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Hacktoberfest: Getting Over the Fear of Open Source

Tori Crawford on October 14, 2019

It has been months since I first looked into contributing to the open source community. MONTHS. As a new developer looking for my first software en...
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Garrett / G66

Alright you sold me. I’ll give it a shot.

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Tori Crawford

You won't regret this!

Tahani from The Good Place saying I promise you.

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J. R. Swab

I agree; the first time I contributed to an open source project that was not my own it was a bit nerve racking.

Once that first PR was sent and I got to see how it was handled I got hooked. Now I'm looking for projects to jump into and help out.

Great post!

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Curtis Bowden

I'm one contribution in and I've already found it to be fulfilling! I have a long story of using open source software (mostly in IT), but the idea of contributing.. well it seemed impossible to be honest, and it hadn't even really occurred to me that I should! My passion for writing code has been re-ignited in the last couple years and a co-worker had suggested Hacktoberfest to me... and it's been like a rocket thruster for motivation. Thanks for the great post!

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FidelVe

I think that the fear besides being normal is actually good.

As you beautifully pointed out, collaborating on open source projects is great to give us a feel of how working as a dev is, but facing that fear and conquering it is a powerful experience that stays with you and makes you grow, not only as a dev but as a person.

In my opinion another important thing is to not be ashamed of how little you might know about a subject and let that stop you from asking questions or trying to collaborate.

In my case, the thing that I didn't foresee when I started learning, was that this process would change me in more ways than just professionally, I'm looking at life through another lens, I'm more patience, I get less frustrated with failures, and I'm more happy overall.

Thanks for telling us your experience Victoria!

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Michael Messerli

I've worked on tons of projects in and outside of my day job and for some reason I still get this anxiety when looking at contributing to open source. Thanks for the write up, it's the confidence push I needed to get myself to just START 🙌

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AxelleDRouge

Ok I'm convinced, I'll try too. I'm a young dev just like you, it really help to read all those stories others like us experience

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chustedde

"While going through bootcamp I never looked at a massive code base."

Yes, I wish this was a skill I was taught in school!

I did a CS degree and also never saw a code base even close to the scale of things I work with today. In fact, many years later, I got a survey from my university asking how they could improve the CS program and that was my response - that I know the degree is more theory-based, but being able to navigate what seems like an overwhelming code base is important for most real-world programming.

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Juan Alejandro Morais

Kudos to you, Victoria! Hacktoberfest has been a ton of fun💪🏼🕺🏽

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Saurabh Daware 🌻

Congratulations! and yes it feels great to see your code being used by so many people 🦄

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Fridolin Niyonsaba

Wooow this is so motivating, I will try it. Thanks for this nice post

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Azzen Abidi

Great post! Congrats! Very Inspiring :D My first contribution ever was fixing typo in an opensource project website(SlimPhP) and the rest as they say is history :)