Getting started with open-source may appear a very challenging and overwhelming task at first, but it is, in fact, a fun and rewarding experience. Check out this guide: https://egghead.io/lessons/javascript-identifying-how-to-contribute-to-an-open-source-project-on-github
Gaining valuable skills employers are always seeking, by:
- Communicating and collaborating in a team
- Managing Github and source control to understand why branching is important along with other key github skills.
- Learning new stacks and technologies, providing the opportunity to jump into something new
You will also gain project experience and eventually some portfolio material, which you could both list on your Resume/CV. In addition, you will build out your commit history (The green tiny squares on your Github profile), which employers love! But more importantly - you will learn to work in teams.
Joining a project is pretty simple, check out all our project repos, read the project README in its root directory as it will guide you on how to get started.
If you think you have a new and exciting project or idea the community would love to get involved in, here is the process for getting it listed:
- Reach out to a member of the Staff on our Discord server, with a detailed project brief
- Staff will consider if the project is something that would work well with the community
- A Repository will be created and the project will be announced in #projects channel in our Discord server and featured during upcoming announcements
- If the project evolve into something bigger, we may need to assign extra members, actively maintaining the project for a bigger team
- The project repo and discussion channels, will be hosted under the protocode Github organization/Discord Server
- The project must use the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
You can view all our projects here or you can view the specific #current-projects channel in our Discord.
Here, practicing would be our primary objective, but there are many more pragmatic reasons for contributing to open source projects:
- To add a new feature / improvement to a project; or to fix an issue with a project.
- To practice/learn a particular programming language or technology which you are interested in.
- To build your online presence – highlighting open source contributions relevant to the job makes your resume stand out from the rest.
- Test: Start with testing the code for any bugs, if found raise an issue about it. (Always check first if someone has already raised an issue for the same.)
- Suggest features: Look for possible improvements and provide suggestions in the comment section.
- Design: Considering the fact that practice is the main objective, try to make little changes on your forked repository and make a pull-request about it. Commit often and provide appropriate messages to your commits.
- Improve documentation of the various projects.