Still Not On GitHub 😲
Tags: github, opensource, hacktoberfest, productivity
Published: 2020-10-20 03:00:52

> This October get over the fear of GitHub and Terminal and make your first Open Source Contribution

This lockdown/quarantine period has been really fruitful especially for me coming from a Business Development background to Software Engineering, learning software development life-cycle, building a few projects and going from 0 to over 400 contributions on my GitHub. 

A perfect software or a product doesn't get created at once! If so you'd not be seeing the consistent software updates 🧐! GitHub is a place to track all of your different version of the product and progress.

GitHub and Command line interface appeared so scary and sure it was until I learnt how easy and fast it has made to access everything on your computer on that black background.

![Magic after learning GitHub and Command Line](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*SnPxeKkNMjz6Fpfx2LiUfg.jpeg)

# ✅ **Why learn GitHub?**

Well there maybe thousands of reasons that you may find on the internet but here are a few I realized after spending time around - 

- **Great collaboration tool 👍:** Not only for programmers but for building a great product in all. 

Visualize better - You're in Mumbai, I'm in Tamil Nadu, another of our team mate is in Bangalore and also we're lucky that a designer from New  Delhi who joined us. 

*Still thinking about sharing files and doing reviews via email or WhatsApp 😱?*

Found a bug or came up with a new idea about the project,  create a new issue! 😎 . 

Recently I won a [t-shirt and some goodies](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fposts%2Factivity-6709345406767255552-1slx) by contributing in erxes, an open source marketing platform and a month before that during the review time their Developer Advocate was asking me more about my issues and ideas which I submitted. I was so amazed to see people from all over the planet contributing in building this amazing product.

![erxesGoodies](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/1*zsMxqIiFdZ07fOsbwbQwgw.jpeg)

> Separated by distance, brought together by GitHub

- **Inspiration at it's best:** There are so many inspirational Open Source projects on GitHub. Recently I found one called Signal Messenger. Immediately fell in love with the idea of innovation and inclusion of privacy in messaging.

- **Extensions and Marketplace:** Once you start into GitHub you'd feel the unexpected `git conflict` or sometimes `large files` or some times `forked repos not updated`. Well there are bots and extensions that'd do all of that! A few I've been using lately - imgbot, pull, codereview. 

- **Hosting:** And I won't lie how simple the hosting has been made now with just your GitHub integration with Heroku and Netlify. And it's just with a tap!

# ✅ **What about OpenSource if I've no experience 😔**

Absolutely no worry! The first thing I pushed on GitHub was my [HackerTech 2019 FinTech Deck](https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fdhairyaostwal%2FReBank%2Fblob%2Fmaster%2FReBank%2520by%2520Dhairya%2520Ostwal.pdf).

And even if you're learning basic front-end like HTML or CSS or just know C/C++ or basic Python still GitHub welcomes you! 

You could browse through several projects and **suggest improvements** 🤔 or help them **better up or update their README** 😵. Working with README is so simple that after some time you'd wish if everything was in Markdown format! And README is important as many projects do get scanned up on the basis of their README during hackathons. 

**Installing `Git` and getting to `GitHub`**

Follow these tutorials for perfect installation - 

🔔 **Windows** = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j7fD92g-gE
🔔 **Mac** = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twFo9wCpdSU

And create your GitHub account by simple signing in here

# ✅ **Hey I've been hearing a lot about HacktoberFest lately…**

Yes HacktoberFest is a great initiative by Digital Ocean to bring people make their first Open Source contribution and get a chance to win an amazing t-shirt!

![Hacktoberfest](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*rjuHOuJtNKQTnFXK.gif)

Whether you do Algorithms, Data Structures or Web development or Machine Learning or Design or are just learning you should take part in this. And finding your ideal projects(even academics 😅 isn't too tough on GitHub)

# ✅ **Terminal**

You must have seen someone in your life working on terminal and that Hacker-Feels 🤖!

Well Terminal is super good and I promise would make your regular tasks so simpler which you do on normal Graphical User Interface.

![CommandLine](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*-Jkl3K-i1tYGDLOB.gif)

Follow the below gist for some basic commands -

{% gist https://gist.github.com/dhairyaostwal/571fdad8f5352ece126382845b3b357f %}

You can also check manually on your Desktop, a folder named `newFolder` with `index.html` and `style.css` being created.

So you've created a project and want to push it to your repository on GitHub. I'll be showing you one of the ways by which you can push your code to your GitHub repo.

Assuming you've first created `newFolder` named repository on GitHub first and are working on that on your local computer.

Open your terminal and go inside the repository. Follow the above terminal commands for help -

{% gist https://gist.github.com/dhairyaostwal/d422a906af906b637799a12987260e29 %}

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So now challenge for you to create something which you love or contribute to an existing project on GitHub with issues or commits! 

Would love to know if this post has impacted and made a difference in your life 🌻!


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🌱 Before you leave -
 
Hey! My name is [Dhairya Ostwal](https://github.com/dhairyaostwal), a Computer Science student from India.

Help me reach a higher audience by sharing my work. Thanks 💪

Connect with me on **[LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/dhairyaostwal), [Instagram](https://instagram.com/dhairyaostwal), [Medium](https://medium.com/@dhairyaostwal), [GitHub](https://github.com/dhairyaostwal)**.