Into the world of Opensource 🚀
Opensource is like wine, it tastes bitter at first, but gets better eventually
What even is Opensource ?
In very simple words, the term Opensource refers to something people can modify and share, with the consent of the owner and maintainers because most of its source code is publicly accessible.
It's like all the awesome developers in the world come up and contribute, put their efforts into a project and make it much much better and give it all the fixes you will need. Opensource is all about collaborating to make a project better 💙
Why Opensource ?
Open source allows you to showcase to the developer community, the interesting challenges you face, and how you think about solving them. Open source developers can casually contribute to projects, to learn how you work, and what it's like developing software for a particular set of challenges.
The more you contribute, the more you learn. There are many Opensource products we actually use too, like VLC media player, FireFox, Linux and more. Developers from all around the world constantly contributes and collaborates - thus making this more awesome ! You will learn alot too, from new technolgies, languages all the way to personal development, it all connects up eventually !
That's fun, where do I start ?
Getting started is no big deal and there is nothing to be afraid of. You don't need to be an expert with code or tech to get started. Listed below are 3 basic steps, following them plus some googling would solve all your problems !
1. Understanding Git, GitHub!
The very first thing to get started is to learn Git and GitHub! ( they are not the same thing ). Git is a version control tool for tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code for a single project!
Meanwhile, GitHub is a platform that offers a cloud-based Git repository hosting service. Essentially, it makes it a lot easier for individuals and teams to use Git for version control and collaboration. Take a look at this amazing video.
2. A GitHub account
A pretty obvious thing - make a GitHub account, follow me there, explore a wide variety of Opensource projects made by amazing people, and you are one step closer.
3. A development domain
Choose what interests you. There are several domains like Web-development, Android Development, Documentation, Machine Learning, and so on. Explore these at first, I chose Web because I always loved websites XD
Next, learn basic languages of it: HTML, CSS, Javascript - build some projects (2 to 3 recommended) - go on with advanced stuff React, MongoDB, ExpressJs and such, and there you go - almost ready to contribute! Now you can make your projects, add value to others' projects and the list goes on !
How do I find projects ?
Finding projects is not that tough if you look at it, here are some steps :
- The GitHub advanced search, search for issues that are labeled
good first issueand choose any language that you want. - Try out Twitter, you might find people talking about their projects!
- Follow good people on GitHub who are active in Opensource, you'll find projects from them too 🚀
Worry not, I'll share more awesome projects in the next blog !
You can do it !
Yaay ! That's all about how to get started. The more you learn, the more you explore the better it's gonna get. There will be trouble, and weird issues - ask the community, google it, and fight through it. Remember you can do it 🚀
You can also reach out to me via Twitter, google up stuff, and ask others. That's what Opensource is, Collaboration first and code second 💙
Thanks for giving it a read, you can follow me - I talk about Opensource, Web, Hackathons, and more.
