#Question about good first issues

4 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

late prawn

Hi I'm a software developer trying to get in a habit of contributing to open source. Couldn't find any good first issues so I was hoping someone with more experience could point me to a ticket I can start on thanks.

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dusty sapphire

Maybe start on a project you actually know and use yourself. So that you understand what the issue you try to fix is about and can test directly. I‘m a bit confused what brought you here and that being your first question

clever ether

I'm getting the impression that they've only done hobbyist work or solo work and want to learn how to contribute to OS. Maybe in hopes of getting experience with group development they can showcase towards a job? I know most people recommend OS as a good way to get started with that

Qjuh is right though, my first OS contribution was on open source software I was already using. There's a decent number of advantages here:

  • You have an understanding of the product direction and the needs of that software's users (because you are one!).
  • You know what the expected behavior of the application is and how the changes you're making are causing deviations from that behavior.
  • The people working on that project are probably passionate about the same things you are (my first OS contribution was on AnkiDroid so it was nice knowing other devs shared a passion about spaced repetition systems and learning - you could see something similar helping with a game you like or a tool you use for a hobby you enjoy like blender or audacity)
  • A tool you use is likely to be a large project because you're using it.
  • Non-technical users can submit bug reports and feature requests that can turn into simple first timer tickets

At the very least you should pick a large well known project because those are likely to have solid development guides that can be helpful for first timers like AnkiDroid's was for me. VSCode or GIMP are other examples of projects with solid developer guides. These also tend to have "good first issue" tags (see AnkiDroid's or VSCode's good first issue pages) that can be useful for starting.

Granted, you might be asking for tickets to solve for discord.js. Sadly, libraries like discord.js tend to have less in depth development guides since there's not an app to build and you'll usually find that their "good first issue" tags are generally pretty empty. Applications are a much better bet for finding issues that have been identified but not fixed (since non-technical users will submit issues for those but not for libraries).