Hacktoberfest: 69 Beginner-Friendly Projects You Can Contribute To

Wanna get started in open source and also score some nice swags? Join the Hacktoberfest® 2020!

In this post, I’ll list 69 beginner-friendly project that you can contribute to. By beginner-friendly I don’t mean simple. Some of them are very complex. However, like any other software project, there’s always some low hanging fruit.

The projects in this list have their issues triaged. That means the maintainers tag the simplest ones as “good first issue”, or "easy". Not only that, most of them ensure that only a novice must submit the pull request. That’s amazing, isn’t it?

By joining the Hacktoberfest, you can contribute with 4 pull requests during October 1 and October 31 and have a change to win a prize. The first 70,000 participants who conclude the challenge will be qualified to pick a limited edition T-shirt or plant a tree. However, be kind and only contribute if you have a value to offer back. Many people are only interested in the swags and that's kind of selfish in my opinion.

Without further ado, let’s check what we’ve got. I’ll break down the list by programming language. This way you can filter the projects by your favorite language.

I'm aware that I haven't covered all programming languages. However, you can also find a list of projects that tags #hacktoberfest here .

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Hacktoberfest®, or Digital Ocean in any way.

Table of Contents

1. Javascript
2. Python
3. Java
4. TypeScript
5. Ruby
6. Rust
7. Go
8. PHP
9. C++
10. Kotlin

Javascript

• https://github.com/responsively-org/responsively-app A modified web browser that helps in responsive web development. A web developer's must have dev-tool.

• https://github.com/cypress-io/cypress
  Fast, easy and reliable testing for anything that runs in a browser.

• https://github.com/HabitRPG/habitica An open source habit building program which treats your life like a Role Playing Game.

• https://github.com/vuejs/vue A progressive framework for building user interfaces.

• https://github.com/nodejs/node An open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript runtime environment. It executes JavaScript code outside of a browser.

• https://github.com/electron/electron A framework lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

• https://github.com/facebook/react-native A framework that brings React's declarative UI framework to iOS and Android.

• https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby A free and open source framework based on React that helps developers build blazing fast websites and apps

• https://github.com/facebook/jest A delightful JavaScript Testing Framework with a focus on simplicity.

• https://github.com/moment/moment A JavaScript date library for parsing, validating, manipulating, and formatting dates.

• https://github.com/mochajs/mocha A simple, flexible, fun JavaScript test framework for Node.js & The Browser.

• https://github.com/fastify/fastify Fast and low overhead web framework, for Node.js

• https://github.com/vercel/next.js The React Framework

• https://github.com/babel/babel A compiler for writing next generation JavaScript.

Python

• https://github.com/scrapy/scrapy A fast high-level web crawling & scraping framework for Python.

• https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy An interactive TLS-capable intercepting HTTP proxy for penetration testers and software developers.

• https://github.com/pytest-dev/pytest A framework makes it easy to write small tests, yet scales to support complex functional testing

• https://github.com/zulip/zulip A powerful, open source group chat application that combines the immediacy of real-time chat with the productivity benefits of threaded conversations.

• https://github.com/ansible/ansible A radically simple IT automation platform that makes your applications and systems easier to deploy and maintain.

• https://github.com/jupyter/notebook Jupyter Interactive Notebook

• https://github.com/saltstack/salt Software to automate the management and configuration of any infrastructure or application at scale.

• https://github.com/python/mypy Optional static typing for Python 3 and 2 (PEP 484)

• https://github.com/opsdroid/opsdroid An open source chat-ops bot framework

• https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas Flexible and powerful data analysis / manipulation library for Python, providing labeled data structures similar to R data.frame objects, statistical functions, and much more

• https://github.com/numpy/numpy The fundamental package for scientific computing with Python.

• https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib A comprehensive library for creating static, animated, and interactive visualizations in Python.

• https://github.com/arviz-devs/arviz Exploratory analysis of Bayesian models with Python

Java

• https://github.com/strongbox/strongbox A modern OSS artifact repository manager.

• https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch Open Source, Distributed, RESTful Search Engine

• https://github.com/commons-app/apps-android-commons The Wikimedia Commons Android app allows users to upload pictures from their Android phone/tablet to Wikimedia Commons

• https://github.com/authorjapps/zerocode A community-developed, free, open source, API automation and load testing framework built using JUnit core runners for Http REST, SOAP, Security, Database, Kafka and much more.

