`"Flip Bits Not Burgers"`
Contributing to Open Source and projects can seem like a daunting process. Your favorite search engine will return a ton of results on guides and repositories to get started. But many times, your search does not yield the result you want, you still do not know how to contribute to Open Source even after reading multiple blog posts. The impeding reputation of certain projects and a harsh undertone does not help either and might complicate matters even further.
I have been there myself. I trawled through pages to find great Open Source repositories to contribute to, only to notice that I did not know how to start.
Frustrated and a little disappointed, I started focusing on other projects instead.
But it all changed when I saw a fellow employee’s Hacktoberfest sticker on their laptop. I was intrigued — was this a remnant of yet another Hackathon?
Hacktoberfest turned out to be very different.
Labels, labels, labels
Hacktoberfest proved to be a great month to get into Open Source. GitHub was filled with issues labeled Hacktoberfest that needed your help. There were enough projects to choose from — ranging from documentation to Python to RUST. During this time, I learned how to search GitHub for issues by labels and how to find good issues to contribute to.
I found some good-First-issue and made PRS, here are my PRs:
What can we take away from this?
I would advise you to free yourself from the assumption, that you need to contribute perfect and well-rounded code the first time. Your first contribution does not have to be ground-breaking (or even be code to be precise).
Project maintainers know that this might be your first Open Source contribution if they have labelled the issue as first-timers-only or similar. Your contribution can be anything like correcting a spelling mistake, adding some hyperlinks or a small learning project. Start small to become familiar with the process.
Many project maintainers that label their issues as friendly for beginners are also happy to answer your questions and provide support. So, don’t be shy to ask for clarification, if you do not understand something.
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