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Ask HN: What open source project should I work on?

1 points by zensavona ↗ HN
I've been really excited about trying some open source stuff just for fun and also to improve my coding (and collaborative development) skills, I know Go, PHP, simple Javascript and bits and pieces of other technologies (C/++, Ruby, Lua, Haskell, Shell etc). I think I'd like it to either be Javascript or Go, though - those are the languages (and related ecosystems) I seem to like working with the most. The only other requirement is that it's on Github and follows the whole pull request code review workflow.

I've never really contributed to an open source project before, I'm really excited to get into this though. If you guys have any recommendations of something interesting to hack on please share!

Thanks

5 comments

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lucb1e
What open source project is complete and doesn't need any help? Besides Go or PHP and Github, you've told us no preferences, so it's kind of open ended. What has you motivated, what are you looking for? Would you mind spending four days adding a basic feature in a relatively unfamiliar language?

I've recently contributed to an opensource project myself for the first time. The project is Filezilla (the client in particular), and I added a feature to create a new, empty file on the server. About 70 lines of code in the end, but having little c++ experience it cost me two evenings, though that includes getting it to compile (also a first, compiling a project with a number of dependencies and lots of code on Linux). The patch is being reviewed now, and I have good hope it makes it to the next release. It feels really good to complete because I've actually done something measurable; solved a problem in software used by thousands.

I'd like to take such a project on again. It was small enough for me to grasp in a language that I was not very familiar with, and I learned lots of things. And it solved an actual problem. So those are things I'd be looking for in a project to take on. Perhaps you prefer something bigger? Or not? Not that I'd know a project to suggest, but perhaps others do ;)

zensavona
I like everything you've said about that.

I guess I want to be able to make a contribution which is actually a real thing used by real people, rather than a dead project somewhere in the corner so to speak. A good community surrounding it would be cool too - I wouldn't mind meeting some like minded and interesting people!

In honesty I don't really know what I want/what I would find interesting - that's why I'm looking for suggestions.

Hermitian
It is really hard to recommend a project to someone just because everyone have such diverse interest and passion. My only suggestion is to roam around the community until something tickles you inside. If you are not sure what you will find interesting may just because you haven't found a project you are passionate about. Frankly if that "dead project somewhere in the corner" is something that motivates you, you should choose that over the larger projects.

Personally, my personality and preference are for smaller projects with a more intimate community. In the end of the day, (for me) it is much more about learning and doing something I love rather than doing something to go on a resume (or my lack of a resume. :P). So think about these questions: 1. What is your goal in doing this? (i.e. combinations of to learn, to have fun, to add to the resume, etc.) 2. What motivates sufficiently at 4AM in the morning?

lucb1e
Haha yep, 4am is a common time to finish something neat :D
lucb1e
How about software you personally use? There must be something that's opensource and contains a bug or misses a feature. Perhaps you could look at open tickets (the filezilla 'create new file on server' ticket was open for 4 years, lol).