Getting to the Finish Line

When October rolls around, it is impossible to miss all the posts and excitement for Hacktoberfest. It was a goal of mine to participate this year, but because I was in the middle of some other projects, I was not able to contribute until the last couple of days. I actually submitted my first PR yesterday! Being a self-taught developer, wading into Open Source can be intimidating. I wanted to highlight the resources and repositories that helped me in the process of contributing.

Helpful Articles

The first article I read was from Victoria Fluharty. Her article "Hacktoberfest: Getting Over the Fear of Open Source" was an encouraging read about getting over the fear of contributing and her excitement upon completing Hacktoberfest.

I also found this great article by Sarah Drasner called "How to Contribute to an Open Source Project". The article does a great job of laying out the steps required to contribute to a project.

(In case you aren't already Sarah Drasner is totally worth following on Twitter)

Projects for Beginners to Contribute to

The following are projects that are great for first timers to contribute to. I selected issues that accept multiple PR's, so you don't have to be "first" to the issue.

Quotebox - https://github.com/bauripalash/quotebox/issues/1

Add More Movie Quotes - https://github.com/NikhilNamal17/popular-movie-quotes/issues/3

Inspirational Quotes - https://github.com/vinitshahdeo/inspirational-quotes/issues/4

Add a Drink Recipe - https://github.com/alfg/opendrinks/issues/633 (there are multiple issues in this repo that you could tackle)

You Can Do it!

If you started Hacktoberfest and haven't completed it yet, you still have time to contribute!

If you haven't signed up yet, you can head to https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/ to get signed up.

I hope these resources are helpful in getting you across the finish line