Contributing to Open Source Software
After nearly 3 years, working in software development i made my first ever open source contribution. It is awesome to see something you built now being used by many.
In this article i am going to talk about why and the how of contributing to Open Source projects.
So let’s get started.
The How
It’s actually pretty simple, look up packages that you are using in your projects on Github, click on the Issues tab and look for issues, which you feel you can solve. It doesn’t really matter how small it is. It might be a bug in the code, some documentation issue or a feature request. The idea is to pick one and just get started.
In some repos, issues for beginners are marked “good first issue”. Those are good to start with.
I suggest you contribute to packages that you use because you know what those packages do. So it’s easy to navigate and understand.
The Why
There are a bunch of reasons
You Learn a LOT.
When you open a repository and start reading code, you learn a lot. You learn about cool packages, clever ways of using the language, project structure, code organisation, best practices, testing frameworks etc.
You can then, take these learnings and apply it on your projects.
Adds value to your CV
I mean, it does give you an upper-hand. It won’t help you land a job but will surely increase the chances.
Giving back
We use tons of free packages in our projects. When we contribute to these packages we make them more robust and useful.
It’s satisfying
I know it sounds cliche and cheesy but it’s true. I felt immense pride and satisfaction when my code was shipped to production (and it worked! 😆).
That’s it for today. I hope you found this article helpful.
Thank you for reading!
(For those who are curious i contributed to postwoman. I added MQTT capability to the product.)