Ask HN: Best open-source projects for first time contributer?

21 points·fourphoxic··7 comments

I'm interested in making a start in open-source, but don't have any idea where to begin. I've been programming for about 15 years, mostly for closed-source companies and my own projects. However, I'd like to build confidence in a newbie friendly project before attempting something bigger.

My main languages are mostly in Java and Python, but I don't mind stepping out of my comfort zone.

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Almost any organization that ever participated in Google Summer of Code. You can find this year's list here: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/organizations/

In your day to day programming job you probably interact with dozens of libraries. You could pick one that you like and help polishing it.

Since you are using it already you probably have good insights on what improvements could benefit other users.

I need help integrating Lucene/Solr (a search indexer with a REST API) into WikiPaper (http://wikipaper.org). You can do the backend in whatever language you like. It's an independent project so you don't need to read a ton of code to get up to speed.

I'm not sure how long it will take, probably some number of weekends. Any help is appreciated!

can you please add an email at which we can contact you? I don't see one in the profile.

http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/294/h...

http://up-for-grabs.net is pretty good for beginners.

The best way is to start out contributing to a project that you use and learn whatever language it uses.

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