

Ask HN:  Open source projects on GitHub that need junior level help? - mspaint

College students and new graduates are always told on Hacker News "Get a GitHub page.  Contribute to open source projects."<p>What are some projects a junior/entry/student level developer can hope to contribute to?
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Zev
Two things:

1\. Why do they have to be "junior"-level? When you start a job, do you want
to be doing easy stuff? Or do you want to be doing the fun, challenging stuff?

If you're looking for projects that have bugs that are easy, or easy-but-
tedious-and-time-consuming, you probably won't find very many. The easy bugs
tend to just get fixed, the tedious ones? You don't want to work on those.

2\. I've always wondered how far people get with other people saying
"contribute to this project because I like it!" — at the end of the day, after
you've spent the past hours working on something else, are you _really_ going
to spend the next hour coding for something you don't care about? Or are you
going to say "meh" and play Starcraft?

There must be some app/tool/… that you use that is open source? Thats a good
ones to look into contributing to. Because you already use it, so its easier
to care about it.

~~~
mspaint
1\. Why junior level? Because I don't want to add memory leaks trying to add
features to mongrel2, I'm not enough of a ruby wizard to hack on Rails or
Sinatra yet, etc. When I start a project, I want to be doing stuff that will
challenge me, but I can still get something done on. When I am hired, I don't
think they're going to put me in charge, I think they're going to assign me
small things to work on until I learn more and prove myself.

2\. My full time job _is_ looking for work. I have many part time jobs, like
freelancing, helping my family, farm work, etc. I want to contribute so I can
learn. Starcraft will not make me any happier a year from now, or even a month
from now.

I use lots of open source. I spent most of a day once optimistically
installing what I needed to build Firefox, only to read how long it takes even
on quad-core meat grinders. I have a single core 2005 vintage laptop.

In short I don't care if I don't care about the project. The goal is help the
job search, sharpen my skills, and maybe contribute something while I'm at it.

~~~
Zev
_Because I don't want to add memory leaks trying to add features to mongrel2_

You won't. Just send that patch in that fixes a bug/adds a feature. If its
less than perfect, well, thats why code gets reviewed before committed. Other
people look at the code and tell you whats wrong. And then you fix it! If
you're not sure how to fix it, you ask, and someone will help.

 _I'm not enough of a ruby wizard to hack on Rails or Sinatra yet.._

So what? You don't have to understand the entire system to be able to fix one
small part of it. You don't need to understand minutiae of actionmailer to
improve active record.

And how big do you think Sinatra is? I'm willing to bet its significantly
smaller and less complicated than you seem to think it is :) *

I had more typed up, but, it can basically be summed up as:

    
    
      1. Find a project you like.
      2. Don't make any excuses and send in a patch.
      3. ???
      4. Profit! (aka: Goal reached)
    

* Sinatra is _small_ ; about 2k LOC, with ~400 LOC being html templates.

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clojurerocks
I dont know about projects on github, but im involved in a couple of projects
that are looking for developers. One is for a non profit. And one is for a for
profit. They are using cutting edge technologies such as django and node and
mongodb and whatnot.

------
ra
Ideally pick something that you use or are interested in.

Django is pretty well setup for new contributors:
<https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/howto/contribute/>

