This is how you contribute to open source: Use open source, notice a bug, investigate the bug, write a bug report and offer to fix it

I'm going to invoke Goodhart's Law here: _“When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric.”_

The most important message is: “If you don’t know where to contribute, you shouldn’t”. If you are not solving or improving a product you are using (even docs are fine), don’t contribute.

contributing to opens-source is hard for both maintainers and contributors. It's in no way an activity for noobs.

I also believe many new developers are putting a language or framework before the project. They want to “learn typescript” but don’t even know what to build with it. Imagine saying “I want to learn how to use a drill” and having nothing to drill into. Pick your project first, then pick your technology. I also feel that you’re far more likely to be engaged if it’s a project you picked on your own and truly have a passion to complete it

just like noone needs to get married: "All my friends are married so I'll propose to the first person I find"

ngl i had this mindset earlier in my career that i NEED to do open source to better myself but i just couldn't do it, i was just aimlessly wandering around github looking for some work to do in my spare time. at some point later when i matured as a dev i found myself contributing to open source not because i wanted to better myself, but because i wanted to better the project i was contributing to and that was the game changer. my advice to beginners would be if you don't know where to contribute to some vague idea of Open Source - start a pet project, direct your energy into learning

Goals come from things you understand, not things you don't 💯 Nice advice Theo

The problem is that the "how to get a tech job on 2023-2024" videos on UKposts recommend contributing to open source. And yes a lot of beginners haven't been around long enough to like a project and contribute to it. It's like the egg or the chicken dilemma, you need to start somewhere but every decision is the wrong decision. I think it comes down to your values more than your level of seniority. Every contribution you make should benefit the project, even if it's a small one but make it good.

Good take. I couldn't have contributed to open source project in the early stages of my carreer ( didn't have the skills to do so ), and nor did I want to. Now a decade later and with a deeper understanding of "code", I find myself going through the source code of libraries and frameworks, usually to solve bugs and add features as I need them and give back to the community as well.

I remember the first time I contributed to open source. It wasn't a huge project, but I used it a lot and I encountered a bug that noone else seemed to have encountered yet. So I went ahead and fixed it. Submitting that pull request almost gave me a heart attack because I was so nervous I missed some guideline, or that my code wouldn't be up to snuff, or even worse that I'd introduce a new bug with my code. So I went over my small 5 line fix probably a dozen times, and eventually submitted it. I was in absolute imposter-syndrome induced agony for what felt like ages. But eventually one of the devs responded, merged my stuff and thanked me for helping out. I was riding the dopamine rush I got out of that for days. That's when I fell in love with open source. There's just something so pure and wholesome about the idea of just helping someone out because you have the resources to do it. The reality of course not such a fairy tale (like it's clearly demonstrated in this video), but this interaction will forever be what I think Open Source *is*.

maybe title your video "Don't Contribute to Open Source if you're a beginner" but I guess that won't be a click-bait enough title for UKposts. But yeah I completely agree with your point in the video. Also I've never once thought about contributing to open-source projects just for the sake of contributing. Like if I don't even understand the project, it won't be a meaningful contribution. But I guess it does happen. Thanks for bringing light to this.

While the title of this video is a bit of a head turning oversimplification, the aspects the video goes on to cover are definitely on point. “Cart before the horse” took the words out of my mouth as I was watching.

Best definition - *“OPEN SOURCE IS AN ECOSYSTEM OF TALENTED PEOPLE WORKING HARD TO KEEP THE WEB AND ALL OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ALIVE.”*

This video is actually so good. Im not an experienced dev and I genuinely thought that its all about adding pull requests and getting more exposure. Thank you so much for making this video. And the "identifying the problem in the application we work" is on spot.

