Today was a productive day. I was able to accomplish 2 goals.
I really feel great about being able to accomplish things that only a few months ago, I felt like I couldn’t do. And, to think that I’ll be coding things that contribute to actual projects, that would have been insane. But, hear I am, doing and building.
As I mentioned before, I joined an open source project on a chrome extension that tracks your Protein Intake. The extension is called Protein Tracker.
Yesterday, I made my first pull request. Today, that was approved. I was so happy to see that my code got merged into an actual project.
This got me motivated and so I decided to work on 2 other issues, redesigning the options page and also fixing the issue with the progress bar.
I pushed all my work and both got merged too. I even got a shoutout which was pretty cool. LOL!
Here’s the product demo gif.
The Process
Joining an open source project is fairly easy if you want to do this. I highly recommend it because it gives you real world experience and it allows you to contribute to projects that can impact people.
You have total control over what you work on, so, you can pick anything that is dear to your heart.
For me, I came across this product through a slack channel. One of the members posted the project to see if we were interested in working on something. I said what the heck and I joined.
The first thing I did was to read the instructions for contributing. This may be on the README file or it can be on a separate file. This is very important because projects can have different processes.
For this project, the instructions are simple.
- Fork the project
- Find an issue to work on
- Create a branch using the naming convention
- Add your name to the contributors file
- Work on your issue
- Push to Github
- Issue a Pull Request
- Wait
- Celebrate (or weep in sorrow)
It only took me a few hours to work on the code. However, the reward for helping out is countless. I can’t wait to do more.
If you’re interested, what I suggest is that you search Github for issues that are outstanding. If you’re a newbie, just search for good first issue to find issues that are generally easier. Then, work your way up.
Good luck!
Today was a productive day. I was able to accomplish 2 goals.
I really feel great about being able to accomplish things that only a few months ago, I felt like I couldn’t do. And, to think that I’ll be coding things that contribute to actual projects, that would have been insane. But, hear I am, doing and building.
As I mentioned before, I joined an open source project on a chrome extension that tracks your Protein Intake. The extension is called Protein Tracker.
Yesterday, I made my first pull request. Today, that was approved. I was so happy to see that my code got merged into an actual project.
This got me motivated and so I decided to work on 2 other issues, redesigning the options page and also fixing the issue with the progress bar.
I pushed all my work and both got merged too. I even got a shoutout which was pretty cool. LOL!
Here’s the product demo gif.
The Process
Joining an open source project is fairly easy if you want to do this. I highly recommend it because it gives you real world experience and it allows you to contribute to projects that can impact people.
You have total control over what you work on, so, you can pick anything that is dear to your heart.
For me, I came across this product through a slack channel. One of the members posted the project to see if we were interested in working on something. I said what the heck and I joined.
The first thing I did was to read the instructions for contributing. This may be on the README file or it can be on a separate file. This is very important because projects can have different processes.
For this project, the instructions are simple.
It only took me a few hours to work on the code. However, the reward for helping out is countless. I can’t wait to do more.
If you’re interested, what I suggest is that you search Github for issues that are outstanding. If you’re a newbie, just search for
good first issueto find issues that are generally easier. Then, work your way up.Good luck!