Ask HN: Small coding projects

12 points by dantetheinferno 8 years ago | 6 comments

I'm a data scientist who wants to move to being more of a full stack developer. Is there an easy way to see projects that need some extra coding help and are relatively easy to get into? The goal is to learn Github / a software platform in a manageable way that isn't overwhelming and can help out.

chatmasta 8 years ago |

I find it’s much easier to contribute to a new codebase than it is to a large, mature one. When a project is in alpha stages, it’s usually mostly coded by one person, so you can clone it and easily understand the code just from a quick read. On the other hand, mature projects have many contributors and have evolved to an increased complexity due to many disparate abstraction layers, testing and build processes that need to account for the larger number of contributors.

I would recommend finding open source projects on Show HN and contributing to them early. This way you’ll make a big impact without too much cognitive overhead, and you might even eventually become a core contributor.

smehtaca 8 years ago |

You can find a lot of open source projects that need help and have beginner level issues here: https://github.com/yourfirstpr/yourfirstpr.github.io/issues

I would also recommend FreeCodeCamp(https://www.freecodecamp.org/) which partners with charities that need developer help. FCC also has great tutorials that you may find helpful.

rthomas6 8 years ago |

I'm also someone who is coming from an outside field who like to program. I've only had success contributing to codebases that I actually want to use for my own projects. Especially libraries that aren't quite finished for all features, but are still much further along than anything I could build on my own. Then when I run into one of those cases where the library isn't quite done/has bugs for my usecase, I try to contribute.

So my advice is to start by making your own project and look for libraries that will help you get there. Then when you find bugs in that library, you'll have a strong and direct motivation to fix the problem for your own sake. Then submit a pull request so others can benefit too.

mtmail 8 years ago |

https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/ is over, but they link to a search result of github issues that need help (usually beginner friendly). You can filter down by programming language

https://github.com/search?q=label:hacktoberfest+state:open+t...

SirLJ 8 years ago |

Here is one idea based on your background: Stock trading robots, it is going to be fun to test trading ideas and who knows you might find an edge!

You only need a bit of stock market data to start...

itamarst 8 years ago |

http://datafordemocracy.org/ has a bunch of datascience projects, but also they need general software engineering help.