Ask HN: Where can I begin contributing to Node, MEAN stack, JavaScript projects?

21 points by heatish 11 years ago | 7 comments

I recently finished a full stack web development bootcamp from which I have experience in 3 different stacks. I'm looking to begin a career in Javascript, preferably node development and want to get some contributions to real life projects (outside of my small personal projects) to get on my resume and have some talking points about for interviews. I've gotten an interview or two so far but both have had concerns about my experience. I figure there couldn't be much of a better way to spend my time while applying for jobs than getting this kind of experience under my belt.

I don't really know where/how I would start with this though, do I just browse NPM, find some package that I'm familiar with, check the issues log and go to work on one? Do I approach the developers beforehand and get their thoughts/consent to work on something and submit a pull request, (putting all the work in for a pull request that gets ignored seems like it would be quite annoying)? I'm confident that I can contribute solid code, I guess the process itself is what I'm inexperienced with. If there is anyone on here that is in need of some open source junior level JS development please feel free to contact me, I'll be over at the Who's Hiring Thread.

mbesto 11 years ago |

I'm still convinced Assembly[0] is the greatest platform for budding developers to get experience, potentially earn some money, and network with other developers. Trying to commit to open source as a newbie is...well...hard. Most mature FOSS products feel like monstrosities and culturally are intimidating (omg dhh is gonna think I suck).

If you're a noob and do wanna go the FOSS route, find libraries you use and are familiar with and contribute. Contributing can be in the form of issue identification and potentially fork/PR's. OR scratch your own itch, even if it's not totally productive. I helped build a Dota2 API gem and I have yet to use it for a project. If you want to go into the actual application building mode, then do check out Assembly. Plenty of JS projects there: https://github.com/asm-products

[0] - https://assembly.com/

Ronsenshi 11 years ago | |

> Most mature FOSS products feel like monstrosities and culturally are intimidating (omg dhh is gonna think I suck).

I agree about intimidation. Some FOSS have very steep contribution requirements.

Here's a slightly exaggerated example:

Oh, you want to add a patch that moves line of code up by 5 lines? Well, first, you need to sign up in our separate issue tracker. Create new issue with properly formatted title and description and add bunch of tags you know nothing about. Don't forget screenshots and demo webpage where you can clearly see the problem. Now, you can do a PR, but you absolutely have to adhere to our issue title formatting. If there's even a tiny typo or it is not in a correct format it will be closed immediately. And then you wait for who knows how long.

heatish 11 years ago | |

This looks great, thank you. I'll be signing up for it tonight. I certainly want to put some contributions out there for FOSS so maybe I will see what I can do on NPM, find something small to work on a bit on the side.

_greim_ 11 years ago |

Just dive in. The best way to find issues is to be using modules in your own projects. And of course, be easy to work with, know when to/when not to back down, conform your code to the project's conventions at all times, yadda yadda.

> putting all the work in for a pull request that gets ignored seems like it would be quite annoying

This happens. Popular, active projects especially can be hard to break into. You can start in chat or issue threads first, then PRs once you get a feel for what's expected. Often they'll ask for PRs up front.

However if you have a clearly-beneficial, well-constructed fix, by all means submit an unsolicited PR. They ignore it at their own peril/embarrassment :)

Lara_c 11 years ago |

For the MEAN Stack, 1. Have a look at mean.js over on Github https://github.com/meanjs/mean 2. Support women who code by checking out the free videos over on www.bossable.com and follow the 30 day Mean Stack Challenge 3. Find something that you'd like to improve or add to the project and start contributing! P.S writing training guides always gets left till later on, so maybe start with that :)

skadamat 11 years ago |

SmartBear had a great post on this for beginners:

http://blog.smartbear.com/programming/14-ways-to-contribute-...

gaelmetais 11 years ago |

I'd love some help on my project https://github.com/gmetais/YellowLabTools ! It's an EAN stack for the moment, no MongoDB, but that's the next big step !