Have fun, and contribute to Open Source, with 24 Pull Requests! 🎁

I'm getting into a bit of a coding groove at the moment, and since it is December - and also the advent period 🎄 - I thought I'd use some of my energy to help others. I've got some coding ideas of my own, but I love to contribute to existing projects, as well.

I came across the 24 Pull Requests project a number of years ago (in fact, way back in 2012).

What is it?

From the website:

24 Pull Requests' goal is to encourage contribution to open source projects during December. The site suggests open projects, highlights tickets that are good for new contributors, provides guides for contributing and promotes good contributions submitted each day.

Or, via the Twitter bio...

Giving back little gifts of code for Christmas.

I wasn't able to take part for quite a few Decembers in a row, which made me sad. Then, the project itself took the 2019 and 2020 off.

This year, I spotted a Tweet...

Happy times! I've had a bunch of small things I wanted to contribute to various projects and places lately, so this quickly got me motivated to get involved.

Oh, and it doesn't have to just be a pull request... since 2018 it has been far broader than that:

we're making the biggest change to 24 Pull Requests since the start of the project: you'll be able to record every kind of contribution you make to open source, not just pull requests

So - if you're opening issues, helping with documentation on a wiki, organising an event, answering technical questions on Discord or Stack Overflow, doing a livestream to promote a coding project - go ahead and record it, via the contribution form on the 24 Pull Requests site.

How to get started

If you're reading this on DEV, the chances are that you're already familiar with how to contribute to an open source project. If not, there are a bunch of articles and resources collected together on the web page. You can also ask questions via GitHub Discussions or on Gitter, if you're not sure about something.

You'll also want to go ahead and Login with your GitHub account, so that the site can keep track of what you're contributing.

The website can help you to find projects to contribute to, based on your coding language of choice, your experience level (look out for the beginner filter), or type of contribution (e.g. documentation, tests or design instead of specific code). It doesn't matter if the project you want to support isn't listed - go ahead and get involved on GitHub, and if you've connected your account, the 24 Pull Requests dashboard will help you keep track.

🧠 Shame I missed it, maybe next year...

One more thing to note! It is not "too late to start, now"! 😁

Hint: although the idea is that you contribute something on a daily basis, it's also 24 times in total. In my case, it's December 3rd today, and I've already submitted a number of PRs as well as some issues, helped with admin on a couple of project websites and resources outside of PRs, and I did some beta testing for our friends here at Forem. You can do more than one thing each day, if you like; or, not. I encourage you to just get involved.

My contribution profile is looking healthy already 🌟 and that makes me happy; but, I also want to keep up my momentum, so it is a great motivator, as well.

Share what you're working on! Keep notes. Write about what you've been up to here on DEV, or Tweet about it to @24PullRequests. It's such a great thing, to give back to and support those projects you use every day.

Happy coding!🧑🏼‍💻