• https://github.com/JabRef/jabref Graphical Java application for managing BibTeX and biblatex (.bib) databases

• https://github.com/sirixdb/sirix A temporal, evolutionary database system, which uses an accumulate only approach.

• https://github.com/prestosql/presto A distributed SQL query engine for big data, under the auspices of the Presto Software Foundation.

TypeScript

• https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript A superset of JavaScript that compiles to clean JavaScript output.

• https://github.com/microsoft/vscode Visual Studio Code

• https://github.com/TroyTae/game-of-life Conway's game of life web version!

JRuby

• https://github.com/jruby/jruby An implementation of Ruby on the JVM

• https://github.com/sinatra/sinatra A classy web-development dressed in a DSL (official / canonical repo)

• https://github.com/publiclab/plots2 A collaborative knowledge-exchange platform in Rails; we welcome first-time contributors! balloon

• https://github.com/faker-ruby/faker A library for generating fake data such as names, addresses, and phone numbers.

• https://github.com/chatwoot/chatwoot Open-source live chat software, an alternative to Intercom, Zendesk, Drift, Crisp etc.

Rust

• https://github.com/servo/servo The Servo Browser Engine

• https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-clippy A bunch of lints to catch common mistakes and improve your Rust code

• https://github.com/rust-lang/rustfmt A tool for formatting Rust code according to style guidelines.

• https://github.com/hyperium/hyper An HTTP library for Rust

• https://github.com/nushell/nushell A new type of shell

Go

• https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes Production-Grade Container Scheduling and Management

• https://github.com/moby/moby A collaborative project for the container ecosystem to assemble container-based systems

• https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform An open source tool that codifies APIs into declarative configuration files that can be shared amongst team members, treated as code, edited, reviewed, and versioned.

• https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-server Open source Slack-alternative in Golang and React - Mattermost

• https://github.com/gavv/httpexpect End-to-end HTTP and REST API testing for Go.

• https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach An open source, cloud-native distributed SQL database.

PHP

• https://github.com/phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin A web interface for MySQL and MariaDB

• https://github.com/matomo-org/matomo The leading Free/Libre open analytics platform.

• https://github.com/symfony/symfony An PHP web framework

• https://github.com/nextcloud/server Nextcloud server, a safe home for all your data

• https://github.com/PrestaShop/PrestaShop A fully scalable open source ecommerce solution.

• https://github.com/appwrite/appwrite An end-to-end backend server for Web, Mobile, Native, or Backend apps packaged as a set of Docker microservices.

• https://github.com/flarum/core Simple forum software for building great communities.

C++

• https://github.com/godotengine/godot Multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine

• https://github.com/projectM-visualizer/projectm A cross-platform music visualization. Open-source and Milkdrop-compatible Resources

• https://github.com/roc-streaming/roc-toolkit Real-time audio streaming over the network.

• https://github.com/amritansh22/Data-Structures-and-Algorithms-in-cpp This repository is in development phase and will soon provide you with c++ code of various data structures and algorithms

• https://github.com/namanvats/cpalgorithms Algorithms and Techniques for competitive programming

• https://github.com/noidawt/tomorrow A small graphical calculator project.

Kotlin

• https://github.com/robstoll/atrium A multiplatform assertion library for Kotlin

• https://github.com/hexagonkt/hexagon A microservices toolkit written in Kotlin.

• https://github.com/sirixdb/sirix A temporal, evolutionary database system, which uses an accumulate only approach.

Conclusion

That's it folks! I hope you find a useful project to contribute during the Hacktoberfest and get started with the right foot in the open source world!

Other posts you may like:

• The Best Way to Compare Two Dictionaries in Python

• How to Check if an Exception Is Raised (or Not) With pytest

  • 7 pytest Features and Plugins That Will Save You Tons of Time
  • 73 Examples to Help You Master Python's f-strings
  • Other links
  • 11 Useful Resources To Learn Python's Internals From Scratch
  • 3 Ways to Unit Test REST APIs in Python
  • How I Set up Multiple Python Versions with pyenv on Linux

If you liked this post, consider sharing it with your friends! Also, feel free to follow me https://miguendes.me.

Comments

[Robin Gagnon]

Would like to chip in my own vimcolorschemes. Currently making a lot of effort for it to be as beginner-friendly as possible :)

The stack is mainly JavaScript, Gatsby, and React.

Cheers! Good job on the list

[Jérémie Astor]

The site is pretty neat IMHO.

[Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard]

Nice list!

