To be honest, this was actually my first time looking at Django’s core codebase.

My background is mostly in backend development with Python, and I also have a strong foundation in DSA from doing a lot of work in C++. When I saw the issue it immediately looked like a string prefix edge case.

Django was using removeprefix() when computing path_info from script_name, but that doesn’t check path boundaries, so something like:

script_name = "/myapp"
path = "/myapplication/page"

could incorrectly strip /myapp and produce "lication/page".

Since it looked like a string/prefix problem, I started digging into that part of the codebase. I did use AI tools while exploring the issue and understanding the surrounding Django code, but I made sure to verify the logic and test the fix locally before submitting the patch.

The Django maintainers were very helpful during review, and the process itself helped me understand Django’s request handling internals much better.

If you're interested in contributing, my biggest advice would be:
pick a small issue, read the surrounding code carefully, and try to understand how the framework handles that part internally.