Contributing to open source projects helps you to improve your professional skills and discover new opportunities.
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Great write up. I couldn't agree more.
There just isn't any better way to learn than by solving real problems and working with others more experienced than you.
Not to mention the confidence you'll gain and the satisfaction you'll feel!
😀 thanks a lot Ben!
I think a mentor helping out would be a good idea. Assigning issues, being hands on through the first couple of issues. Maybe even working on issues together. Would be a great way to assess skill level too.
I think that could be helpful.
Definitely! That's why I've mentioned the Good Squad meetup - I've had a great experience attending it!
I've been thinking about organizing something similar in my town, but I feel like there wouldn't be much interest here.
What about a virtual event? May be that'd work
That would be interesting, especially with live share extension for vscode/vs2019. This could actually for for mentoring too.
Oh, that's a cool idea to use live share! You can also stream on twitch or livecode.
The format I saw goes like this:
That sounds really interesting.
I am a dev for many years now and I am currently on "analysis paralysis" to start contributing to OSS. Thanks for the links, they will help a lot! I'll start digging straight away!!
Have a good one! :)
Hey, thanks for the comment here! Wondering what "analysis paralysis" is :)
From wikipedia :P
"Analysis paralysis describes a moment when over-analyzing or over-thinking a situation can cause it to become 'paralyzed', meaning that no action was taken therefore a solution is not reached."
I am always wishing to contribute but took no action since I am always trying to find the "best" repo to contribute and also there is a hidden fear of not being good enough... I code since I'm 13 though... I'm 29 now. People call this "The impostor syndrome"
oh, enhanced my vocabulary, thanks a lot! :)
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_p...
Great article, @agoldis ! I tried to approach the topic from a different angle at medium.freecodecamp.org/the-defini... . We seem to have some points in common, while we also mention separate ones.
I wonder: can you recommend any more good articles on contributing to Open Source?
Thank for reaching me! It is a great read what you've posted! Seems like you have mentioned few points on OSS that I didn't cover - that's great, readers can discover the various aspects of contribution to open source.
As for other articles, I can't quite remember... your post is great though! What do you say about posting references to our publications so readers could discover the content?
Posting references looks like a great idea. Let's do it :)
Done! 🙌🏻
Same here :)
I've really been enjoying contributing to open source and I definitely agree with you that even documentation is valuable to OSS.
Any contribution to Open Source is valuable
Nick Taylor
I'm still feeling really good about my past week, so I'm just gonna drop this here as it relates to the post.
This week, I got a PR merged that I've been working on for quite a while for the Refined GitHub browser extension. Feels pretty good.
Basically going with the non-null assertion operator in almost all places, because as mentioned in github.com/sindresorhus/refined-gi..., the assumption with the extension is that the DOM nodes referenced in most cases are expected to be there. If they aren't, the extension breaks, a bug is filed and it's fixed.
One thing to note @bfred-it, is currently dom-chef types need to handle JSX (Element and IntrinsicElements) or we import
@types/react.In the process of working on that PR, I discovered a bug in the TypeScript types that ship with TypeScript.
For context, see github.com/sindresorhus/refined-gi..., specifically this commit, github.com/sindresorhus/refined-gi....
Also, just posting my tweet about this so that people can find discussions about the issue. See twitter.com/nickytonline/status/11...
I'll restate what I tweeted as I probably should have posted my question here originally.
The NamedNodeMap interface in lib.dom.ts does not allow for a string indexer, even though vanilla JS supports this in browsers, e.g.
someDomElement.attribute['aria-label'].value.We have code like this in the Refined GitHub extension, so for the time being, I've gone ahead via a declaration merge for
NamedNodeMapI can't tell from the MDN docs for NamedNodeMap if it's standard or not. All they seem to mention is "Attr nodes' indexes may differ among browsers" which wouldn't apply to access by the attribute name.
Just wondering if this was omitted by mistake or is it because this is not considered WHATWG DOM standard? I went to dom.spec.whatwg.org/#interface-nam... and unless I'm reading it incorrectly, I believe it states that using a string indexer is valid.
