I just finished 4 PRs! hacktoberfest!

Although the approved PRs are still maturing, I'm happy that I did it!

I'm a Rails developer for many years but never contribute to any repository. I just didn't know where to begin. And repository like Rails need so much background knowledge that really intimidates me. However, after joining the event, I found open source projects aren't all some kind of framework or language itself. Many of them are really just website projects need helps from people. So it's not as pressureful as I thought that contributors needs full of algorithm knowledge or knowing everything. Try to search issues and solve them is fun and not really that hard.

Thanks a lot to Hacktoberfest gave me object and energy to contribute to open source projects! I actually knew this event on around in the middle of October. I'm glad I finished on time and it gives me much confidence :D

Tips

Here are some methods I use to achieve my goals:

1. use Github topic page to search for the repos. If the language I want, ex: Ruby, is not in the list on sidebar. I input the language in the search query in URL directly. ex: https://github.com/topics/hacktoberfest?l=ruby
2. use Github's advanced search to search issues with #hacktoberfest
3. If you are an experienced developer. I think by searching thoroughly. Everyone can find 1 or 2 issue they can solve. Reply the issue you want to solve and discuss with the maintainers. For example, I'm pretty good at testing, so 2 of my 4 PR is to fix specs.