Welcome to 6 Things They Don't Tell You About Hacktoberfest (When You're Learning to Code). In this series, we’re sharing tips for self-taught coders that the official Hacktoberfest resources may not cover.
Please note that, while contributors can use either GitHub or GitLab to participate in Hacktoberfest, we’ll only be discussing GitHub in this article.
You heard right, folks. The hardest thing about Hacktoberfest isn't the coding itself. It's figuring out how to test your code.
Ok, maybe this one's just me. Maybe there's a bit of selection bias involved. (i.e. You're obviously going to sign up to fix issues you feel qualified for.) And maybe there's a lot of back-end folks laughing at me right now. But hear me out.
When you begin learning simple web development, every tutorial just says to open your examples directly in the browser. So this is coming from someone who's spent the past several months writing code in Visual Code Studio, then just double-clicking HTML files in File Explorer to pop them open in Chrome. You can't exactly blame me for not knowing I'd have to download Ruby and Jekyll to see a simple, one-line footer I added in HTML.
Because each repository is unique and there are so many different tech stacks, I unfortunately can't write you a step-by-step guide for setting up your environment. After all, that's the repository's README or CONTRIBUTING files' job. And did I mention I don't 100% understand it myself yet? (Though MDN does offer some helpful background.)
Anyway, that's not the point. This article is moreso a heads-up that Hacktoberfest will have you downloading software you've never used before and may not use again for quite some time, depending on what stage you're at in your learning journey.
The important thing is not to let it deter you. Sure, figuring out what you need to download, how to download it, and what commands you need to get it to work may end up taking more time than the coding itself. But you'll come out more knowledgeable for it.
Conclusion
Let this and the previous post serve as the FYI I wish I had: No matter how productively you spend your Preptember, you're not going to know everything going into Hacktoberfest. You're going to have to pick up some knowledge on the fly, just like in a real engineering job. So mentally prepare yourself, but definitely don’t let it stop you.
In the final post of this series, we'll be exercising our soft skills.
✒️ Contributors, what are some rookie mistakes you've made in the past that you wish someone had warned you about?
📝 Maintainers, what are some of your pain points that you wish more new coders were aware of?
Comment below and let's spread the knowledge!
This is a submission for the 2024 Hacktoberfest Writing challenge: Contributor Experience
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