If you allow for shameless auto-promotion, I just published a repository that is specially designed to be beginner-friendly. That would be in the Kotlin section

LouisCAD / kotlin-libraries-playground

A playground to gain a wider and deeper knowledge of the libraries in the Kotlin ecosystem. Also the official sample for gradle refreshVersions.

Kotlin Libraries Playground

A playground to gain a wider and deeper knowledge of the libraries in the Kotlin ecosystem

Also the official sample for gradle refreshVersions

❤️ Contributors welcome! #hacktoberfest

We want to collect sample usage of Kotlin libraries, and the more the better!

You are very welcome to contribute your own library sample.

==> CONTRIBUTING.md

🤔How do you keep up with all the new stuff?

There are great resources to learn Kotlin.

But once you master the language, you are not done just yet.

You now face another challenging task: become familiar with its ecosystem of libraries.

With time, you want to both acquire:

• a wider knowledge of what good libraries are available in the ecosystem in general
• a deeper knowledge of some specific libraries particulary important for you

There are several inefficient ways to do that:

• reading tutorial after tutorial and being stuck in a loop…

View on GitHub

[Johannes Millan]

I'd also like to use this for shameless self-promotion. Here I go:

Super Productivity is looking for contributors. Super Productivity is a
"To-do list & time tracker for programmers and other digital workers with Jira, Github, and Gitlab integration"

You can check it out here:
super-productivity.com/

If you'd like to contribute, please head here:
github.com/johannesjo/super-produc...

[Bobby Iliev]

You can also check out Tails, it is a (no-config) copy'n paste library of templates and components hand-crafted using TailwindCSS 🙌

For more information, check out this post on DEV:

Tails 🌪️ - Beautify open-source TailwindCSS Components

Bobby Iliev ・ Sep 23 ・ 2 min read

#hacktoberfest #contributorswanted #css #webdev

[Johannes Lichtenberger]

Thanks a lot for mentioning SirixDB. Indeed we have a lot of work for Java and Kotlin (backend) developers, as well as for JavaScript and TypeScript (frontend) developers. Furthermore a Rust-Client, as well as a Kotlin-Client will be a great addition 👍

Besides, we want to add interactive visualizations to the frontend to depict how data changes over time and to provide the best diffing-views possible for imported JSON and XML data.

[Miguel Brito]

Hi Johannes, SirixDB looks very interesting, great job you folks are doing. Also thanks for your comment. I hope this post can drive some nice contributions to the project.

[Jérémie Astor]

Did you forget C ?
I so, I might start with my project, since it is in C and very welcoming 😄
Gwion.

[Miguel Brito]

Hi, Jérémie, it's not that I forgot I did try searching for nice and beginner friendly in C but couldn't find many.

As a matter of fact I like C, it was my first programming language. I learnt how to program in C. I'll add you project to the list. Thanks for mentioning it.

[Attila Szeremi⚡]

May I suggest a little change to your article?

-# Hacktoberfest: 69 Beginner-Friendly Projects You Can Contribute To
+# Hacktoberfest: 69 Beginner-Friendly, Awesome Projects You Can Contribute To

[Miguel Brito]

Just bear in mind that this change doesn't count as a PR.

Jokes aside, it's a shame hacktoberfest 2020 got spammed :(

[Labs64 NetLicensing]

We at Labs64 support open source and welcome all contributors to our open source projects! 🙌🏻

You can find a list of our repositories here: netlicensing.io/blog/2020/10/01/ha...

... as well as some nifty NetLicensing SWAGs ✨

[Matteo Bruni]

Another TypeScript project looking for contributors:

tsParticles - github.com/matteobruni/tsparticles

matteobruni / tsparticles

tsParticles - Easily add particles animations to your website. Compatible also with React, Vue.js (2.x and 3.x), Angular, Svelte, jQuery, Preact, Inferno

tsParticles - TypeScript Particles

A lightweight TypeScript library for creating particles. Dependency free (*) and browser ready!

Particles.js converted in TypeScript, dependency free (*), improved with new cool 😎 features and various bugs fixed and it's actively maintained!

Do you want to use it on your website?

This library is available on the two most popular CDNs and it's easy and ready to use, if you were using particles.js it's even easier.

You'll find the instructions below, with all the links you need, and don't be scared by TypeScript, it's just the source language.

The output files are just JavaScript. 🤩

CDNs and npm have all the sources you need in Javascript, a bundle browser ready (tsparticles.min.js) and all files splitted for import syntax.

If you are still interested some lines below there are some instructions for migrating from…

View on GitHub

[Kirby Shabaga]

Thanks for creating the list!