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Man, contributing to open source projects seems very intimidating to me.

I have never contributed to one of those repos on Github with a shit-ton of stars and a load of watchers. Made up my mind to start sometime around the start of September. Looked up a repo that I was very excited to contribute to. Went through their really large codebase, tried to understand as much as I could (They have a fair amount of documentation, but I just can't understand a lot of design decisions that were taken). Looked up one of the open issues marked for newbies, went through the relevant code to understand where and how I would have to make my changes in the code, and was about to start... when a seasoned contributor submitted a pull request.

This same occurrence has repeated itself 3 times now. If you mark an issue for beginners, maybe let the beginners handle them? Also, if you plan to contribute to an issue, why not announce your intention to do so? Get the issue assigned to you, so no one else ends up wasting their time coming up with a solution.

I would love to recommend this to the contributing team, but I am just way too scared to initiate a conversation with these guys. I mean, they are way more experienced and knowledgeable than me (some of them are even famous!).

I am definitely out of my depth with this project, and maybe should look for an easier one, but I really want to rise up to the challenge. Guess I'll stick around then, just waiting for my chance. :|

Comments
  • 7
    I don't know which repo you were looking into. But, you should overcome your fear to communicate with the core team. Think from their perspective, if no one's comment, they assume that it's a simple task, they can finish it in 1-2 days, and since no one is responding, just wind it up and clear the technical debt.
    If you comment and tell that you will take 1 week and if required, later extend it upto an extent, will make sure that someone is working on and trying to come up with it. Don't be afraid to communicate. Be free to present your views and if you can't make it, it's ok to inform them that you got stuck. They may help you if they got time and you gonna learn a lot. That's how we grow better.
    One of the best way to start open source contributions is contributing to duck duck go. It's maintained in a very organised manner. Your changes may take some time to reach till production, but it do reaches prod.
  • 1
    @github Hey, thanks for the advice! What you said about clearing the tech debt really makes sense. I was quite reluctant earlier about announcing my intention to work on a feature which I could get stuck on and end up blocking other people, but having a chat with the senior contributors about the required timeframe seems like a good way to avoid such a situation.
  • 1
    I'd advise doing the same thing that you want them to do, that is, comment your intentions to work on the issue so that no one else starts on it.
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