Forem: Naman Budhiraja

Guide For Your First Open Source Contribution.💻

Naman Budhiraja — Sun, 11 Jul 2021 17:02:53 +0000

Hi all👋. Today, I will be talking about an interesting and one of my favourite topics called "Open Source"😃.It is a buzzword that has been roaming around developers nowadays. By following the trend, I am writing this article to help you out so that you can also contribute to open source projects easily.🤘
So, without wasting any time, lets' get started

What is Open Source!!🤔

Firstly, Lets' understand the meaning of Open Source. So, basically open source is a term that originally referred to open source software (OSS). Open source software is code that is designed to be publicly accessible—anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit.

Why you should contribute to Open Source!!🧑‍💻

Open source is free and open to all enthusiastic folks who want to contribute to the community while learning something. Open source helps many developers to boost up their tech career. Apart from this, you will get the chance to engage with different like-minded people and share your knowledge. You will get a lot of opportunities to learn new technologies. Nowadays, open source section in the resume catches the eyes of recruiters more easily. So, open source will help you in many ways.

Prerequisites🗒️

In my opinion, there are two main prerequisites of open source contribution:-
1) Git and GitHub: You should have atleast a basic knowledge of Git and GitHub before starting to contribute to open source projects.This will definetly help you in the long run.You can find the some amazing tutorials for the same for free.Here's youtube link =>

Hindi: Complete Git Tutorials For Beginners In Hindi.
English: Git and GitHub for Beginners - Crash Course.

2) Your Will: Nothing is possible without your will. So, without wasting any time you should start your journey to open source and stick to it. Learning is not easy but you have to make it by staying consistent and doing hard work(Enough motivation for today😅)

Finding Your First Open Source Project😴

Finding your first open source project is a daunting process in itself. It is because there are so many projects released on GitHub and so many tutorials for finding projects to contribute. But what you need to do is just press the search button on GitHub and search for that topic in which you are comfortable and want to contribute. But the main hack that I want to share with you is to filter the projects based on the least number of stars.
Why? Because greater the number of star, bigger will be the project and complicated for the beginners. The point here is to start with the small projects and contribute. After some time, when you get the taste of open source environment, you can jump into bigger projects.

Points to ponder:

🌟 Open Source is not a competition, it's collaboration.
🌟 No working experience is required before contributing to open source.
🌟 Don't be afraid if you don't have hard core coding skills. Remember, editing a readme file is also a contribution to the project.

Useful Tips & Tricks✍️

Always see the activeness of the project before starting the contribution.
Read the project's guidelines carefully before making a pr(Pull Request).
Read the readme file to get an overview of the project before starting to contribute to a particular project.
Join the community involved around the particular project or a topic you are interested in.
Don't hesitate while asking any question to anyone involved in a particular project. (this is the power of open source. People are always here to help you out).
Find an open source community to meet some like minded people and seek help from the experienced ones.
Participate in Open Source Programs like GSOC(Google Summer Of Code) ,Digital Ocean Hacktoberfest, MLH Fellowship , GSSOC(I was part of it) and many more.

Outro✨

This blog post concludes that you don't need any work experience or any hard skills. Open source contribution requires your collaboration behaviour towards the project. So, turn on your laptop and find your first open source project to contribute.😉

So, That's it from my side🙏🙌. I hope you like this blog post and I didn't waste your time. If so, then please give a ❤ and share to your peers who want to jump into open source.🤘
And if I had missed something, kindly comment down below💻.
See you untill next time👋.Connect With Me On LinkedIn and Twitter.

 "The power of open source is the power of the people.The 
  people rule."

                          Thank You

Points That A First Time Coder Should Follow!!!🗒

Naman Budhiraja — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 20:22:05 +0000

Hi All!!!👋

Today I will be talking about the most important things that a first time coder or who are thinking of starting a carrer in tech should follow.👨‍💻(Note:- These opinions are my own which have been plotted after more than one year of programming experience.👍)

So without further ado , Let's get started!!🤙

Which Programming Language To Choose??🤔

This is the most common question asked by a newbiew or we can say who wants to learn to code for the first time.I also had this same question.I will suggest you to start with C++.
But Why C++ ?? Beacuse it is begineer friendly and will cover most of the important topics like pointers , OOPS , etc.😎

Where To Start??🤨

Hold On.I got your back!!💪

Here are the few links where you can start learning:

1) FreeCodeCamp:

Website: https://www.freecodecamp.org/
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8butISFwT-Wl7EV0hUK0BQ.

2) W3Schools: https://www.w3schools.com/.

3) GeeksForGeeks: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/.

These are few websites where you can start but there is more out there.You can explore on the internet!!Go Explore!!

Don't Get Confused!!😕

We have the advantage of most beautiful thing Internet.😎 There are lots of amazing resources on the internet where you can learn coding.But due to so many resources , it creates lots of confusion like which course is best , etc.
For this , I shall tell you one simple thing that All Resources Are Awesome out there because the team/people behind that content worked very hard to post such content on the internet.
So , Don't get confused.Just start learning and stick to it.
You can explore different resources while learning but first stick to one resource for atleat one month.🤘

Find Community🏃

The best thing of coding is that you are not alone in this journey.There are many people with different level of expertise in different technologies out there which are really amazing and very helpful to the community.I would highly recommend you to join a coding community so that you are constantly in touch with coding and motivate yourself every single day.
So,Where to find these communities?? You can connect with amazing people on LinkedIn and Twitter.You can also go to workshops , webinars , public events , meetups which are being conducted by amazing community members.
Go Find Your Coding Community And Make New Friends!!👱👩

Pair Programming👬👫

This is most underrated point that every newbiew should follow.👊
Pair Programming means programming with another fellow and learn and share code while working together.The fellow could be anyone like your friend , classmate , but of course with the desire to learn coding along with you.💪

❌Remember: Never! I Reapeat Never!! Compare yourself with your fellow while doing pair programming as it leads to anxiety , self-doubt and at the end of the day you will realize that it was nothing but just a useless thought.❌

Find Mentors👨👩🙏

Finding the right mentor is a difficult task in itself but not impossible.Your mentor can be anyone whether he/she is your junior or senior.Basically , the role of a mentor in your life is to guide you in every step that you are taking in building your carrer in any field. "Your mentor" means you admire him/her a lot and want to follow his/her path while learning.So,Go find your mentor and connect with him/her.

Outro✨

The conclusion of this blog post is to just start your coding journey and don't wait for right time.You need a laptop and a internet connection and you are good to go.All the learning resoureces are out there on the internet and also you have amazing people out there to help you out.So,
JUST START💪👊💯

So , That's it from my side🙏🙌.I hope you like this blog post and I didn't waste your time.If so,then please give a ❤ and share to your peers who want to learn to code.🤘
And if I had missed something,kindly comment down below💻.
See you untill next time👋.Connect With Me On LinkedIn and Twitter.

           "Coding is not a Sprint , its a Marathon"

                          Thank You