Accelerate Your Tech Career with Open Source: How and When to Get Started
Oct 14 / 4 min read
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Accelerate Your Tech Career with Open Source: How and When to Get Started
- What is Open Source?
- Why You Should Contribute
- How to Get Started with Open Source
- When to Make Your First Contribution
- Sustaining Your Open Source Journey
- Conclusion
Introduction
Introduction
- Babacar Cissé DIA
- Sr Software Engineer 10+ years of experience
- Work at Kirschaum - Development shop
- Engaged with open-source technologies
- Leveraging tech to build scalable, efficient solutions
- Meaning we use, improve and create open source projects
What is an Open Source?
- any function you are writing, chances are someone wrote it before
- less repetition, building block
- Usually free
What is an Open Source Contribution?
- What constitutes a contribution ?
- code, documentation, translations, testing, or even reporting issues
Why You Should Contribute
Benefits for Beginners
- Learning new skills in a real-world environment.
- Building portfolio and connections.
- Collaborative coding and best practices
Benefits of Contributing to Open Source
- Networking
- Portfolio Building
- Professional development
Benefits of Contributing to Open Source
- Learning new technologies
- improving coding skills
- understanding collaborative development
Give back
- You have been using someone else code
How to Get Started with Open Source
Definition
What constitutes a contribution (e.g., code, documentation, translations, testing, or even reporting issues).
Finding the Right Project
- explore your favorite projects
- look for labels like “good first issue” or “help wanted”
Understanding the Project's Codebase and Community
- project’s codebase and documentation.
- "README.md", issues, and pull requests.
- "CONTRIBUTING.md" file.
- Past contributions (past Pull Requests closed/merged)
- Distribution with "LICENSE.md" file.
Preparing for Your First Contribution
- Forking the repository, cloning it locally, and setting up your development environment.
- Best practices for understanding and working on issues (reading previous pull requests, communicating with maintainers, etc.).
- Tips for writing quality code and documentation.
- Mention the importance of reading the contribution guidelines, writing clear commit messages, and following the code of conduct.
Preparing for Your First Contribution
Steps
- Forking a repository.
- Making your changes.
- Submitting a pull request.
When to Make Your First Contribution
Timing of Your First Contribution
- Sooner than you think
- start small: fixing a typo in documentation, or submitting a simple bug fix.
Common Mistakes and How to Overcome Them
- Imposter syndrome
- fear of rejection
- overdoing
Knowing When You’re Ready
Assessing project/codebase familiarity Indicators:
- Understanding the development workflow
- Building the project locally
- Fixing small bugs or improving documentation.
Progressing to Larger Contributions
- More complex tasks: new features, refactoring, or significant bugs
- Effective communication (ie maintainers, other contributors)
Sustaining Your Open Source Journey
Setting Realistic Goals
- Balance open-source contributions with work or study commitments.
- Setting goals for the number of contributions per month or quarter.
Leveraging Your Contributions Professionally
- Adding open-source work to your resume or portfolio.
- Using your contributions to showcase your skills in interviews.
- How to talk about your contributions on professional networks like LinkedIn.
Real-Life Examples of Successful Open Source Contributors
- Linus Torvalds, React.js/Vue contributors, Taylor Otwell and many more
- Sometimes life changing: Caleb Porzio, creator of Livewire and many more has made $1M in the last 5 years
Real-Life Examples of Successful Open Source Contributors
- Lead to job opportunities
- Contributing builds reputation
- Ivan will tell us more about it
Conclusion
- Open source: What, Why and How
- Iteration as the way forward
Conclusion
For more advance contributors
- check the license before you use on your projects (ie might be free to use but not commercially)
- different licenses: MIT, Apache, GNU, GPL etc
Thank you
Links
- https://bcd.dev
- https://kirschbaumdevelopment.com
- https://github.com/kirschbaum-development/eloquent-power-joins
- https://github.com/kirschbaum-development/laravel-test-runner-container
- https://github.com/kirschbaum-development/paragon
- https://github.com/kirschbaum-development/mail-intercept
Foot notes
Markdown to PDF using Marp
npx @marp-team/marp-cli@latest accelerate-your-tech-career-with-open-source-how-and-when-to-get-started.md --pdf --allow-local-files
By Babacar Cissé DIA
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