? C# is in my opinion beautiful and a fast involving language and that's something I really like, but it also creates troubles to developers. You know, to learn about the new features, to incorporate them into their existing code, and so on. I've noticed that that's really an issue. There was a recent tweet from Jimmy Bogard saying that C# evolves too quickly. That's why I've created Sharpen.
Sharpen analyzes your existing code and gives you hints and clear suggestions where you can use new C# features in it. It also links to the documentation of those features, giving you an opportunity to modernize your code and at the same time to really learn those new features.

What contributions are you welcoming?

We welcome all kind of contributions. For example, just giving a star on GitHub is already for me a contribution to Sharpen, definitely. Even if you do not know C# that well, but you want to contribute to the website, the documentation, all these kinds of contributions are welcome. If you want to contribute to the code, of course, there are also plenty of possibilities: to write the analyzers, also to improve the visual appeal of the extension, and so on. The only thing really needed is a willingness to join.

What skills do people need to contribute?

For initial contributions there are no high skills needed.
The only thing needed is really the curiosity and the willingness to participate. If you want to join the coding, there is a CONTRIBUTING.md page, which explains in detail how you can join.
And in that case there are also various areas where one can support Sharpen. For example, working in general on Visual Studio extensions is really exciting.
So, learning about how to integrate your own UI and code and to incorporate into Visual Studio. Even if you do not have the knowledge, I'm always there to support. We also have one pretty cool thing: it's called The End Game. Before each release we distribute Sharpen to people who want to try it before it's officially released. This is also a huge help getting the initial feedback.

How do I get started?

The best way to start is to go to the Sharpen website - and then go to GitHub and check the CONTRIBUTING.md file - everything is there.

Alt Text

Join, October 2nd, for CONTRIBUTING.md - a virtual Hacktoberfest meetup, free and open for anyone who wants to join. Learn what Open Source projects are looking for contributions, which communities are looking for new members, and who is looking for advice from someone with your exact skill set. Check this page regularly for more interviews with contributors & maintainers which we'll release until the event.

Latest comments (0)