Ask HN: How to Start Contributing to FOSS as an Ubernoob?

3 pointssyeare3y ago3 comments

Basically title, but for some background: I'm a student in post-secondary education that has dabbled in programming for about a decade, but never really completed any large projects. I've made simple shell scripts, but consider that "real" development work. When I tried looking at pull requests/issues and the respective APIs of FOSS projects such as GNOME or KDE apps, the code would just completely go over my head. I would have no idea how to even start solving the problem or where/what the bug even is! It just made me feel all the much more worse because I was too broke to donate to awesome projects I use, but also too moronic to contribute bug fixes. I would appreciate any and all advice, thanks!

3 comments

3 comments · 2 top-level

fundamental3y ago· 1 in thread

Find a small project that you're interested in and check out the developmental discussion channels to see if there's any way you can lend a hand. Starting with trying to find complex coding tasks in large bureaucratic projects is setting yourself up for failure IMO.

For example, https://zynaddsubfx.sourceforge.io/contribute.html shows a few different levels of involvement in one project I maintain. That's not me saying you should work on this project specifically though; you'll want to find projects that you're enthusiastic to learn about.

syeareOP3y ago

YOOOOO WTF THIS IS EXACTLY THE KINDA STUFF IM INTO I'm trying to make hardware synthesizers in the future and I looked at JUCE for making VSTs before

yuvalsteuer3y ago

Depending on what kind of person you are, a different strategy would be in order, i.e if you tend to like being thrown in the deep-end try tackling the biggest github open issue you think you can handle.

If your the type to ease into things, find good-first-issues of projects you like: <self-plug> checkout, feel free to reach out! :) https://github.com/nabaz-io/nabaz/issues/2