Ask HN: How do I find an open source project to contribute to? I'm a Senior Dev and got a fire lit under my butt after going to the Rails Conf 2017 in Phoenix. I would like to contribute to a Ruby or Javascript project, but I don't know what, or where I can find them... How do I find a open source project that needs some maintainers or things fixed? I am open to writing Ruby, Javascript or Elixir. I'm also open to writing documentation |
Another reason to pick a library you actually use is because you will go into it with additional curiosity and expectations. I'm always a bit thrilled to find out that a library which I can't even begin to imagine being clever or thoughtful enough to design is indeed much smarter than I imagined, or, is actually kept together with duct tape. The latter situation has actually helped me overcome productivity declines that come from obsessing in vain over whether I've got the details down right. I just need to remind myself that a much more useful and popular library that I depend on has apparently flaws that end up not impeding development or public usage.
Find some software that you're interested in. Do you follow their GitHub account, subscribe to the mailing list (especially dev list), keep up to date on changes that are new? Have you looked at their source? Is there anything you wish the software did better, or any bugs you wish were fixed?
Learning how everything fits together for a software project can be a great learning experience, and if you take notes as you go, you'll naturally write docs (and be the hero of the day).
I'm thinking of scraping GitHub, Bitbucket, HackerOne, etc for metrics that correspond to projects that a) need help and b) need the kind of help you'd want to give.
This is the problem you're staring at right now, so you're already interested in solving it.
My open-source e-commerce platform all in Javascript. Backend is an API powered by Hapi.js (node.js) and Storefront is a React isomorphic app.
Also I like to check out tools that I use daily and see if there are issues I can tackle. You can follow mailing lists, public slack channels, etc. too.
Just talking to others will give you ideas to get started. And if you can't find anything quickly, start your own and have fun with it!
It's a Rails/React app for professors to run Wikipedia assignments, where instead of writing term papers, the students improve Wikipedia articles.
I'd love to have help from experienced devs -- especially someone to help me get started migrating to Redux.
If you can, try to look at how the project communicates with the community (mailing list, irc, gitter,slack,..) and just ask the community where the pain points are if you can't find any open issues.