My Second Experience and Learnings @Hacktoberfest | How to Contribute
Tags: hacktoberfest, opensource, github, digitalocean
Published: 2021-10-18 18:14:43

Howdy all! Hope the winds of October are flowing with you and you all are doing great. :maple_leaf:
The second-most famous thing about October, apart from Halloween is *Hacktoberfest* :tada:
Yes, its that time of the year when Open Source enthusiasts and developers from all around the globe, come together and contribute to various open source projects. These projects may range from being a beginner-level to solving some of real-time problems.

This year, was my second time @Hactoberfest, and needless to say, I got to learn a lot of things, just like the previous year.
*If you wish to see what all I got to learn previous year, from this month-long journey of contributing to open source, you can read my article, which I have shared over [here](https://dev.to/noviicee/experience-of-my-first-ever-hactoberfest-2b62).* I still remember the day last year. It was 15th of October when I made 4 valid PRs, and was waiting for them to get matured (14-days time period). I shared my experience of my *first-ever Hacktoberfest* then.

Today, I am here to share my second time experience about Hactoberfest, what all did I learn, how this year was different than the previous one, and how can YOU contribute! Believe me, it's never too late. Register yourself now, and get started. [Link](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/)

So since participating in the fest last year, I was determined that I will be participating next year as well. This year, I was waiting eagerly for the season to begin. I registered myself as soon as the initial registrations got opened. After that, I was waiting for October to start!
One thing, about which I was very firm was to make real, *valuable* contributions. Similar to last year, my focus wasn't on getting the T-Shirt, but to move ahead in my open source journey and to learn new things.

October came and I started off! After registering for the Hacktoberfest, you will come across a demo on the official page, which is made for beginners in open source, in order to help them with Version-Control System.
Previous year when I was starting off, I did not even know a single line about open source and version-controlling. I was struggling to even clone a github repository.

Fast forward one year-
[See full tweet Here](https://twitter.com/reachtoana/status/1443642967575564314)
Added my Haiku :tada:

I know it's not a huge thing, but the feeling of being unable to do it an year ago, to be able to do it with ease is overwhelming. I just feel happy that I was able to expand my learning even if it was by just a small percentage.
Wholeheartedly thankful to @hacktoberfest

![Hacktoberfest-Congratulations](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/qvlnyapkxdytk1qrb5kb.png)

## Contributions

Last year, my major contributions were code contributions. My first contribution, was a simple code contribution in  a repository which was especially designed for beginners in order to start their journey with open source. I made some documentation contributions as well, but they were marked *invalid* after a few days (maybe because rules were updated in the middle of the month last year). Yeah, 3 of my 4 PRs were code contributions, and one was a tiny fix of a link. :smile:
I  was able to make 4 PRs till October 15th and only after that I realized that I will have to wait for them to get matured (14 days time-period) :sweat_drops:
Well, all my PRs got accepted and I received my first Open Source gift in the month of February 2021 (it took some time to reach my place due to pandemic conditions all around)

### How this year was different

I was very clear that this year, I won't make just simple code contributions. Since I have been into open source for quite some time, I wanted to make valuable contributions. So I started searching for issues that would actually help projects. My favorite programming language is Python, so I was searching for projects that involved Python. I found some really  amazing ones which required contributors and I began working on them. I set up the project on my machine, ran everything, checked upon all the functionalities and raised issues wherever I thought some changes were needed. Apart from these, I also worked on projects which involved a dash of front-end development. Reason being that I have learnt a little bit about front-end development, and I wanted to implement my learnings into real-time projects.
*This is one such benefit of contributing to open source. To learn and implement at the same time.* :smile:

One more thing that I was looking forward to was- *do not contribute only for the sake of completing 4 PRs in Hacktoberfest and then forget everything* :joy:
My first purpose was to witness an increment in my learning curve. As I said, I wanted to try hands-on front-end, I found a really fun project that even **beginners can contribute to!**
You can follow it [here](https://github.com/TerabyteTiger/color-themes)
Basically I saw [this  post](#) on @thepracticaldev and was really interested to try a theme!
You can also contribute if you want to :yellow_heart:

Apart from these, I made some contributions in the form of resources. I believe that having resources at one place proves to be really helpful for everyone who is learning and so I wanted to provide my contributions in the form of PRs to such repositories which collects and organizes all resources at one place.

![Hacktoberfest-Anamika-S-Profile-1](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/2200kr95okdo5wxgyodr.png)

## Rounding Off

We are halfway through the 8th edition of Hacktoberfest, and it has been an amazing experience till now. From struggling to make a single Pull Request last year, to completing Hacktoberfest Challenge easily this year makes me happy. It lights a spark inside that yes, at least I was able to learn *something* in a span of one year.

Also, it was Hacktoberfest which introduced me to the Dev Community, and I feel really glad to be a part of this community since a year. I have also recived the One-Year Badge on 15th of October 2021 :joy:

![One-Year-On-Dev.To](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/nodmbf3vwcy41o5aoqk2.png)

*For the Beginners*
Don't feel intimidated. There are lots of issues that you can start working with.

Feel free to reach out for any sort of discussion regarding the post, or other materials. If you wish to connect with me, you can find me [here](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anamika-singh-0fficial/) also, apart from my Dev.to profile of course :smile:

At last, I wish ***Happy Hacktober*** to everyone :melon:
May the source be with you. :dizzy: