When I joined my first Hacktoberfest, I was purely a QA.
Now, two years later, I’m still a QA — but in my free time, I’ve become an indie gamedev.
Over these two years, I’ve grown — not just as a professional, but as someone who discovered that open source is truly open for everyone.
At first glance, it might seem like QA specialists don’t have much to do in Hacktoberfest — after all, it’s often seen as a coder’s festival.
But my experience proved the opposite: QA can participate, and make a real impact.
My Contributions
Most of my pull requests went to the free-programming-books
repository, which had around 376k stars at the time of writing.
I believe even small changes — like fixing broken links — can help others.
Sometimes, one dead link in documentation can change someone’s entire learning path.
I once found useful materials on Godot engine and GDScript in that repository, and now I try to keep it useful for others who are learning just like I did.
What I Learned
This year, I got an Supercontributor bage, and even made it into the top 10,000 contributors of Hacktoberfest.
Which, to be honest, came as a surprise to me - it looks like I should get a t-shirt for this now :)
Hacktoberfest taught me that growth isn’t just about writing more code — it’s about helping others learn, improving shared resources, and believing that your contribution counts.
Final Thoughts
I hope my story inspires those who still hesitate to join.
Even if you’re not a developer in the traditional sense — your work in open source can still make a difference.
So, see you next year — because I’m definitely joining again!
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