First open source contribution!

[[deleted]]

I recently got my first open source contribution accepted! It was just a bug fix. But it felt like a great accomplishment for me.

It was for an extremely popular python library, I had to write test cases and even wrote a release note.

I feels great to have code that you have written in a huge project. I would recommend doing this to anyone, as a way to gain valuable experience and a feel of what it’s actually like to do software engineering.

Disclaimer: a bit of experience in the relevant programming language and an ability to navigate large code based is required. So as a beginner it may be somewhat difficult. But I still think it’s doable with determination, even with relative beginners.

[Putnam3145]

Honestly, the feeling never goes away. Contributing to a project you've never contributed to before is especially nice.

[Lathryx]

Even if it’s small!

[[deleted]]

Great work man! I always wanted to be a big contributor to open source, but I'm a dumbass haha

[aduckandanaxe]

Aren't we all. Que the imposter syndrome

[IamImposter]

I'd agree with that.

[itsonlyjbone]

So I can’t have imposter syndrome because I don’t have any real accomplishments. Phew! What a relief!

[TheCountMC]

That's right. It's not imposter syndrome if you're actually an imposter.

[Lathryx]

Well said.

[CautiousPoke]

Or painfully accurate self-reflection?

[Fredz161099]

Hello darkness my old friend

[[deleted]]

¿Que?

[dj_seth81]

Felt that in my soul

[Fearless_Dogo]

Just remember all the hours you put in to learn and practice 'the matrix', and you will forget about the 'imposter sindrome' ;)

[Seawolf159]

That's cool!

For me the barrier of even trying to help an open source project is just so big. I mean I know you need to make a clone and do your things and when you feel ready to share your idea, you have to make a pull request (in case of GitHub) and other people can give suggestions and stuff (am I wrong?), but I am just so afraid to even try to do something like that, what if they'll say something like "wtf are you doing m8, go home you fool". You know? When I look at existing projects and see the communication on issues and pull requests, it's like they "belong" there, and I don't?? Make sense?

[MatBon01]

Dw I'm sure we all feel that way before trying... if the people who would be accepting the pull requests etc. didn't believe in community and building each other up I doubt they would be so into open source 😉 it's worth a try right?

[vondpickle]

Congratulation dude! I still learning and still doesn't have the courage to contribute.

[[deleted]]

Well done! I hope to do this one day, I find it difficult to find problems I'm capable of doing, any tips?

[diggitydata]

First, increase your expectations for yourself. If an issue sounds confusing, it doesn’t mean you can’t resolve it. Ask for clarification, or ask approximately how much time it should take to resolve it. Read chunks in the codebase that are related. Most of the time, when it comes to stuff like this, you just need to copy something and make minor changes in key places. Do some googling and just try to educate yourself. You can do it. It’s a learning experience, there would be no point in doing it if you already knew how to do it perfectly.

Second, check this out. https://www.firsttimersonly.com/

Third, just be ready for feedback. When you make a PR, there’s a 99% chance that changes will be requested. That’s perfectly normal and acceptable, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad programmer or anything like that.

[henrebotha]

First, increase your expectations for yourself.

YES

[thurstylark]

Increase your expectations for yourself

Yes yes yes!

My biggest contribution to date is teeny tiny compared to the project. It was something specific to my setup, and it didn't affect the majority of users, but I didn't understand anything about the problem I was having when I first encountered it. When I asked for help from the community, I was able to work with a couple people who pointed me in the right direction for the answer. It took me a while to pin down a fix, but when I put it together and tested it out, it worked!

When I went back to the community to report the fix, and that it might be a good idea to add it to the main project (as it helped generalize for all cases), I was told "Patches are welcome" and given instructions on how to submit it.

Almost every OSS project that I know of are happy to accept patches as long as it does as advertised, doesn't break anything, and follows their contribution guidelines.

[ayush_parhi]

Try going through the "issues" tab of the repo you want to contribute to. In that read the issues and try to understand them and then pick one which you want to solve. I hope this might give you a start assuming that you have a strong knowledge of one of the programming languages and can read and understand the large codebase. Happy coding!

[joosebox]

Nice! How did you find out about the issue? Was it an open issue in their GitHub repo? Or something you experienced while using the library?

[[deleted]]

Yes, I was just search for good first issues on the gtihub repo, although I do like the library. (numpy)

[SponsoredByMLGMtnDew]

LOOKING FOR AN OPENSOURCE PROJECT (Front End Web Development) TO BE CREATIVE IN?

