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Atharva Shirdhankar
Atharva Shirdhankar

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How I m Learning new Technologies so Quickly and how you can do it too(Open Source Way)?!

When I see myself one year back I was completely confused like how should I learn new things and do some progress in the Tech Field🙁.

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But now!!!! when I see back in time currently I m doing great progress and easily learning new technologies😁.

But actually, what I did or steps I took the cause of which I m doing great progress within a year.
Let me tell you how I did it in this article and even how you can do it if you are struggling in Coding or learning new technologies.

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Many things helped me learn new technical things but let start this first article let me share with you how Open Source helped me
(More article on How I m Learning new Technologies so Quickly is coming soon...)

Open Source Contribution

My Open Source Journey

  • I started Open Source Contribution in November 2020 somewhat and I made my first contribution to GitHub-docs as a contributor cause only text and typo were needed to be corrected which was perfect for a beginner like me to get started with open source contribution.

Improve documentation issue no #1034 #1242

Done with the minor fixes for open issue number #1034 .

Why:

What's being changed:

Check off the following:

  • And when I doing my first contribution I was literally confused about what should I do cause I was not familiar with Git and Github.The mechanism of committing and creating pull requests was new to me.
  • But thanks to the Github docs maintainer team they helped a lot in my first contribution and even I explored and learned about Git and Github on the way.
  • After my first contribution I did more 2 contributions to GitHub docs that were too related to documentation and typo work.
  • As I did my 3 contributions I got used to Github's contribution workflow (fork repository, commit changes, create pull request stuff)and even got the confidence to contribute to another project which has actual coding stuff.
  • I started with contributing to HTML , CSS , javascript codebase projects. Slow and steady I started contributing to Reactjs codebase projects and now currently working on Docker and Android-related issues.

What did I learn from Open Source and by doing contribution to OSS?

  • The journey of Open Source was amazing I learned so new many things on the way. And not only learned new technologies and frameworks but also made new friends.
  • The Open Source contribution I did help me to learn different web frameworks like Django, Flask, etc. And frontend library reactJs.
  • Many times during open-source contribution I came across a codebase that was overwhelming at first. Even came across new technologies I'd never heard of. So by doing Open Source contribution I was learning on the way and I learned those stuff first and I used to implement it by contributing.
  • By contributing to open-source software I became habitual to dealing with the overwhelming codebase, reading the codebase, and do the changes in the code where required.

And yes if you think how I can those new technologies and do the contribution work.
Just ask for some help in the open-source community. There will surely be someone to help you and guide you if you are stuck somewhere. That's the amazing part,I like about Open Source😃

  • When you do Open Source Contribution you are gaining experience which will surely help in the future.

Conclusion
In short, I learned a new programming language, new technologies in public and also implemented those learnings on the way and gained some experience.

How you can start with Open Source and learn new things

  • To get started with open source at first you need to know a few git commands like clone, commit, push. And a little bit familiar with Github's issue, pull request feature. Other advanced concepts of git and Github you will learn on the way by doing contribution.
  • After learning a few concepts of git and GitHub. On GitHub search for some repositories which are specific for documentation or HTML, CSS, javascript base project and best for beginners to start with open source. Below are Few of them to which I contributed and still contribute

    GitHub logo github / docs

    The open-source repo for docs.github.com

    GitHub logo EddieHubCommunity / LinkFree

    Connect to your audience with a single link. Showcase the content you create and your projects in one place. Make it easier for people to find, follow and subscribe.

    GitHub logo EddieHubCommunity / EventCalendar

    Community events from TwitterSpaces to Live streams to Conferences

    GitHub logo JuliaLang / www.julialang.org

    Julia Project website

  • Now search for good first issues in the issue tab.
  • And work on those issues accordingly
  • After getting used to with Github workflow(find an issue, do some required changes in code or documentation(text), create pull request and merge your code), I recommend working on the project which you think is quite overwhelming for you or you want to learn programming language search for those projects which include it.
  • Slow and steady you will learn new programming language or technology and that too efficiently.

(I didn't mention everything in detail about how you can do open source contribution but I m sure you got this😅. My motive behind this article is simple to do open source contribution and learn new things on the way and also gain some experience 🚀)

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Thank You for Reading this Article and yes stay tuned for the next part of this blog series by following me.

Latest comments (2)

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djuber profile image
Daniel Uber • Edited

Awesome way to get your hands dirty with real programs and real problems and learn along the way!

Code Triage might be an interesting service - it automates some of the search for good issues (though the normal filtering is to map your existing skills to projects needing help).

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star_trooper profile image
Atharva Shirdhankar

Yep OSS contribution is really a amazing way to learn and get experience by working on production level application.
Thanks for mentioning tool to find good first issue easily 👍.
And more such articles are coming soon...