My First Contribution to Open Source.
I will cover the advantages of contributing to open source and why one should contribute to it?
What is open-source?🤔
The term open source refers to something people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible.
As per the definition of Red Hat :-
"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".
How I contributed to open-source?🚀
I have been learning web development and in the month of May-2022, I started learning ReactJS (the library of JavaScript). I have a Twitter account and I am following @tapasadhikary.
In the same month i.e May 2022, I saw one post from Tapas Adhikary where he mentioned about one open-source platform i.e ReactPlay. There was one link in the same Twitter post about the complete article on ReactPlay. I clicked and read each and every line of that blog.
I came to know that ReactPlay is an Opensource platform to learn, create and share ReactJS projects with the developer community.
I thought this was the best way to learn ReactJS. By making projects, you can learn many things so I did the same.
On the same day, I messaged Tapas Adhikary on Twitter and asked him shall I contribute to ReactPlay? he replied immediately, why not?
So I went to the ReactPlay repo on GitHub and read about how to contribute? I followed the step and started working on my project.
I made a small project i.e Tic-Tac-Toe game in React.
The issues I faced:-
I was a beginner in ReactJS and I had been studying it from React official docs and in docs mainly class components are mentioned. So I also made my first project in class components and submitted the same for review.
But the ReactPlay team reviewed my project and submitted:-
- That you had used class components and that is not preferable so convert your class components to functional components.
- The CSS part was having some issues like classes name were not proper.
This was very beneficial for me like my code was reviewed by an experienced team.
How I overcame the issues? :-
As I am a beginner in ReactJS and did not know much about functional components so I started to learn functional components and slowly I started to convert class components to functional components.
I took some help from my friends on Twitter and made the project purely in function components.
I again submitted the code for review. This time my code checked and no issue was found.
The project then successfully merged to the ReactPlay repo. 🎉
⭐️ Why should you contribute to open-source?
The question generally arises in our mind why do I contribute to open source? let's see why you should contribute to open source?
1. Build your confidence as a developer :- Like I said that my code was reviewed by the experienced team so I created more pull requests and tried not to make the same mistake from previous submissions so I begin to learn how to write good code. It boosted my confidence as a developer.
2. Build your professional network:- Contributing to open source is an excellent way to build that network. After contributing to the ReactPlay, I joined their discord community and interact with like-minded developers in the open-source space, and build connections along the way. Such relationships can turn into career-changing connections.
3. Improve programming skills:- Contributing to open-source is a great way to improve your programming skills, help others and learn how to work in a collaborative environment.
4. Rewards:- If we contribute to open source, sometimes we will get some rewards like I got the badge of open source contributor from aviyel.com. A badge of honor feels awesome It motivates people and gives them the confidence to take up the next challenge.
5. Learn from Existing Projects:- We can learn many things from projects available on open source. As in my case, I Learned from Existing Projects of different experience levels that are available on ReactPlay. You can find them on the playlist page.
Important Links:-
That's all about this article.😀
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