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Top resources to start with open source!

So you've progressed quite a ways into your foray of the programming world and you're starting to feel confident in your coding skills.

You might want to start looking to contributing to some open source projects to develop your skills even further. But you aren't sure where to start? This article aims to provide some sources of projects where you can get your feet wet!

1. Good First Issue

Homepage for good-first issue
Good First Issue is a site that curates issues from popular open-source projects, and helps you make your first contribution to open-source with filters according to the desired programming language.

2. Good First Issues

Homepage for Good First Issues
Like #1, Good First Issues also provides developers with filters, this website empowers them to browse and select issues and repositories based on programming languages that they are comfortable with. In addition, they can select the type of issues they want to address.

3. Up For Grabs

Homepage for Up For Grabs
Up For Grabs is a list of projects which have curated tasks specifically for new contributors. These are a great way to get started with a project, or to help share the load of working on open source projects.

4. CodeTriage

Homepage for CodeTriage
CodeTriage helps by picking a handful of open issues and delivering them directly to your inbox. After you sign up for CodeTriage, you pick the repos you want to help with, and they periodically send you issues. There is also a section with docs and tips for making your contribution journey successful.

5. Awesome Open Source

Homepage for Awesome Open Source
Awesome Open Source is a massive directory of over 370,000 GitHub projects filtered into 59 categories of development that is further filtered into 7000 more topics according to programming technologies or technologies used. This source isn't as beginner friendly as the rest.

6. GitHub

New contributors showcase page for GitHub
And finally GitHub themselves, GitHub has also setup a showcase of projects have a history and reputation for being welcoming to new open source contributors. But personally I prefer another method.
Advanced filter for issue search on Github
I like to use the Search function of GitHub and type:
label:"good first issue" state:open
into the search bar. Which will list a huge list of issues tagged with the 'good first issue' label. Here is a preformatted link.

I hope you any aspiring programmers will find this resource useful. Feel free to list any more useful resources that you've found, in the comments!

Huge thanks to the folks over at fast tracked programmer for introducing me to open source!

Top comments (1)

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stanbright profile image
Stan Bright

I'd also recommend LibHunt as a better alternative to "Awesome Open Source". Of course, being the founder of LibHunt I'm biased 🙈. I've also written on dev.to about an easy way to use LibHunt for alternatives "hunting" dev.to/stanbright/the-easiest-way-...