As a new grad developer trying to find a job, I completely agree with this as I see more and more of my peers just trying to checkbox that they contribute to oss. Sure it may be tempting but ultimately it's more valuable to actually be a part of a community first, using the project and actually contributing. Instead of just putting your two cents of a pr

Originally, most of my open-source contributions were to solve my work problems. I did not do it out of the goodness of my heart. I did it because I needed a bug or a feature I wanted fixed. And since I did not want to maintain my fix or bug, so I contributed.

influencers telling you what to do and not do, the wheel keeps turning

Love this take👌I usually give the same advice on open source as I do on programming languages-it's not Pokemon, no need to catch 'em all. We should be learning new programming languages when we need them to solve problems and build cool stuff, not to tick boxes on resumes. The same is true with open source contributions. They should be the result of working towards other goals, not goals themselves.

I do open source whenever a tool or library I use misses a feature I want to use or has a bug that annoys me too much. Best part so far was during an interview when I was asked if by any chance I'm familiar with a library and I could honestly say that I've even actively implemented a new feature there. Biggest "contribution" - even though it was not code bust just reporting a nasty hidden bug with repo steps - was in GIT itself. Very proud. 😄

I don't think you can blame the person in this instance as the real issue comes from the companies themselves. You said it yourself, having open source contributions makes a huge impact - to the point that a lot of companies *require* it as a minimum. Remove that hurdle and the desire for contribution and then open source remains as what you want it to remain as. Leave that hurdle in place and open source will be viewed more and more as how that person views it.

It's actually a long involved process to contribute to open source like seeing if the issue has been created already, seeing if your solution aligns with the style and rules of the codebase, seeing if unit tests or other documentation is needed, writing descriptive PRs with repo steps and clear instructions, etc.; plus going back and forth with the maintainers to fix anything missing or needing adjustments. It's like another job really, many times I just say fork it and update it on my own branch in hopes of one day creating a pull request when I get around to it.

Good points. Also, this is probably why some repositories look so impenetrable to new developers on that repository. They get spammed so much that, when a legitimate developer tries to submit a solution for the first time, it gets denied. And I am not talking just about new programmers that still might not have the skills. I am talking people like me, who has been developing for decades, but gets denied because I do not have many contributions to open source other than my own (very small practically invisible) projects.

I just finished the basics of the MERN stack, and I was going to contribute to the "so-called" open source you talked about. But you've opened my eyes, and now I think I have to learn more before starting to contribute to the real thing.

I think this illustrates a massive problem, in that most people that I meet don't really like programming, they have no ideas, no project they want to make...they view it as an ordered list, to follow to be successful.

so it was clickbait afterall

I'm surprised with the twist this video took! I completely agree, but I think there's two other reason you should consider contributing to open source: - you like a project a lot and you want to help it get better. - you love the concept of open source and you want to help this cause.

As someone who is not a programmer, and likes to watch people like you, prime and other people in the coding space, I can say the idea of contributing to open source comes from youtube, and its been mentioned enough times for me to remember that working on open source projects look good on your resume. Maybe I was half-ass listening and I have this twisted, but this is definitely something thats in my head, and it 100% came from youtubers, and if a new programmer asked me how to get started, that would be something in my head.

It’s refreshing to see actual content from you again. I always i appreciate your effort.

I'm a noob (little over a year programming) currently trying to finish my first actual large project. I'm really glad that you said this, because I do not feel ready to contribute to any open source yet, but I have been seeing it as a recommendation all over the place. I'll give it at least another year, and I won't do it just because, only if there's a reason.

My first time contributing to open source was when I wanted a feature added in a library, opened a request/issue for it, the maintainer suggested I make a PR for it. So I did and that's that, I contribute where ever I run into issues with libraries and feel like I can fix them (when asked to). This felt extremely natural and seems to be way most people contribute.

I mostly agree, and that's how I always operated, which is why I don't have many contributions, but I'd say that if you're not in a rush, and wish to go for the contribution path because it gives you a more realistic experience, then I think that is fine as long as your main goal is bringing a quality improvement to something, which will by the way be a nice reference as well. Although my personal opinion is that you'll never run out of personal projects (quite the opposite) if you're really interested in programming, but I don't see why it would be a problem if you woke up tomorrow and decided to make the world slightly better, by searching projects with issues as long as you then try it, check if you agree with the issue being an issue, and then try to fix it. It's also one way to find and try out new tools and stuff. I don't think the issue is necessarily putting the cart before the horse in case of relatively new devs (unless do think you absolutely need to do it, then yeah, kinda), but rather it's skipping important steps you mentioned in the name of a superficial goal. Will newbies have low quality PRs? Very likely, but to be fair many "experienced" people also generate poor quality code and regardless of the quality it may or may not be how the owner wants to have things, which is fine, and no one can really do anything about that. I think that the perception of having to use it and find something yourself is coming from the fact that that's the natural way, which is a relatively good predictor for a good contribution, but while it is easy to do a cut there, I do think it also discourages some useful contributions

