Introduction
This was my second time joining Hacktoberfest, and it felt quite different from my first experience. Back then, I was a fresh graduate and i knew nothing about contributing to open-source and only want the goodie and tried to contribute easy and useless repos that i can just submit lame code to get the 4 contributions. Now, with two years of experience as a 9 to 5 software programmer, I was curious to see how my professional growth would impact my perspective and approach to open-source contributions.
Aim
Like i said, i am curious to see how my 2 year professional growth help me to contribute to open-source projects and make real impact. My goal is to apply my working experience when contributing to open-source projects. Not only that. I will focused on contributing to projects that had real-world impact and were likely to be used by actual users, rather than just picking any repository for the sake of making contributions.
Contribution
I contributed to several small to medium-sized projects, primarily focused on React and JavaScript because these are the language and library that i used the most on my main job, which allowed me to quickly understand the issues and making it easier for me to jump in and solve problems efficiently.
Challenges
Even with my experience, contribute to these projects wasn't as easy as i thought. My first challenge i faced is time limitation because most of time and energy already taken away by my main job and on my mind during this hacktoberfest was "faster get it done and throw it away". However, the real pain come after i finish the task and make a pull request i was presented with a long pr template that full of questions and checklist to fill up, it really feel like "finally i finish the exam and when i turn to the back of the last page and found another long question". After going through those and i still have to wait the reviewer and their approval. I already exhausted and reviewer reply me with more feedback on my work. I was mad but never mind it wasn't a big feedback so i finished it and got accepted.
Lesson Learnt
The biggest lesson I learned was not to rush, i seen many pull request that are opened and doesn't have any update for many days. I thought i have to get it done within a day which stresses me out. Choose weekend or free time to do it not after work and prevent from burn out.
Conclusion
Despite the challenges, I was pleasantly surprised by how much my problem-solving abilities and stress management had improved. I’m not the same person I was two years ago. Now, I’m more willing to tackle harder issues, and I’m capable of solving them with greater confidence. This realization was a significant takeaway, highlighting how much I’ve grown as a developer since my first Hacktoberfest two years ago.
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