How To Get Started Contributing To Open Source | Hacker News Reader

How To Get Started Contributing To Open Source

brandonhilkert.com

37 pointsfrist459 comments

This is pretty much Rails/Ruby related only, and I believe that even though there are points to be taken for other programming languages, people who still haven't contributed to OS and working with, say, PHP will not benefit much.

And have to mention:

> "2. IMPROVE AN EXISTING GEM TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE"

This is such a cliché ("[doing something] to make the world a better place"), misused everywhere from CVs, random blog posts like this and missions of companies.

Seeing this phrase just downgrades the opinion and value of the source for me.

If I ever had the chance to interview people in the future, I'd like to ask why the contribute to those projects. I probably won't penalize anyone for being too involved with Open Source projects (like holy shit this guy claimed to be contributors to 20 projects...), but I will weigh his intentions. And yeah, I'd say it's easier and more helpful to contribute to projects you are already using for your work.

3 [obvious] Ways to Get Started Contributing To "Ruby Projects".

As a new programmer I have always been interested in Open Source, but finding something to do is hard. The concepts I run into are either miniscule or way over my head it seems. Anyone have tips for that?

Rule #0: Do not look for projects to contribute. It doesn't work for everybody and majority won't find anything they want to do and excited to do. Rule #1: do not assume you have to contribute to open source project these days. It is perfectly fine to be a consumer.

Rule #2: avoid the idea that you must write code to get involved.

Rule #3: when you encounter a problem, investigate and ask for help, or offer help.

My first actual major contribution to Open source was Ansible. I rewrote the original hg module because the existing one didn't help me do what I had to do. I have fixed a few minor bugs too (e.g. pip module,)

I basically don't contribute these days because I am super busy with things.

You can contribute by teaching how to use library X. I did quite a few presentations on Ansible back then, taught people whatever fit my use case. Giving feedback is also a great way to help moving project forward.

I was using angular.js and I had an issue using angularjs in Firefox. I logged into irc and asked and then file a bug. I think the bug is closed because they don't have any way to fix that issue right now.... anyway, filing a bug is already contributing.

Should writing code to contribute be a goal in the long run?

Also I already hangout in IRC chats for FOSS and it's something I want to do but the things I look at all seem over my head.

Long run? Sure, but don't stress yourself about you have to write code. There are people write open source software for work (for example, docker, open stack) and you can't really compete with them.

You can try to write code in the long run. You can build new features and implement the feature for a few months...

I still find it's easy to struggle while finding a starting point. Any other general tips?

Do you have a specific software in mind you want to work on? Specific task? Interest? Like I said, I started out to fix things affecting me. I would dive into the code a bit to see what went wrong. For projects like angular.js I don't have any knowledge how to fix things so I simply file bug. For projects written in Python I am more comfortable hacking.

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