Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What are some open source projects that a beginner can work on?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 85 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are some open source projects that a beginner can work on?

#41

Post by jordigh »

k__ wrote: post #34
jordigh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mercurial queues. I thought that's what you meant with "patches".

Ah yes. MQ was the plugin used to create those patches, now I remember. They stopped using? Even on the main Firefox repo?

Like git, Linux, Mercurial, and gcc development, they have a patch-based code review flow, but MQ is not needed to produce the patches that they expect. You can do the same without MQ, and they will never know the difference on their end.

I actually rather like email-based code review. It's really easy to keep editing and rebasing your patch while people comment on it. If Mercurial Evolve picks up, this will be an awesome new way to work, especially if Kallithea or Bitbucket grows the features to support it.

However, current Mozilla development, AIUI, is moving towards ReviewBoard, although I have heard a growing mutinous group in Mozilla who just wants to chuck all homegrown solutions and slap all of their code on github like everyone else.

Re: Ask HN: What are some open source projects that a beginner can work on?

#42

Post by BorisMelnik »

One thing a lot of people don't realize is you don't have to be a developer to work on open source products. You can do design work (logos, branding) and lots of other stuff. Documentation is endless, and not just technical documentation there are a lot of features that just need to be explained in plain English (or plenty of other languages as well)

Re: Ask HN: What are some open source projects that a beginner can work on?

#43

Post by creichert »

thatsnotme wrote: post #26
MaxGabriel wrote: post #10

I strongly recommend trying to contribute to a project that you personally use. Once you've been using it for awhile, you'll be better equipped to make changes to it + you'll maybe find bugs that you can fix. While you're doing this, mark yourself as a watcher of the project on Github, that way you can see bug reports come in and maybe fix them. You can try to contribute to just any project someone here suggests, but…

I know C and also Javascript/jQuery/CSS/HTML and I want to work on a project, so as to apply what I've learnt into something that is actually useful.

I strongly agree with MaxGabriel. I find it difficult to make meaningful contributions to projects which I don't use or have some familiarity with. I am significantly more motivated to make contributions to projects which I have invested my time in.

My advice is to start small. Look into making documentation updates and fixing bugs you find in projects you currently use. Expand your open source toolset as you build more and repeat the process.

Re: Ask HN: What are some open source projects that a beginner can work on?

#44

Post by bluedino »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #16

The answer is "all of them!" ESR wrote "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch." You'll be much more effective working on a program that you use and want to make better, compared to a beginner-friendly project that you have no interest in. Instead of looking externally for projects, look inwards. Think about the software you already use, and how it could be better: that stupid an…

You need motivation of some sort to create a feature or fix a bug. Whether it's a monetary reward, notoriety, or your own need for the feature.

Re: Ask HN: What are some open source projects that a beginner can work on?

#46

Post by mordocai »

joe_the_user wrote: post #35
ridiculous_fish wrote: post #16

The answer is "all of them!" ESR wrote "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch." You'll be much more effective working on a program that you use and want to make better, compared to a beginner-friendly project that you have no interest in. Instead of looking externally for projects, look inwards. Think about the software you already use, and how it could be better: that stupid an…

This is seriously not true. I've had experiences of projects I tried to get involved because I liked the software but where the maintainer had zero interest in involving any new people. It's lovely that developers scratch itches and create cool software - there isn't anything that implies those same people want to work with other new people. I'm glad you had a good experience and maybe I was unlucky or whatever but I…

Well, the idea is that if you start working on a project specifically because it is noobie friendly you are likely to burn out quick since you don't have that itch you are scratching.

I think the parent is correct in that you should try to work on projects that scratch an itch. If it turns out it is a hard community to work with then fork it or move on to your next itch.

Re: Ask HN: What are some open source projects that a beginner can work on?

#47

Post by sytse »

For GitLab we have a list of items that are marked 'accepting merge/pull requests' on http://feedback.gitlab.com/forums/176466-general/status/7964...

There are more than 180 items, including things that should be relatively easy for a Rails programmer. For more information see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/CONTRIBU...

Re: Ask HN: What are some open source projects that a beginner can work on?

#48

Post by joe_the_user »

mordocai wrote: post #46
joe_the_user wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is seriously not true. I've had experiences of projects I tried to get involved because I liked the software but where the maintainer had zero interest in involving any new people. It's lovely that developers scratch itches and create cool software - there isn't anything that implies those same people want to work with other new people. I'm glad you had a good experience and maybe I was unlucky or whatever but I…

Well, the idea is that if you start working on a project specifically because it is noobie friendly you are likely to burn out quick since you don't have that itch you are scratching. I think the parent is correct in that you should try to work on projects that scratch an itch. If it turns out it is a hard community to work with then fork it or move on to your next itch.

If it turns out it is a hard community to work with then fork it or move on to your next itch.

Some people might unlimited energy to program and infinitely thick skin. I think a lot of people find putting energy into a project that rejects their efforts to be somewhat traumatic and something that can impel them to give up rather than bounding on to this next adventure.

I agree that getting involved with a project that interests you should be one factor in choosing what to involve yourself with. But the OP said "any of them!" concerning what project to get involved with where as I'm arguing one should be selective and that people involved in Open Source already should be giving some guidance on the question beyond just "whatever you want".

Re: Ask HN: What are some open source projects that a beginner can work on?

#49

Post by aleem »

Start with a project you use or depend on in your own projects. It's probably best to start by enhancing or adding a feature on that project.

Other things to look for is a project that is managed by people who a receptive to pull requests and have accepted them routinely. Also look for projects that have lot of issues open and closing on a routine basis--this will mean the project is in active development.

This will keep you motivated and provide you with some good mentors who may accept or suggest improvements to your pull requests.

Along the way you will probably learn about forking repos, writing good commits, sending pull requests and most of all, contributing code.

More mature projects have a lot of tooling such as running unit tests, adhering to coding standards, etc which can create hurdles to entry bfor beginners but if you do venture forth with these you'll develop some great habits.

Post reply on HN