Tee or Tree fest ? - Hacktober dilemma
Tags: hacktoberfest, opensource, react, github
Published: 2020-10-20 13:40:31

## My Hacktoberfest experience (Powered by gifs)

Well, this was my first Hacktoberfest contest. Starting this year, I begin contributing to open source projects. I had few side projects of my own but I wanted to get involved in the **open source** vibe.

I got the opportunity to contribute to my first one from my job itself. We are working on a software which goes by the name of `ONOS`. While working on it , I stumbled upon a bug which broke the application when running on **TLS** and proposed a fix for the same. It got accepted by the community and this is where it started. 

Now **Hacktoberfest** is a celebration of open source. I really didn't know about this a year ago. This year, having been active on Linkedin and now Twitter as well, I was able to stay updated with the events happening.

After reading about it in a Linkedin post, I straightaway headed to the main website and skimmed over guidelines. So let's go through the process of how I searched for repos and made by contributions with my creativity and brain in a long weekend of 3 days :- 

**Brain** : 4 PR's in the month of October 🤔 ? Seems doable.

![Let's go](https://mrwgifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Goku-Thumbs-Up-Reaction-Gif-On-Dragon-Ball-Z.gif)

**Creativity** : But wait which repository man !!!!

**Brain** : You remember that time when Bucky Roberts just popped up on Linkedin about a new project that's going to revolutionize payments and stuff ? 

**Creativity** : Ahhhh yeah wait how do you even remember this ? 

**Brain** : That's the only damn job I have besides thinking. Now go over to the Slack link that he mentioned in the post and see if you can find something there. 

**Creativity** - Oh alright chill dude !!. OPENING SLACK in 10,9,8,7,6...

**Brain** : 

![Lord](https://media.tenor.com/images/09462bcc2bdbe22915160d8d24639933/tenor.gif)

**Creativity** : 3,2,1 - BOOOM!!!

**Brain** : Yeah so just focus on the keyword - **repo** or **github** you know across all channels.

**Creativity** : SPOTTED !!!. I see two repos😍  


**Brain** : Good catch 👍. Let's explore the first one's issues on github. 

**Creativity** : Wow I actually spotted one which I think I can do. There is horizontal page movement of the website in mobile view for small screen devices like iPhone SE.

{% github https://github.com/thenewboston-developers/Website/issues/220 %} 

**Brain** : Great let's fix this man. Fork the repo, clone it, create a feature branch, do the fixes, push to remote and raise a pull request from forked to main repo. 

**Creativity** : Yeah I saw you going through contributing guide. Don't act smart with me. 

**Brain** : 

![brain angry](https://thumbs.gfycat.com/AgileShortAegeancat-size_restricted.gif)

  *(After some research and fixing)*
<br/>

**Creativity** : FIXED IT!!! I am raising my first PR for Hacktober 🔥.

**Brain** : Look at you all fired up !!. Well good for us. But it's past midnight you know. Let's sleep.

**Creativity** : Yeah RIGHT!! (Couldn't sleep in the anticipation of whether the PR got merged or not 😅)

**Brain** : You ruined the night moron !!. Anyway let's just check on the PR. 

**Creativity** : OMG it actually got merged. 

![First PR](https://i.imgur.com/l8tXwzb.gif)

**Brain** : That's great and all but 3 more PR's to go dude! It's time for the second repo that we saw.

**Creativity** : Yup I see an issue for it as well. This one requires more logical tinkering around. 

{% github https://github.com/thenewboston-developers/Account-Manager/issues/363 %}

**Brain** : Yeah I should probably take the lead here. 

![professional](https://media1.giphy.com/media/QaLmoeVI1KLWngQM9o/200.gif)

*(After understanding the repo and the issue)*

**Brain** : Yup let's start with the code and try some variations of the fix. 

**Creativity** : Yeah this is where I step in 😎. 

![creativity](https://media1.tenor.com/images/083918c655bfd81d8211501c94257789/tenor.gif?itemid=14388191)

  *After some research and fixing*

**Creativity** : Raised another PR!!

![2nd PR](https://i.makeagif.com/media/4-02-2018/-xoNiN.gif)

**Brain** : Halfway there man !! and also let's not wait for the merging and meanwhile explore more repos.

**Creativity** : Fair enough.

  *(After seeing many fake repos and many brilliant ones together)*

**Creativity** : Yeah this is confusing tbh. I am just going to open Linkedin now and see something new........ahhhhh wait a minute. Someone just posted an update on Hacktoberfest guidelines getting strict and stuff. 

