
Show HN: Learn how to GitHub by contributing code in a fun simulation project - danthareja
https://github.com/danthareja/contribute-to-open-source
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Glibaudio
Not enough people contribute to OSS because of fear of taking the first step.
This is a nice nudge towards getting used to the workflow and demystifying how
the experience should go.

Also a clever use of a bot to teach coding. Very meta.

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jazoom
I'd say you're right. I've been coding for about 6 years and only submitted my
first PR on GitHub earlier this year. It was pretty confusing and I think I
did some things wrong. I've been using git for about 5 years but there's a
whole culture thing around OSS on GitHub I didn't (don't?) understand.

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danthareja
What are things about GitHub culture that you had trouble understanding when
you started out?

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jazoom
Sometimes maintainers haven't taken my bug reports seriously because I still
use the default avatar. Apparently that's important.

When I made bug reports explaining the exact issue, the maintainers would ask
me for a PR. I felt this was strange because instead of them changing one line
of code the next time they were working on the project they were asking me to
clone the project, go hunting for the appropriate code to change and worry
about any adverse effects from that change. All those things would be a non-
issue for someone familiar with the code of the project. I'm talking about
very straightforward issues here. Sometimes they would even ask me for a PR to
fix a typo in documentation, which is just ridiculous for going through all
the above steps when they could just type one letter the next time they were
developing on the project. I have since learned that there is a culture of
people wanting to build up their contribution rep, or something, so the
maintainers were actually just offering the PR as an opportunity.

There have been other things that I can't think of right now.

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st0le
If you think you are ready,
[http://www.firsttimersonly.com/](http://www.firsttimersonly.com/)

~~~
danthareja
I love that site! When someone completes the simulation and gets their PR
merged, I link to it in the "What's next?" comment.

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peternicky
Since when is “GitHub” a verb?

~~~
danthareja
It's up there with the best of them. Google, Snapchat, Insta, Microsoft Word

