Hacktoberfest 2025 — My First Time as a Contributor 😼

#devchallenge #hacktoberfest #opensource

Hacktoberfest: Contribution Chronicles

✨ Hacktoberfest 2025 — My First Time as a Contributor ✨

Ahoi!!

Well, where to start? It was my first time joining Hacktoberfest, and honestly, I joined a bit late — but I was determined to earn that Super Contributor badge.
So I woke up early, made myself some quinua (I’m from Peru 🇵🇪, we’re very proud of our food!) with my classic pan con tortilla 🥖🍳 — and got to work.
(Of course, I had to include a bit of Peruvian flavor in this post! 😄)

I contributed to projects as curious as one with a button that literally did nothing but gave you motivational quotes (the-button-that-does-nothing), all the way to a “Word-like” collaborative editor built with React (CollabSpace).

Here are a few examples of what I worked on with lots of joy n.n

At first, I noticed that most of the issues labeled hacktoberfest were already taken.

Then I saw something interesting — some people created their own issues and assigned them to themselves.

That was the key: proactivity.

So I started checking out projects, seeing what they were missing, and that’s how my own issues came to life.

As the cliché says: if the opportunity doesn’t exist, invent it.

And just when everything seemed to be going smoothly… one of my PRs had conflicts.

The nightmare became real.

Fixing merge conflicts in Git is, for me, a small torment.

I made myself some tea (my calm version of the stereotypical programmer’s coffee), took a deep breath, and got back to it.

I have a white cat. I thought about dressing her up for the occasion —I even considered painting her black (for the drama, obviously)— but in the end, I let her be.

Free, like the open source spirit 😸

Beyond the beautiful super contributor badge, what truly made me happy was seeing my changes come to life in real projects, each with its own essence and community.

Being able to contribute to something I love is worth more than any prize.

Thanks to all the maintainers for the opportunity.

This experience left me full of ideas for future projects I’d love to support.

Definitely, being a contributor is my thing —even if PR conflicts will always be my nightmare.

P.S. I’m usually a backend developer, so it had been ages since I touched anything frontend or UX/UI-related.

My respect to my not-so-distant cousins: the frontend devs and the full-stack unicorns.

CSS styling was a real headache 😅 — !important became my best friend, haha.

But seriously, this event opened my eyes to the vast open source universe that’s out there.