I am sad that this video has just one thumbs up button. The kind of abuse, deceit and gamification to get some lime light via open source contributions is an insult to the honest (curiosity or need driven) progress of open source, the biggest and most unique movement in the entire history of mankind so far and this selfish attitude needs to be surely called out.

Seing the caption I assumed this was a rant about big tech buying community projects such as redhat etc. Bjt it turned out actually being informative and insightful.

Hey theo, I don't disagree with a lot of the points you say, and there are probably some extremes (like you showed in your video). But I do think that there is a bit of an issue that is underlying this: the onboarding for devs to an open source project can be a bit of an issue and in some projects is completely overlooked. It becomes even more apparent when you find a more structured project with proper docs, tooling and onboarding. On the project I help maintain, we always get bug reports or enhancement requests submitted but rarely ever do we have someone come in with an issue and offer to address it, and I can only think it's an onboarding issue. I remember how daunting the codebase was when I first found it and wanted to work on something. It's been one of the things, I've been trying to slowly address (and could probably do more). And if your project isn't meant for new devs, then it should probably say so really early on in your contributor docs.

Nice video, and I like the advice at the end. I've worked mostly with closed-source APIs & engines in my career, and never had it so clearly laid out why I have never felt the need/desire to contribute to an open-source project (even though it's advice I was given at the beginning of my career, without this context.) I've definitely wished I could submit fixes for the closed-source stuff I use, instead of submitting issues/tickets and wishing them happy birthday every year that they remain open.

"This isn't a clickbait video!" - video with the most clickbaity thumbnail and title I've seen in weeks

One of your most insightful takes. I'm gonna be thinking about this for a loong time. Thanks for the video.

My friend was saying all this open source is good i should do it, but now i aint going to any open source until I actually find a bug and have been using it, not destroying the true spirit of open source.

I never tried to contribute to open source, by watching one of you videos you recommend to give it a try, so i started doing that and just for the repos i like, i think its the best option, also the amount of duplicate issues and spam PR is something I didn't imagine, for now I will only do as you said, contribute if you like it and you think you could help

Thanks for your perspective! I was like the reddit poster in the video before, so thanks for correcting my misconception!

I totally agree with you - I'd first focus in 'how to start with OSS' A LOT on 'how to make good issues for project you like' instead of 'how to code'.

"This isn't a clickbait video." Yes, it is. The title is extremely attention-grabbing, obviously controversial, and the actual message of the video is not what the title says.

I've never heard your name before somebody shared this video in my job's Slack. Watched this video, you got yourself a new subscriber. You make a great point and the production quality is great. Thanks for sharing, looking forward to hear more of your opinions.

In india if we want to get into google summer of code, google provides a list of projects like plasma where you have to have a contribution so you can get into the competition.

Thanks for the insight on this. Never knew this was such a big problem. Agree, contributing to open source should be to solve real problems, not for exposure. It's fairly simple nowadays to create an app and host it on Vercel or something, creating your own thing was what we did back in the day :)

Maybe one could also start by contributing documentation, which not only helps everybody but also leads to a better understanding of the project. What do you guys think?

As you said, the important thing about open source for people looking to get into the industry _isn't_ that you contributed to some big project, it's that your contribution is out there where people can see it. Sure, there's a certain amount of prestige associated with submitting a contribution to something like the Linux kernel, but at the end of the day the better option (and the one I'm pursuing) is to just work on a project that _you need_, and then share the source for that at an appropriate time. Again, what matters isn't that you contributed code to a project, what matters is that your code is out there where it can be seen.

