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Discussion on: Hot Take: Saying 'In the Spirit of Hacktoberfest' is Gatekeepy

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nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor

Thanks for writing this Bekah. There are so many things to be aware of when you first start contributing to open source.

This part captures it so well.

that contribution required a person to learn how to fork, clone, submit a PR, and do so many new things.

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bekahhw profile image
BekahHW

Thanks, Nick! It's easy to forget if you've been doing it for a long time and if you don't work with a lot of early career devs.

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somedood profile image
Basti Ortiz

I was about to quote the same excerpt, but you beat me to it! 😂

Jokes aside, it cannot be understated how intimidating first-time contributions are. From my experience, before I even considered sending my first PR, I had to learn:

  • What is a fork?
  • Why do I have to create a new branch from a repository I already forked?
    • What are the consequences of not branching?
    • Oh, no... I committed to the main branch of my fork. How do I fix the history?
  • What do I do with that dangling branch once it has been merged?
  • How do I sync my fork?
    • Do I even need to keep it around?
  • What... is a "rebase"?

The list can go on and on! It's a minefield to say the least. Instead of focusing on the small change, I went through all those hoops just to submit that PR.

Of course, this is not to bash on the prevalent Git workflow. It's definitely a much more organized experience than sending ZIP files around. 😅

The bottom line is: there is indeed a large hump to go over just to send in that first PR. This is not to even mention the Docker shenanigans just to set up the development environment locally!

Anyway, excellent write-up @bekahhw ! It is quite an eye-opener. 🚀

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bekahhw profile image
BekahHW

Thank you so much for your thorough comment. You are so right about all of these things, and so many repositories don't give detailed directions.