

Ask HN: What open source project should I work on? - zensavona

I've been really excited about trying some open source stuff just for fun and also to improve my coding (and collaborative development) skills, I know Go, PHP, simple Javascript and bits and pieces of other technologies (C/++, Ruby, Lua, Haskell, Shell etc). I think I'd like it to either be Javascript or Go, though - those are the languages (and related ecosystems) I seem to like working with the most. The only other requirement is that it's on Github and follows the whole pull request code review workflow.<p>I've never really contributed to an open source project before, I'm really excited to get into this though. If you guys have any recommendations of something interesting to hack on please share!<p>Thanks
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lucb1e
What open source project is complete and doesn't need any help? Besides Go or
PHP and Github, you've told us no preferences, so it's kind of open ended.
What has you motivated, what are you looking for? Would you mind spending four
days adding a basic feature in a relatively unfamiliar language?

I've recently contributed to an opensource project myself for the first time.
The project is Filezilla (the client in particular), and I added a feature to
create a new, empty file on the server. About 70 lines of code in the end, but
having little c++ experience it cost me two evenings, though that includes
getting it to compile (also a first, compiling a project with a number of
dependencies and lots of code on Linux). The patch is being reviewed now, and
I have good hope it makes it to the next release. It feels really good to
complete because I've actually done something measurable; solved a problem in
software used by thousands.

I'd like to take such a project on again. It was small enough for me to grasp
in a language that I was not very familiar with, and I learned lots of things.
And it solved an actual problem. So those are things I'd be looking for in a
project to take on. Perhaps you prefer something bigger? Or not? Not that I'd
know a project to suggest, but perhaps others do ;)

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zensavona
I like everything you've said about that.

I guess I want to be able to make a contribution which is actually a real
thing used by real people, rather than a dead project somewhere in the corner
so to speak. A good community surrounding it would be cool too - I wouldn't
mind meeting some like minded and interesting people!

In honesty I don't really know what I want/what I would find interesting -
that's why I'm looking for suggestions.

~~~
Hermitian
It is really hard to recommend a project to someone just because everyone have
such diverse interest and passion. My only suggestion is to roam around the
community until something tickles you inside. If you are not sure what you
will find interesting may just because you haven't found a project you are
passionate about. Frankly if that "dead project somewhere in the corner" is
something that motivates you, you should choose that over the larger projects.

Personally, my personality and preference are for smaller projects with a more
intimate community. In the end of the day, (for me) it is much more about
learning and doing something I love rather than doing something to go on a
resume (or my lack of a resume. :P). So think about these questions: 1\. What
is your goal in doing this? (i.e. combinations of to learn, to have fun, to
add to the resume, etc.) 2\. What motivates sufficiently at 4AM in the
morning?

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lucb1e
Haha yep, 4am is a common time to finish something neat :D

