Is that time of the year again! The guys over at DigitalOcean are hosting the awesome Hacktoberfest again and that can only mean one thing: a chance to win the free t-shirt! Just kidding (or am I?), the main benefit of Hacktoberfest is to make it as easy, painless and accessible as possible for new developers to contribute to open source projects on GitHub.
If you are learning a language and have the goal of being a professional dev, I’m sure you’ve heard of GitHub. However, it might feel daunting or even scary to contribute to an open project. After all, if you are a newbie like me, you might be thinking “Am I good enough?”, “Do I actually know what I am doing?” and the classic “I probably don’t know enough to contribute anything meaningful”.
So! Hacktoberfest is our opportunity to find beginner-friendly maintainers and repos that have already accepted that we aren’t seasoned devs, and are still willing to hear us out (read our code) and give us a chance. You know how exciting it is to see your code pull request go online, reviewed and accepted? It’s an amazing feeling, trust me. So let’s get to it.
This is the landing page. Link here: https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/
The main things to know are:
- You need to register with DigitalOcean. That’s how they will track your user and your pull requests (PRs).
- You want them to track your progress because that’s how we get the sweet merchandise, that Hacktoberfest 2020 t-shirt! You’ll need 4 PRs to get it, though.
Resources
Link to the page: https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details
Here is where you’ll get to read the rules, how to participate, and even links to repositories based on your experience level! So easy.
Events
Link to the page: https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/events
Arguably the best part of Hacktoberfest, search the list for events hosted near you and maybe make long lasting friendships and connections that will help you grow as a dev!
For example, in Jersey City, NJ the local DEFCON201 chapter will be hosting a livestream on twitch for Hacktoberfest! (link)
More help
And of course, here at the CC Community we love to help each other, so feel free to drop comments below if you need help with your first PR on GitHub, if you are looking for a team to tackler larger problems, or anything else!