I contributed to my first open source project recently, and I figured I would share my experience. It was for the website railsdevs, which is a job board for Ruby on Rails developers. I love the idea of this site. It is set up so the businesses reach out to developers, instead of the other way around, like it usually is. Anways, The code I contributed sends out a welcome email when a new user creates their developer profile. This was such an awesome experience because I learned how to:
- Work with/communicate with another developer
- Follow directions
- Run a linter/formatter before commiting my code
- How to make a pull request
- Refactor my code with requested changes and request another PR review
This is good real world experience. I am still looking for my first dev job and I am hoping that open source contributions will help me get a job. Especially since I can't afford to get a degree or go to a bootcamp.
Making my first contribution feels good and really boosted my confidence! It's so cool knowing that I added a feature to a site that many will use, everyday. I can't wait to contribute to more projects and give back to the community! If you are looking for your first contribution(and you're a rails dev) railsdevs is a good place to start. Joe has made it very easy to contribute, he's good to work with, and there are some good first issues in there. Check out the repo here and go forth and contribute! It's intimidating making your first PR, but afterwards it's very rewarding. You will be hungry for more! Also remember, your first contribution doesn't have to be code. If you find a project with poor docs or no docs, you can make the docs or make them better. Anyway that you can contribute matters/helps. Let this be your inspiration to make your first contribution!
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