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Discussion on: Your First Open Source Project

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Edwin Mak

Hey there! Great questions & discussion!

My first contribution to open source was including my favorite pizza place in NYC here: github.com/stevekinney/pizza/pull/138 and perhaps my first "serious" one was for a library used in validating addresses that my previous company was using here: github.com/smartystreets/smartystr...

At first I was certainly nervous that my code wouldn't be "up to standard". But that fear subsides more as you realize that you are just trying to help and the maintainers of the project usually understand that & appreciate your efforts. Contributions are often not 'standard' and that is imo partly why open source is beautiful. Also I'll add, It is super gratifying when your pull request gets merged in!

Honestly the way I discover bugs is often documentation not matching what the behavior of the code. I think bugs become more obvious when we recognize that the developers are humans just like me & you. And that they are subject to making little bugs here and there ;)

Happy coding!

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Onyebueke Emmanuel

Thanks Edwin, I like the fact that yours was Pizza😂😂

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Edwin Mak

:) Gotta start somewhere