
Ask HN: How to Begin Contributing to Open Source? - wstcost7
I&#x27;ve read that contributing to open source and building projects are great ways to demonstrate coding ability and get attention from recruiters.<p>What is the best way to begin contributing to open source as a less experienced developer (a university student with no real world experience besides building small Rails apps)?<p>Also, what types of projects should I focus on contributing to? Will contributing to something like Pandas set someone up for a more data focused role while contributing to a rails gem will be better for a full-stack or back-end role?
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peller
What are you, personally, interested in? Where do your passions lie? What do
you want to learn more about?

Try to build something, anything, it doesn't need to be complicated or awesome
or even original, that scratches a personal itch. In the course of doing so,
you'll gain experience using other people's code. Perhaps you'll run into a
bug using their code. _That_ is one of the best ways to get started. It's a
small change and you gain experience figuring out how other people write code
and interacting with the maintainers.

Or, perhaps one of your favorite pieces of software has some annoying thing it
does, or some missing feature you really want. (If you aren't a _user_ of open
source software, now is a great time to start!) Try to fix whatever it is that
bothers you / or you consider missing.

Above all, do not be discouraged if your change gets ripped to shreds or
outright rejected. That's known as learning ;)

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olivercreashe
Since you're interested in getting attention from _recruiters_ , let me tell
you my best tip that will get your email flooded with recruiter spam: open a
linkedin account and fill it with bullshit skills that sound trendy.

You'll start getting emails from recruiters within the week with the canned
text:

"I stumbled upon your resume..."

Never fails brah!!

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Bahamut
Read the issues for the repository, pick one, and try to figure out what the
problem is, and what the solution is. As you progress, you can report on your
findings.

It's ok to fail, the journey is the important part here. Eventually it helps
you get to the point where you can actually start making impactful
contributions.