I completely agree with you on this! One of the most valuable skills I leanerd by creating issues is to articulate the problem clearly and defend my ideas against project owners in a friendly manner so they get implemented, merged or both sides agree that the feature is out of scope of the project.

Very good video! I've been in the field for 10+ years, and only have contributed to open-source only a handful of times - mainly because I do not have the time to put into them, or I know that smarter people than me are already working and maintaining them. One thing that people forget is that "using != knowing" - I use a lot of different libraries, but I very rarely have to peek into them to see how they work in the first place, and because of that, it does become hard to contribute.

Very good points, saving this to send to people in future. I unleashed a much less coherent version on this argument on a tech recruiter about 5 years ago after he made some mind-bending comment along the lines of "a senior dev should be contributing to open source every day" bro what.

I was considering using open source to make me look better to future employers. It was a freecodecamp vid about open source that gave me the idea. The vid does say you don't have to do this via contributing code, but other means like documentation. I can see from suggested vids on youtube there's no shortage of vids about learning to contribute. Cheers for the extra context.

I absolutely agree, I still haven't made any contributions and it's not the ONLY goal you should have. Build cool stuff using the things people are building rather than trying to build those things. With enough growth, and understanding, you automatically realize when you are ready. I just recently started opening issues and asking questions. Trying to grasp everything at once often leads to learning nothing quite honestly. You have to spend time with a certain technology to know enough about it to contribute. And oh boy, consuming typescript is VERY different from actually writing it

You are making good points, but: - It's not always about getting a job, but sometimes for self-improvement or just fun. I think it's a nice goal for someone to have - The fear of being a burden isn't healthy either. You have to start somewhere, and I'd say it's the responsibility of the project's maintainers to deal with noobs

I'm not even really a coder but "goals come from things you understand" is such a universally applicable adage that I never properly considered.

Thank you for sharing. I was also told that open source would help me to gain experience and help to find my first tech job. But when I looked around, I was hesitating too and decided to just make my own projects for now and work on my weaker spots with those. After all, when I try something new I run into problems as well and have to learn to find the bugs and fix them. I was doubting my decision though, wondering if I was overreacting. But seeing this video I now know I wasn't overreacting. (It has only been a few months since I finished a front end development course, so greener than a junior developer.)

I mean, the title was a bit click-baity I know contributions look good on a CV, but it never crossed my mind to try and contribute on a project I don't personally use, because... I can't find the motivation to work on something I don't give an F about. What you just said made me sad, but it also explains a few things...

Best video in a while, 100% agree. Although I would argue that the OP wanting to contribute to open source must have been influenced by some people posting that advice in the first place.

I was a software developer for 33 years (recently retired from the tech industry) and my first OSS contributions were projects that I wrote because they scratched an itch. Even though I retired, I still maintain them. It was probably a decade or more before I contributed to an OSS project run by others. So if you want to contribute to OSS, find something you need that's not already available, or at least not in a form you want, and write it. If it's good, people will use it. If it's crap, well... that tells you you're not ready to contribute code to existing OSS projects.

Great video. I hadn't really thought about how many people are being pushed to contribute to open-source projects. I've often encouraged people to do the same without considering the additional issues you mentioned where people are just looking to submit pull requests without using the software. I'm a huge fan of open source software and tend to prefer to use open source over paid solutions (though sometimes a paid solution makes sense). When using open source software as part of your normal workflow, it becomes very natural to contribute, even if it's just to write out a technical issue that someone can pick up and work on. I'm also biased because I've worked as a software engineer for several years now, so what might seem clear to me on writing a thorough technical issue, giving feedback on pull requests probably won't be fore a beginner. The other issue is I think that software engineering is overly glamorized, so you get a lot of people that want to just jump in and start writing code without understanding how code itself works as well as the processes and team work that goes into it and the infrastructure needed to run it. And while open source is an excellent way to get more understanding on how a piece of software runs, it definitely requires more than just looking at code but understanding how that software is supposed to work and knowing how the project itself runs and how to interact with the people maintaining the repo.

