Intro
Hello, my name is Mandeep Singh from London, England. A former I.T support professional for 10 years now turned programmer at the start of 2023. I have learnt a lot during my short time but I am completely new to the world of open source and have never delved into it so as part of my learning journey, I wanted to take part in my very first Hacktoberfest and try out a new learning experience. This also happens to be my very first post on this platform so there's no better time to make it.
Highs and Lows
I started out on a low because I must admit, I was nervous at first. The world of open source seemed very scary to me but after seeing the participation instructions on the Hacktoberfest website and the amount of repositories taking part in Hacktoberfest, I felt much more relaxed and thought "Just go for it" and "What I have got to lose?".
I saw as it as a learning experience and chance to improve myself. Once I had signed up, and started browsing the repos, it all came together nicely. I was learning more about open source repositories, contributing guidelines, licences, git, version control, pull requests, merging, etc. Ultimately this improved my confidence and even more so when I had a contribution accepted for a FreeCodeCamp repository. (I'd never thought say that before I started.)
Growth
As I am still a newbie to the world of programming, I felt I did not really have the skillset to be able to make a meaningful code contribution so I contributed to beginner repo's and did some minor changes. E.G - flagging and fixing minor issues, updating documentation, etc. But as they say "every little bit helps". The main goal was to get a better understanding of open source. Anything else would be a bonus.
Pleased to say, I did gain an understanding, I learnt a lot and am now ready to build on that going forward. Start making some more meaningful contributions as my skillset improves, keep taking part in Hacktoberfest and the main thing: keep learning.
Thank you
For taking the time to read this post. Please feel free to check out my GitHub to check the contributions I made and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.
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