I can only speak for myself here, but why would step 1 be "become a user"? I ask because I don't fully grok why I would want to contribute to a project I don't use (either in my personal time, or work time)?
Itβs worthwhile to be explicit there. For example, a person can be a heavy user of Pandas library but rarely use underlying numpy library directly. There could be motivation to contribute to numpy with expectation that Pandas will benefit too.
Based on the article, this user should start learning to use numpy directly, and I can agree with that.
why I would want to contribute to a project I don't use
Sometimes I might have an academic or research interest in a field I'm not actually working in or I read about a topic that sounds interesting. Then contributing to a project working with that topic or field might seem like a good way to learn and get more into that topic.