Thoughts? Happy to PR this up if it's valid.
And finally, I've made a few PRs to dev.to to get back in the swing of things of contributing there as well.
What type of PR is this? (check all applicable)
Description
Fixed some linting issues being reported in the frontend.
Related Tickets & Documents
#1828
Mobile & Desktop Screenshots/Recordings (if there are UI changes)
Added to documentation?
[optional] What gif best describes this PR or how it makes you feel?
Boom!
That's awesome!!! May be you can share a few tips about how to do what you have done successfully? E.g. how did you discover the problem and what did you do to isolate, solve and deliver the solution? What did you learn on the way?
I would say only work on stuff that you find interesting and challenging. Otherwise don't bother. You won't enjoy it.
When I first started learning react, I started contributing as a way of learning. I found a react boilerplate project, react-slingshot, and just started offering suggestions that became PRs, and also did bug fixes. Eventually I was asked to become a maintainer to which I said yes.
React + Redux starter kit / boilerplate with Babel, hot reloading, testing, linting and a working example app built in
A comprehensive starter kit for rapid application development using React.
Why Slingshot?
npm startto start development in your default browser.npm run buildto do all this:Get Started
Initial Machine Setup
First time running the starter kit? Then complete the Initial Machine Setup.
Clone the project
git clone https://github.com/coryhouse/react-slingshot.git.Run the setup script
npm run setupRun the example app
npm start -sThis will run the automated build process, start…
Takeaway from this is open source is a great way to learn from others and if you contribute enough to a project, you may be asked to become a maintainer (if that's your jam).
At this point I started to debug webpack, specifically the ts-loader plugin. If you've never debugged webpack code, you can run the following command to get started with the debugger.
node --inspect-brk ./node_modules/webpack/bin/webpack.js. I found the error that was being thrown from webpack in the code and put a breakpoint there. First I saw that the files weren't being generated. When I reran the debugger, this time I saw that a particular boolean was not set properly which was related to webpack/TS configuration. Once I fixed the configuration, I was good to go. Takeaways, use your tools. Also, I was probably tired at this point and probably missed the obvious misconfiguration. 🙃Awesome!
Sure, no problem.
👍🏻 thanks a lot!
Personally, I think it's hard to find open issues that are available to work with. Usually someone has already commented on an issue and sometimes didn't even deliver for months... 😢
Hey! Sorry to hear you find trouble finding issue to help with.
Did you try one of the tools mentioned to discover available issues?
Also, from my experience it's ok to take over an issue if someone is not getting it done in reasonable amount of time. As an alternative, you could, may be suggest your help in a comment.
Great article, but I've missed about that problems in contribute OSS. An example, when the maintainers are rude or people in conversation aren't polite.
There are projects that you want write an issues or create a pull request but involved people in project don't accept arguments or simply ignore and deleting your contributions. It's frustrating because you want help it but you have fear to contribute.
Yeah, that's a good point! I wanted to focus on the positive part of OSS and how an individual can harness it for her / his own good.
Besides PR there's another way to contribute which is documentation which I think is much easier to do it instead of contributing code.
Totally agree! Every type of contribution counts! Good documentation is very valuable for every project.
Thank you I love the final URLs to get started and avoid reinventing the wheel or the annoying google ads to sell you something every time you search
Thanks for pointing out they are useful, I was in doubt about those links 😀
I want to start how do I start?
You can use this cool tutorial to get started
github.com/firstcontributions/firs...
Thanks for sharing the URL.
Thanks for sharing. Last fe month i am contributing in open source. Its feel awesome. Also I am learning more and more.
That's awesome! I hope you keep getting good experience with OSS!
awesome! ty!
Brilliant.This gets me wanting to contribute already
I was thinking about writing a very similar post! But yours is very complete and well made! Cheers :)
Thanks a lot for the feedback! If you have some observations / ideas that I have missed, please share!
Hey Andrew,
I tried opening this link from your article, and got 404 error...
github.com/MunGell/awesome-for-beg...
Sorry, my bad. The link is
github.com/MunGell/awesome-for-beg...