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There are a lot of interesting Javascript frameworks to explore. Contributing to those is challenging, so I would start with writing plugins for those. Learn how to make a simple jQuery plugin. You must have worked with some in the past. Look it up on Github. They usually have their issues listed, pick an easy one, and try to fix it. Start with small fixes. Read a lot of code. Poke around.

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Great idea. I've generally had a poor experience hacking on existing jQuery plugins, but mostly because of the situations I find myself in while using them. Most of the time I'm under a time crunch for a client and simply need to get something working. Unfortunate reality. I should take a plugin that I think needs work, and either rewrite or contribute back to the project.

If you ever modify libraries or extend them, you should spend just a little more time submitting those somehow. You learn a lot by taking a few small cycles in making it worthy of adding to open source projects. If the modifications are production ready, then they should definitely be good enough contribute.

You're right. What happens all too often is we make the change with the hopes of going back to clean some stuff up, document, etc, then never get around to it.

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