I contributed to an open source JS library because it was something I used and I enjoyed coding, it started as just random PRs later I was reviewing other PRs and making good ones of my own got quite recognised in the community and a couple of years later I actually used those experiences to get me a job that isnt even anything to do with coding! For the sake of simplicity lets call it transferrable skills

I've recently started using the Astro framework, and I absolutely love it. I would like to contribute, but I acknowledge that I currently lack the knowledge to do so. At the moment, I'm starting by helping with the translation of docs to Spanish. However, I don't view it as a means to secure a job; I simply want to contribute because I genuinely enjoy working with Astro.

this was an awesome video, will share it with people who try open source just for showcasing

Honestly, I am one of the people that needed to hear this. I dont spam PRs but I also feel like I NEED to to contribute to OS to become a better Dev and feel bad for not spending my time off wandering around github looking for a problem to solve. Thanks!

Thanks for this. I am one of maintainers for an open source project. This gave me a new perspective. ❤

Im going to suggest that this kind of behavior is why communities like the arch linux community are "toxic" and "gatekeeping" when in reality i think it's more of a trial by fire way of forcing only the people who know what they're doing, or those who wish to learn what they're doing. (although honestly, i think a lot of it is overblown. 90% of the "read the wiki" responses are on questions like "how do i do x?" where x is setting up a mail server or something fairly trivial. Rather than actually having a specific issue, or they have a specific issue and then never mention what it is (though ime people usually point that out first) I understand why people don't like it, but it's weirdly hypocritical i think. Also, if you want to learn via open source, you should make a project and then open source it. The likelihood that someone comes by and fixes your bad code for you is low, but not zero.

As a rule, I only try to submit PRs to open source projects if I’m using them AND had to fix a bug or add functionality. Beyond that, it only makes sense to attempt a PR if the set of new & fixed code is clean and generic. Basically, stuff that isn’t a hack specific to what I needed or my environment. For example, adding support to build it with the latest Visual Studio or c++ versions.

Thank you this is the best advice ever. I’ve recently decided to code as a hobby. The developer job world is just too overwhelming for me.

If you would like to contribute to a project, learn how it works and then go into issues/discussions and help others use that tool and resolve issues they have. OSS is not just about writing code. Most people will most likely abandon the idea of open source contributing right there because they will realize open source isn't as glamorous as some people might want you to think.

I think there is an exception to the "don't contribute if you don't use the project and don't know how", if you want to give back to the same developers on a different project. I, for example don't have the skillset to contribute to moby (docker upstream), but I can help with docker compose because it's a high level cli that I understand. Do I use docker compose? No, not really, but if I can help Docker (the company) to focus on project moby, by solving some issues in compose I'm happy to do that and the end result is almost the same, I gave back to the same community and core developers have time to focus on the main product.

I was really confused at first because I am a hobbyist and haven't sought out information about getting into programming as a job, so I didn't know this was a thing people recommended. That's sad. I have a goal of one day contributing to some open source projects, once I've learned enough of the languages they're written in to actually be useful. But they are projects that are near and dear to my heart. I still help out, with the occasional typo fix, noticing errors in the documentation, and fixing up english translations/making them sound more natural. But I really want to eventually contribute more, because I have a lot of feature ideas, but I don't want to burden the maintainers with them when they have better things to be doing

Hacktoberfest is opt-in now and several projects leverage it pretty well, like Jellyfin for example.

The video is great but the title is misleading clickbait. All hail the algorithm

Some companies require open source contributions to be considered. I had applied to Automattic some years ago and was rejected because I hadn’t contributed to open source. So yes, it shouldn’t be a box to check for a job, but enough companies abuse it that way so it has become that.

barely ever contributed in open-source projects, but when I did, they were projects I was actively using in my work and which I really wanted to (and knew how to) improve. like Lua language server

