I honestly didn't think I would be able to finish the hacktoberfest challenge, let alone in such short amount of time. Still I feel like I am not done participating.
I first heard of hacktoberfest last year when I had been a member of Dev.to for just a couple of months and struggling with getting my open source app off the ground. I focused on working on my own project because I believed to contribute to another person's or organisation's codebase you have to be super skilled. While asking for help with my own issues I was facing, another community member subbramanil opened a PR just for a single unit test file and took me through what the contribution was and why he was doing it, as confused and excited as I was. Here's one inspiring piece:
A year later. Still I didn't want to contribute to anything because I felt I wasn't going to be good enough. I read so many posts everywhere about how people contributed even it was just a single line of documentation in a README.md and that really pumped me up to actually doing something. (I still didn't)
What got me to stop procrastinating about participating is the fact that everyone in my office was either already participating or being encouraged to. Plus I wouldn't want to see a bunch of beautiful hacktoberfest T-shirts at work knowing that I could've gotten one too but didn't do anything about it.
This past Friday, I found easy prey. I saw this
Add JSDoc comments for better IDE support
#27
JSDoc comments can be added to most methods to clarify not only their purpose and usage, but also their parameter's expected types. Since this project is not written in TypeScript, IDEs could use these comments instead in order to provide useful code completion etc.
Please direct any PR towards the refactor-everything branch and only work on lib/netflix2.class.js as this is soon going to replace lib/netflix2.js.
The thing is, I've been writting comments all my live (minus the years I didn't know about programming) I mean how hard can it be?
I submitted a pull request, then BOOM!! 1/4 PRs for hacktoberfest was done. I was so exited that I submitted 2 more pull requests to other repos in one day.
As a bonus to myself, I submitted a pull request to the Dev.to android project.
forem
/
DEV-Android
DEV Community Android App
DEV Android π
This is the official repository for the dev.to's Android app.
Design ethos
DEV Android is an WebView based application. This application is inspired by Basecamp's approach. We will grow to include more native code over time.
By leveraging webviews as much as possible, we can smoothly sync up with our web dev work. And where it makes sense, we can re-implement certain things fully native, or build entirely native features. Life's a journey, not a destination.
Contributions
We expect contributors to abide by our underlying code of conduct. All conversations and discussions on GitHub (issues, pull requests) and across dev.to must be respectful and harassment-free.
System Requirements
You will need to have Android Studio 3.5 or up installed.
Usage
$ ./gradlew tasks --group=custom
------------------------------------------------------------
Tasks runnable from root project
------------------------------------------------------------
Custom tasks
------------
androidTest - Run android instrumentation tests
hello - Hello World taskβ¦
Top comments (20)
Nice post.
Procrastinatination is not a always a bad thing.
For me (edited) it's a symptom that what I intend to do is not simple enough yet.
I have a list of simple useful things you can contribute at the end of this
Contributing to open-source is like dancing Tango
Jean-Michel Fayard γ» Oct 11 γ» 6 min read
Procrastination is significantly more complicated than that and a self destructive behavior. Stick to what you have competence in (computer science). What works for you may only work for you. After reading your comments, it's ostensibly a poor rationalization. Try honesty regardless of where it leads you. "This above all: To thine own self be true. And it must follow as the night the day, thou canst then be false to any man." Polonious, Hamlet
That part is right. I have edited my comment.
On the other hand, I have no intention to "stick to computer science".
Then you are operating outside your competency. The number one guide in medicine and in psychology IS NEVER OPERATE OUTSIDE YOUR COMETENCY. You have no idea how much harm you can inflict upon others when you do. A single sentence can dramatically change a persons life. I've had the fortune of knowing those I've helped with the right words. I dread the thought of imagining who I've done the opposite the wrong words. We all must be more careful of what we say to others: especially when we give advice to how others should manage their life/problems. I'm sure you don't realize it but, your response contradicts itself. Read it again and think about it.
Good point and I get it.
I have read it again and can't find which of my sentance is wrong.
The mathematical contrary of "not always" is "at least in one case".
I know "at least one case" and more where procrastination is good. I have bipolar tendencies, and when I am in a maniac phase, procrastination is a very useful tool.
As fas as I'm concerned, I am inside my competency when I talk about myself.
Is that worse that letting people suffer alone?
Hi Jean β I really like breaking down procrastination to one idea of looking at macro not micro. In my experience when breaking down big picture items to our team, making these milestones βedibleβ is my #1 focus. Thank you for sharing! Have a great one. -Tom
Thanks for sharing !
Thank you for sharing, Beautus. In your article you mentioned you added JSDocs to a repo. Would love to hear more about that first step. Did hacktoberfest provide repos or provide information on how to find repos to contribute to? All the best! -Tom
For example with codetriage.com
And plenty of things at dev.to/t/hacktoberfest
Another useful site is issuehub.io
Hey Bud,
It's great to see your post! And Thank you for mentioning my post :)
I'm participating in Hactoberfest this year as well. Plan to write a blog/series of blogs once I finish.
Looking forward to see your posts as well!
Cheers!!
No thank you. I doubt I'd have done half of all this without the help.
NB: The app is sitting on 56k+ downloads on Google Play alone
Haha βI still did nothingβ <β that was me last year.
After you send in that one PR, everything else falls into place π€π
I'm so grateful for your post. I could not participate until a week ago due to personal reasons, then I thought I would not have enough time for completing the challenge.
But I saw this post and it really motivated me again to just try it and now BAM four PR's submitted, three already merged!
The feeling of approval is just so satisfying. Please try it out everyone, there's no real downside from contributing and it doesn't have to cost much time too :)
Hey, man. Can you provide the first step to contributing? How? Where?
Thanks!!
Oh man, this is a tough one to answer from the top of my head. But I've read some pretty interesting posts that I think can answer your questions, or at least give you an idea.
dev.to/mrahmadawais/how-to-start-c...
dev.to/jerodsanto/get-your-hacktob...
Cool! Thanks, bro.
Yes it can seen kind of scary at first, but once you start doing it you realize that's it's fun to help! And usually the people are great ππ
I swear they're the best. Great experience I've ever had. With every PR, there's something new that I learn.