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A Beginner’s Guide to Contributing to Open Source

Janessa Tran on February 28, 2020

For any developer early in their career, contributing to open-source software may seem quite daunting. Maybe you have never worked on a project wit...
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Ty • Edited

Great read! I would also add that working on lesser known projects is often a good way to get started.

For example: making meaningful code contributions for a well known project like Vue might be more difficult than making code contributions to a small/highly-specialized npm package that you rely on.

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Janessa Tran

That's a really great point, thanks for bringing that up!

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Charlotte Koch

This is a very good little article. It's really interesting to me (open source contributor for >10 years) to see how much the game has changed -- in particular, most things in the list of "green flags" definitely didn't exist back when I got started! I mean, I know the game has changed, but seeing it written down is nice.

I also appreciated that you noted "that being new to a project can be an asset." This is important! The best people behind the best projects understand this point well.

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Janessa Tran

Wow, that's amazing you've been contributing to OSS that long!

It's interesting to hear how those things didn't exist back then and makes me all the more grateful that they do now (at least for some projects!)

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Joe Attardi

Another good way to contribute to open source is to create your own project!

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

Up here in Canada Beavers own the forests. You don't want to mess with them.

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Janessa Tran

That made me LOL 😂

Duly noted. When I finally manage to visit Canada one day, I will definitely be avoiding these beaver-ridden forests!

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Doina

Janessa, thank you so much for this valuable information! Starting out can be a bit intimidating for a beginner, just like me. Another concern of mine is that you might accidentally mess up if you contribute to a project. Through your article, the whole picture has become clearer. Many thanks!

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Anayo Samson Oleru

Great read! Here is one great open-source you can start from quicksi-bot.now.sh/

It's a tool that help developers start new projects quickly and easily without having to worry about the setup.

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M-Yamashii

This is great article!
Could I translate the article into Japanese and publish it on Japanese knowledge community Qiita?
qiita.com/
I will indicate the link to original, title, author name in the translated article.
And I will share the translated article.

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JacobWashington • Edited

Great article! I just started learning to code in February of this year and I've been looking for ways to start contributing to projects that aren't my own. I had considered open source and had been on the slack channels for a couple projects, but they seemed so cut and dry that it was a bit overwhelming. The instructions you provided here for finding a suitable project, as well as the resources for actually finding them are going to be a huge leg up for me. Thank you!

Also, great interview on Code Newbie!

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Janessa Tran

Thank you, Jacob! I am glad you find this information useful! It definitely can seem overwhelming at first, but I also think there is definitely value to early career devs contributing and I'm really happy to hear you're looking into it! Good luck, you totally got this!!!

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Francesco Ciulla

Nice one

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icebot47

Wonderfull article, thx for that Janessa ;)

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Janessa Tran

Thank you for reading! :)

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Cat

Greetings,

Been wanting to start contributing for a while now, let's see if it's now I actually go and do it!
Ty for the article.

BR
Cat

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Janessa Tran

I believe in you!! Goodluck! 🌻

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Janessa Tran

I'm happy that it's helpful to you, Muhammed. Thanks for reading! :)

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Ana Vela

This is such a helpful guide for open source newbies. I plan to participate in Hacktoberfest, so this will come in handy. (I heard your interview on The CodeNewbie podcast which was also wonderful!)