Love your newish set and video animations

yeah the intro had me very confused, but yeah i fully agree that people shouldn’t try to contribute to open source just for the sake of having it on their resume and especially that beginner programmers shouldn’t try to contribute to existing open source projects for the sake of contributing to open source. they could however try to make their own open source projects and maybe even look at existing “good first issue”s as practice exercises, but trying to seriously contribute will likely fail and just waste time for the maintainers. on the other hand if they are genuinely interested in a specific project and their goal is to keep contributing to that project, the investment can be very worthwhile for both parties

I'm in my first year of CS and my class has been given the advice of doing open source numerous times, alongside other hints pushing us towards it like "I've never had a employer who didn't want my GitHub." It kinda sucks as someone who isn't skilled enough at coding to really contribute to keep getting advice I can't use. For reference I'm in my 2nd java programming class, I'm also in the upper echelon of my class, and I feel woefully under prepared to engage in any established code base.

As a recent grad student I see this almost everywhere in my "bubble" of peers and colleagues. In fact i would be lying if i said i wasn't looking to contribute to a few OSS projects myself but I never understood anything! Now it all makes sense, i just need to take it all in and learn some more. Thanks Theo.

In all serious as a junior trying to break into the industry theres a lot of pressure to find an open source project to contribute to. Ive been out of work for a long time and the industry seems to be blacklisting anyone from entering or getting a break.

Funny, I learnt to code by looking at an open source online game's code and learning how it worked, the reason I did this was because I played the game and wanted to know its secrets. Eventually I started writing contributions to it (and never once had criticism that my code was bad). But over the years I frequently found myself more and more butting heads with other developers, because I was a dev that played the game but increasingly the running joke that "developers don't play the game" was proven truer as more and more devs were simply there to write code without actually considering the impact on the playerbase; bugs which should've been picked up if the 'dev' had bothered testing for five minutes, adhoc changes getting pulled on a whim without any discussion with the playerbase (aka: the client), etc etc. Eventually I moved on when I realised that most of the developers were college kids that had no passion for the game (they didn't play) and were only there to stick the experience on their resumé.

Contribute when you need to. I tried during Uni (forcefully, to pad my resume) and failed. Now that I'm working, I just contribute issues/fixes that I actually need. It adds up over time. I feel I needed that work experience to gain some skills and direct team members, before going into open source where you won't have as much help/receive immediate responses.

10+ years in and the most I've contributed is helpful comments on issues I've had. It's crazy to think you can just walk in and start posting PRs like stackoverflow answers Open-source projects generally die (or get forked) once core maintainers leave because they understand their architecture the best and it's hard for outsiders to just "fix" things without deep knowledge of the project

Thank you! I've been so lost on how the heck I'm supposed to do this random thing I keep getting told I HAVE to do.

Interesting case study imo, is that I like seeing numbers go up so I make PRs, the difference is that those PRs are actually meaningful as I can actually evaluate what has a chance of getting merged, and minmax it. Which obviously just so happens to be fixing issues I find with software. Can still minmax that, however the end result is positive. I would've usually either worked around, NIH'd, or locally patched those problems, but instead I take my time and make a PR in order to see numbers go up.

It can be useful to submit reports too. An issue with nVidia CUDA drivers and flatpaks got fixed the other day partly because I raised the issue, not because I knew how to fix it. I have no intention of learning to bundle drivers as flatpaks any time soon either because it's not my area. But if I started making pull requests based on my guesses about the problem, it would doubtless have been a pain for the developers.

It actually took me ~5 years for my first pull request on an open source project. It wasn't huge, it wasn't complicated, but it was something that actually annoyed me. It's not that I never wanted to contribute before (I always read issues in case I find something I can dive into), it was just feeling pointless contributing for the sake of it.

Gotta admit, I'm often self-serving in that regard in the exact way you mentioned as an example. I don't even see it as a career element or just hobby, but when I like an open source program but find that some features are missing, I join to contribute those bits. And once you're in and have a better knowledge of how the thing works internally, helping out with other stuff like open tickets comes naturally. Of course, there's the occasional stuff I then put out as free code for the hobby niche I'm in, but that's even more of a side thing.

I agree. I think the issue comes from people wanting to get in to a job asap so they just want to pad their resume. I would always double check to make sure it's not just some coders anxiety about their first contribution though.

