Imagine contributing to open-source can change your life. By creating pull requests to fix typos, grammatical errors, or rephrasing text, you can m...
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Typo fixes PRs are a nightmare for maintainers.
This would probably be a better title: "Don't contribute to open source if you're just starting to code"
Oh thanks, I'm not alone to see the bad title here. 🙏🏼
No. Don't stop to contribute to the Open Source.
if you're a beginner and want to contribute, first understand what you're getting yourself into - even if you do it occasionally, there are real people behind it. And as I wrote in this post, it can have a significant and negative impact on the mood of maintainers to see spam.
However, a beginner can totally contribute to a repository that is at their level.
The title is straight wrong!
I was confused and was eager to read on why the person is suggesting not to contribute to open source. I agree with the contents, but It might not be entirely true.
Hacktoberfest is good if you contribute in organizational repositories, that have very good standards. I never participated and for obvious reasons.
A classic example of clickbait.
Exactly, that's the point. Beginners should consider contributing to projects where they feel they have the right knowledge required. Contributing just for the sake of PR acceptance or a prize is ridiculous.
Yes, every beginner is welcomed for meaningful contributions.
Things like missing items in documentation can result in ppl not familiar with the code base to waste time digging through the code for trying to find the root cause of a problem they may be having.
Typos can result in a lot of misunderstanding. At least I have few experience having to deal with such from internal KT docs.
There is an increasing hatred on doc contributors these days. Some of it is understandable, but please don't jump on the bandwagon especially if it does not impact you.
However still at least for ones starting out, read the contributing guide (if such a doc exists in the repo), check how other pull requests are being tagged, and follow the same practice. More often it is along the line of:
then whatever description follows.
Definitely, I think we should strive to create meaningful contributions, have a goal of genuinely improving the app and learning through the process. Open source software is a place of immense value than just a way to get free swag.
Absolutely! Couldn't agree more. Open source is about making meaningful contributions, improving together, and learning along the way. It's not just about free swag, but building a community and making a real impact. 🌐🚀 Every beginner is welcomed to contribute not mess.
Hi there, I'm noticing that this post is very similar to this video. Your line of reasoning is the same as the video's, and there are a few sections where it looks like you paraphrased. For instance, your article contains the phrase "be it a free T-shirt or the prospect of a high-paying job", which looks like it has been paraphrased from 7:48 in the video. Please cite your sources 😄.
If you didn't take anything from this video, I do apologize.
Hi there, thanks for reaching out! I appreciate you pointing out the similarities between my post and the video. While I strive to create original content, it's possible that my thinking could be unconsciously influenced by information I've consumed, including the video you mentioned. My intention was not to plagiarize, but rather to share my own perspective on the topic based on my understanding and experiences.
I remember a video by an Italian dev/youtuber where he said 'throw yourself into the open source fray even if only to practice, and if they accept a pull-request, even if it is a piece of crap that changes a letter, it is already an achievement'. I remember that at the time I, as a junior, contradicted him, because in my opinion a junior in an open source project is like a newly licensed driver racing in F1.
And I found both him and other people disagreeing with me because, according to them, messing around with code in opensource projects, making lots of mistakes, helps you get better! which may be true, but there's one detail: with that statement, they practically didn't give a damn about the project and those who maintain it!
Honestly, I still don't agree and I will never agree with this Italian idea that as a junior you have to throw yourself into the fray at random in opensource projects, which are almost always quite complicated... In my opinion you need more experience, because opensource is not a game, people are not wasting their time creating projects!
There are people who have put a lot of effort and effort into it, and then seeing a junior messing up the code and wasting a maintainer's time is like when you hand a notebook of essays to a baby and he starts scribbling in it, then the only solution is obviously tear out the scribbled page.
Yes, that's true; but you can also do that by just cloning the project and playing around with it, without ever opening a PR. Newbies can learn without publishing the results of their experiments.
Exactly there is a nice quote addressing the same - "Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."
While I understand the idea behind learning through practice, I disagree that jumping into any random open-source project is the best approach for beginners. It's encouraging to see some people share my perspective.
This is an excellent article, and there are a lot of valuable nuggets for beginners. I do think the title was a tad bit misleading, but oh well, without it, I wouldn't have read the piece, so good job on this. 🙃
One thing which you highlighted but needs a little more emphasis is that beginners need to get the chance to try (and therefore make mistakes when contributing to open source). Don't get discouraged if you are a beginner and have never contributed yet. Your first contributions will, honestly, not be great - but that's the price maintainers need to pay, to foster the next generation of contributors.
