My (first) Hacktoberfest journey
Tags: hacktoberfest, github, opensource
Published: 2021-11-08 17:15:25

On early September 2021, I decided to get more involved in the open source world. Feeling a need to giveback a part of everything I've learned from others. 

Neither confident of my coding skills nor of my english abilities, I had to work on my own fear of doing it bad. So I firstly published some repositories, then rapidly want to contribute elsewhere as it is the essence of open source.

## First contribution

**Where should I start as a *firsttimer*?**

Google brought me here: https://www.firsttimersonly.com/

After understanding what is *a fork*, *upstream*, *pull request* etc... I looked for a [good first issue](https://goodfirstissues.com/), and finally found somewhere I could help: https://github.com/WordPress/openverse-frontend/issues/223.

I was as enthousiastic as stressed to open my first pull request, that I forgot a basic rule of courtesy.
Another first time contributor explicitly ask for working on this issue. Few hours later, I unintentionally, nonetheless shamely, short circuit his potential work with [my first PR](https://github.com/WordPress/openverse-frontend/pull/233). 😳

I **should just ask** if anyone was already working on this issue before opening a PR.

**How was your first contribution on Github?**

Here is the first pull request of [Mark Otto](https://github.com/mdo): https://firstpr.me/#mdo

## First Hactoberfest

Thanks to dev.to and @ayushi7rawat I discovered what is [Hacktoberfest](https://dev.to/ayushi7rawat/beginner-s-guide-to-hacktoberfest-2021-24d1).

An open source event at the same time of my first contributions sounds like an opportunity to stay focus on this learning journey. Otherwise, I like the idea of getting a 👕 or a 🌳!

**Goal:** 4 pull requests merged in the main branch of repositories labeled `hacktoberfest`.

First of all, I was lucky as the first project I contributed to, [Openverse Frontend](https://github.com/WordPress/openverse-frontend), takes part in the event. I had some landmarks in the codebase which helped me to get **3** PR merged.

At this moment, wanting to find another "playground", I scrolled indefinitely this page https://github.com/topics/hacktoberfest?l=javascript. Axios, Chart.js, Meteor, Cypress... I didn't feel ready for that! 

I was becoming lazy for the last missing PR. I naively thought that sharing a personal project into a Hacktoberfest labeled repository which reference others first time contributor projects was OK. But It is not regarding to [Hacktoberfest values](https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/resources#values).

At least, it is ok to me to learn contributing process, and to put a light on a particular project!

Always lazy and always missing a PR, I finally received a notification of a merged PR on [Public APIs](https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis). 🎉 **4/4**

## What I learned?

Apart from coding aspect, I learned a lot:

- not being too shy and asking even if the question seems stupid
- new english words: *sisyphean task*, *LGTM*, *FOSS*
- more about Github process and workflow
- removing an extra blankspace, fixing a typo, adding a line in a `README.md` is enough to earn points
- there are no little contributions but a sum of ones that makes a huge one
- being more grateful to kind people sharing their knowledge, researches and time without counterpart

To my mind, this event was a great way to enforce skills and to discover many open source projects! ❤️