Ask HN: How can I contribute?

5 points by jmsbrwr 12 years ago | 7 comments

To put it bluntly, I currently offer no value to the tech community that has gotten me to a position where I am employable; and I don't like that.

What I am looking for is advice on how I can give back. Yes, I know I could write some blog posts and craft amazing open source projects that make everyone's life easier, but I don't know how. What do I write about? What would my amazing open source project do?

Also, I would like to join discussions here on HN. The problem with that is that I am the kind of person who, if I don't have anything to add to the conversation, does not say anything. And I almost always feel like I have nothing to add.

How do I get over all this and become useful?

toyg 12 years ago |

The classic answer is: "please write all this boring documentation stuff for $your_favourite_project", or pick a boring bug report in some project, triage ot and fix it. It's all very valuable stuff, but it's fracking boring.

The real answer is: find a project you like, even a small one, and patch it to do something you find even more useful. If you think you can't do it, maybe it's a good chance to use it as a skill-up project. Or, rewrite an interesting lib or useful tool from $language_you_dont_like to $language_you_love. Or just put on GitHub some private tool you wrote that someone else might find useful.

bjourne 12 years ago |

You know, people (myself included) write on HN not because they want to "contribute" or being "useful to the community." But because it is an interesting past time. Is being useful to other hackers really your goal?

helen842000 12 years ago |

You could write the process and steps that got you to where you are now, for others who also want to become employable.

Focus on replying to the questions in the 'ask' thread. This is the community directly asking for feedback/input.

Your best projects will come from working on things you're passionate about.

johnny22 12 years ago |

work on an existing open source project that does something you need/want.

jmsbrwr 12 years ago | |

This is a problem I've had before. I couldn't find anything that I needed or wanted. Recently though, AngularJS has struck a chord, so maybe I'll give that a try.

tagabek 12 years ago | | |

Well, if you're looking to give back, you could try finding something that many people want.

_random_ 12 years ago |

Make a decent pivot table for BootStrap + KnockOut.js :).