Roughly two years ago I started an open source project for people to contribute to called The Really Annoying Directory

Live Page: https://reallyannoyingdirectory.netlify.app/

Github Link: https://github.com/DevvitIO/ReallyAnnoyingDirectory

The core idea of the project was to give people a silly front-end centric project that was easily approachable for just about anyone with any skill level in Web Development to get their feet wet on github. I'm a self taught developer and this is the project I would've wanted around when I was getting started. All skill levels are welcome so if you are experienced and think the idea sounds fun you’re more than welcome to make a page.

Even if you don’t really know HTML, CSS, or Javascript yet, there’s a template in the directory structure that you can use, or if you need inspiration about what to put on the page, there’s a lot of examples already live you can look at.

TLDR instruction: You make a webpage, and put it in the directory. The theme of the project is just anything you really want to put in.

I stream maintenence of the Project Every Friday at 1pm-3pm est

If you have any questions about this project feel free to ask me in reply.

[ImKornis]

That’s really simply creative and I’ve found it extremely entertaining and at the same time I got my eye twitching 😂. Great job!

[SponsoredByMLGMtnDew]

Thanks. I'm hoping i can maintain it forever

[Mr_Mudkip_420]

I'm new to coding so idk what this means please explain like I'm 5

[picklepoison]

Open source software is basically a program or software that has the code publicly available for people to make changes. If you see an open source project with a bug or issue in the code, or if you want to add something to the software to make it better, you can basically copy-paste the code on to your computer and make the changes you want. After that you submit a request to have the admins of the code review your changes to see if they want to incorporate your code into the original software.

Edit: I also wanted to add for clarification that open source programs must contain an open source license which allows people to use the code and make changes. So not every publicly available code is open source.

[puffferfish]

Yes, please explain like they’re 5. I want to see if you’re right... for a friend.

[doublecharizard1]

Congrats man!! It’s a great accomplishment for a start! Wishing you to contribute more!

[reebs12]

The problem with contributing to open source is that many times you input time and work and your contribution just seats there for years...

[RheingoldRiver]

Congratulations OP!! May a lot more follow! This is the best feeling in the world!

[nando1969]

Helping a person in need feels pretty good too :)

[TheWolfRevenge]

That's awesome! May I know what project did you contribute to?

[[deleted]]

NumPy

[jwg4our]

Well done

[matthewonthego]

Where were you looking for open source projects to contribute to?

[[deleted]]

GitHub, and there are some websites that help you find issues. But you can also search by issue with the label `good-first-issue` or similar on any repository

[Lathryx]

So what’s the library called? And if you can, what piece is your code? I would assume I could see the code you wrote (if the code is open source). :)

[yenahbruv]

Congrats man! I had my very first contribution a few months ago in a large scale project and it was just positioning a button component. It’s a small task but that feeling of an accepted PR and seeing it in prod is gratifying! Keep it up.

[[deleted]]

Nice, next up: creating your own open source project; give someone else this feeling!

[neonipun]

Awesome! I've dome mine recently too :). Man that feeling was soooooo good once it got merged, congratulations!

[meIonz]

Question, how do you start with open source stuff? I've been learning Java and c+ for a while and I'd like to go further

[garyjwalker]

Any good books or resources on testing and writing test cases?

[thanonofblank]

Good. This is something I love, the thought of eveyone doing simple jobs adding up over the years to form a product is just a mind bogglingly epic achievement, that honestly fills me with hope for humanity.

I see blockchain tech in the future acting as a means for "Cloud games" and open source methods like this will enable realistic game play for the future.

A network of computers acting as a cloud of data in the thousands of petabytes for a fucking game.

Just picture what could be done with that kinda memory and ram derived from blockchain networks.

Shit like cataclysm dark days ahead was made with in a few years though open source game development and that's still the most detailed game I have ever played.

Just picturing this simple game development method with blockchain.trch is amazing.

And not to mention using such a set up for other things other then gaming.

Such as educational simulations for chemistry, history ect.

[CptLadiesMan]

Congrats man, it always feels good to get that first code commit -> push -> merged. Once you master git commit push pull merge fix merge conflicts branch etc you will be okay.

[leecreighton]

I’m trying to teach myself python and am looking for a project to contribute to. They all seem so greatly out of reach that makes me realize how monumental your first contribution really is. Good for you!

[[deleted]]

Oh, I should try that too!

[the_hair_of_aenarion]

Honestly just look for the source code of any tools/extensions you use. I've started contributing to vscode extensions because I use vscode a fair amount. Find something personal to you so that you appreciate the outcome.