I agree with one of the commentators; the main idea is don't start contributing code if you are only starting out as a coder.
As you mentioned, I did touch on this point in the conclusion, encouraging beginners to start small and learn as they go. However, I love your suggestion of dedicating a whole article to this topic. I'm already planning future content, and focusing on how beginners can approach open source contributions is definitely on my list!
Good point on your post. The thing is that contributing to open-source is seen as a PR counter that you only want to increase in any way.
Maybe PR's should be categorized depending on type of changes (is not the same that renaming a variable, that a typo change in a comment), the moment that your project is (maybe adding new comments is important because you're preparing documentation to launch your project) or simply you value more performance improvements in some parts that adding a bugfix for a corner case.
What do you think? PRs should be evaluated depending on type of changes introduced and project circunstances?
Overall, I believe exploring a system that categorizes PRs based on specific criteria has some merit, but evaluating PR might require lots of efforts by the maintainer. In the end the issue won't be solved instead will be compounded and all the maintainers will bear the cost and eventually the Open Source Project as well.
the blog post itself is okay, but the title is just too aggressive. @shricodev is right
Well said, if you're going to get involved then do it for the right reasons, do it appropriately and commit for the love of doing it, not to have your ego stroked.
There's lot of people will contribute 2-3 things and quit just so they can get it on their resume, simply for the kudos and nothing more. It's like those god awful fake TikTok vids where someone hands $250 to some random stranger, it's all BS as everyone is in on the gag, the upshot is simply to get likes on social media.
It's the reason I never have contributed as I know I won't be able to commit long term, I'd rather not waste people's time by being a "fly by night".
Absolutely agree! Meaningful contributions come from a genuine love for what you're doing, not just to boost your ego or resume. It's unfortunate when people contribute for the wrong reasons, looking for quick recognition. It's better to stay genuine and not waste anyone's time with short-term commitments. Everyone benefits more when it's about the love of the craft and long-term commitment.
I understand where people are coming from when they say to just create pull requests no matter what. It creates numbers that look good on your profile. But here's the problem:
You're wasting people's time. Open source maintainers are sacrificing their own free time to keep projects running just so the rest of the world can use them. They most likely aren't getting jobs on a level where having a bunch of FOSS contributions impresses anyone. They're doing it entirely for the community, because they know that they already stand on the shoulders of giants, and are giving back to the ecosystem.
And then some newbies come along, and start making contributions ranging from asinine to insignificant, not to make life easier for others, but to pad their own portfolio with higher numbers, because that's just how the employment dance works. Employers don't even care that you actually participate in open source; they care that you follow the script.
People shouldn't be making insignificant contributions anyway, but doing so to farm stats just makes it even worse. And encouraging this sort of behaviours is extremely yikes, in my honest opinion.
TL;DR: Never create PRs unless you know why you're doing it and the reason does not include the words "portfolio", "employer" or "t-shirt"
Perfect!!
I've been in this industry for approximately 4 years and I never felt comfortable to contribute to open source. Never saw something that that I can do in a project and add real value. Contributions should not be a metric, in my point of view, they should be a way to really add something to the project.
I'm a contributor to 2 OS projects (one of them is very popular) and I HATE making commits and PRs just for the sake of GitHub contribution count, and pulse stats ..
On my last project, I wrote 20k+ lines of codes, in 350+ files, and I only have 26 commits on the repo .. and quite frankly I'm satisfied.
I am strong believer of consolidated commits, squashed PRs, and contributing to add value rather than add github stats ..
Your goal appreciated !!
Click bait title.
I think part of the issue is teaching new contributors how to be a good open source citizen. dev.to/opensauced/stop-burning-out...
The article is coming soon!
Great post.
Can anyone tell me how can i find the open source projects?? I am new and i don't know how to find or get notified to see the open source projects. Please help me if anyone about it.
Great text! the mentality raised in this post is fundamental
I'm glad the message resonated with you!
I think we should only contribute when we wanted to , like using a tool for 1-3 years and now you understand it completely and wanted to solve any bug you want or add any feature you want.
Nice, Good article @jitendrachoudhary !
Very interesting post! I recently watched this video youtu.be/5nY_cy8zcO4?si=eiq98RQS6l... that had a similar take on the topic. 😊
I'm glad you found the post interesting! 🌟 Thanks for sharing the video, I'll definitely check it out. It's always great to explore different perspectives on the same topic.
"It can be quite comical when developers submit pull requests that have been generated by AI bots" => 100% agreed, good article
It's like AI is taking over our brain first then our jobs.
Harkirat made exact same video on YT lol
😄 I guess great minds think alike.