I don’t often agrees with you but for this one I agree 100%. I work as a developer since years and I often look at OSS projects and I often read issues and PR - I almost never submitted a PR to such project for one major reason : I evaluated that I wasn’t enough a user to understand and be able to write a decent solution. So this kind of behavior is not surprising to me: recruiters asks juniors to contribute to open source in order to sell their profile. So people do. In a shitty way.

if no one do open source then open source dies, it should be a goal for anyone to be welcome to help out and join the world of people that is doing the right thing.

There was an awareness session on Open source and Hacktoberfest in my college. The speaker, who was a former google employee, specifically mentioned, 'if you're not able to make any contributions in the coming month or two, forget about getting a good job'.

Yeah, makes some sense. I know Theo is a fan of Advent of Code, and this reminds me of this course I have where the professor was saying during one of the lectures that Advent of Code is a waste of time and doesn't help our resume like open source contributions do, and one of our assignments at that course is to contribute to open source projects. I felt quite confident to make a couple open source contributions for the grade (it was something I did before, to address some issues I faced when using some open source softwares), though in some cases the maintainers are ghosting me, that's a little bit frustrating, though I can now see that maybe they are a little bit exhausted of all these contributions from people with no genuine interest in the project. I still felt that the contributions I made boosted my skills a little bit, especially for working with other people's code, so it's probably something people should try at least once or twice, I guess. That was quite a rant, I needed to vent out.

Just contributed to open source recently, clicked on this video to find out why I shouldn't've (according to the video title), but turns out I checked every box at 3:28 (I used that project, I had a problem with it, I determined it's a bug in the project code I can solve, I put a code analysis in the issue, and only then made a pull request) which means my decision to contribute was right which contradicts the video title. I would name it "Why You Shouldn't Contribute to Open Source" instead to not make it sound like every open source contribution is bad

My first SD job, I was asked in the interview about why I didn't contribute to open source tools I was using in my project. Employers are asking for these kinds of things.

As much as I want to help out, I've avoided getting wrapped up in Hacktoberfest precisely because I don't want to add to the chaos.

8:40 this point about how inexperienced programmers don't understand the difference between a bad goal and a good goal is excellent and IMO worthy of its own video. A lot of introverts without friends who program will be trying to learn programming without any goal better than "I should learn Python" will sabotage themselves over completing something like a Udemy course or introductory book and then losing motivation. It's a strange thing to feel a failure when you've accomplished something and should feel success and it's not something anyone who has experienced it is eager to ever discuss. This was really helpful, thanks for making this video. Best wishes.

There are 2 ways I make contributions to Open Source project: 1. When I am doing something as my job and find out something not right, or make good example codes for new release versions, or fix some documentation mistakes, I am quite happy to mention this issue and have a PR because I want to keep my work aligned to the original source as well as contributing to the project. 2. When I am using the open source projects for my hobby projects and find out a bug or just want to add a new feature, I will fork the code, do some tests and generate PR for it. There is another key to this is the communication with the developers. There will always be some ways to directly chat with them such as mailing list, IRC Chat, Discord, Telegram, Github discussion or just an issue. They will quite happy to have people helping them fix and improve the project. Even if they don’t like it, you can still use it on your own and even form your own branch of the project. I don’t know what the others think, but I am just having fun to spend my spare time lol

If I was Hacktoberfest organizer I would make a rule that commit has to be at least 50 lines of actual code changes in total. And that readme files and other non-code files don't matter and that non-code parts in code file such as correcting typos in strings or variable names also doesn't count. And I would keep adding new rules to make sure that commits are such that actually create value.

Well said. I have noticed this trend as well in recent years. Hanging out on the Rust users forum for example so many times I have seen. people turn up how to contribute to a Rust project or even the Rust language itself. Whilst clearly they have very little knowledge/experience in Rust or even any programming. I have always wondered what the motivation was. I came to the conclusion it was just so that they could put something on their CV/resume in the hope of getting a cushy job. This kind of worries me. No software project needs to be cluttered up with half baked junk slapped together by amateurs who have no particular need or passion for the. project.