![nervous](https://media3.giphy.com/media/DUuyU3KyYGLNS/giphy.gif)

**Brain** : Whattt?? Let's head over to the site and see for ourself.

  *(After reading updated guidelines)*

**Brain** : I see it's just opt-in now via Hacktoberfest topic on the repository and merging or closing a PR with `hacktoberfest-accepted` label would work.

**Creativity** : But wait ???? What about our 2 PRs ? 

![Hacktober guideline udpate](https://keyassets-p2.timeincuk.net/wp/prod/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2017/04/anigif_enhanced-946-1433453114-7.gif)

**Brain** : What a cry baby really !! All these guidelines apply post OCT 3 12:00 PM UTC. So our PRs are safe. 

**Creativity** : UTC?? What's that in IST ?? Did we miss by seconds? 

**Brain** : Dude just 

![chandler_shut_up](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1b/57/87/1b5787ef7c8c5c131f72a6f433633f5f.gif)

Just continue with the PRs for now. Let me process all this. You keep calm.

**Creativity** : Okay okay !!. Well while crying, I came across this good repo with **Hacktoberfest** topic and it has an issue open to implement DARK mode. 

{% github https://github.com/amanjagdev/react-builder/issues/17 %}

**Brain** : That's great now!! Time to use context (React pun)!!.

**Creativity** : But there a couple of people already solving the issue. They have a head start. Should I still proceed ?

**Brain** : Yeah man! If this interests us, this would be worth an effort and maybe we will learn something new. So let's go now !

![let's go](https://media1.giphy.com/media/3oKIPjzfv0sI2p7fDW/giphy.gif)

*(After a while with implemented dark mode)*

**Creativity** : Another PR down the line !!. 3/4 of Hacktoberfest is done.

**Brain** : Yeah let's call it a day maybe. Our pace is good enough. We want to make quality contributions and so patience is necessary as well.

**Creativity** : That's very logical and correct !! I hate you. 

![roll eyes](https://media2.giphy.com/media/14smAwp2uHM3Di/200.gif)

<br/>
*After some time*
<br/>

**Creativity** : Dude this PR got merged too :D:D:D:D:D.

![3rd PR](https://media1.tenor.com/images/10e9e858f1ac5006bc09d5cc5f440478/tenor.gif?itemid=13379936)

**Brain** : Woah awesome man. This is good. Btw - the Account Manager one didn't get merged but that's because they realized that their code needs refactoring after seeing our changes. 

**Creativity** : No problem. Our contribution worked nevertheless :D. BTW another issue opened from the same repo and it's for implementing responsiveness. 

{% github https://github.com/amanjagdev/react-builder/issues/21 %}

**Brain** : Yes I have some good ideas as well. Let's discuss them with the maintainer over issue comments and implement whatever gets decided. 

*After discussing changes and implementing them - btw this took longer than expected*

**Creativity** : And that's a wrap on the minimum PR's required to be eligible for Hacktober 😇. 

*(BTW this also got merged)*

![4th PR](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/943937477572349076/31A81F703A4D0C32F841844DFC946E758C8A4FC2/)

**Brain** : This has been a great experience. We made 4 PRs out which 3 got merged and all this happened within span of 3 days. You were excellent man!!

**Creativity** : Dude thanks a lot :D. Couldn't have done it without you. You were mind-blowing !! Let's just hope our PRs pass the 14 day review period and we make it within 70,000 peeps. 

**Brain** : We will don't worry.

*After 14 days*

**Creativity** : Lalalalalla! We made it man !! Time to get the tee or the tree or the tee or the tree ??? Dayum. Should have thought about this !!

![confused](https://media1.tenor.com/images/dd077810e1be4283d7d9e3821a963917/tenor.gif?itemid=9315420)

**Brain** : Don't worry I was prepared for this. We are going to get that Tee because it's our first time and we are going to plant the trees by paying for them. I saw this on a Linkedin post. What you say ?

**Creativity** : Now that's why you're the brain of it all !!! Brilliant. Let's do it. 

![green](https://media.giphy.com/media/l1KVcrdl7rJpFnY2s/giphy.gif)

*After placing the order for tee and planting few trees*

**Creativity** : You know in the congratulations mail, there was this recommendation to write about our Hacktoberfest experience on **DEV Community**. 

**Brain** : Who got the time for that ?

![Bye bye](https://media.tenor.com/images/a74a6288d5e49264c8af20b54b0a15c0/tenor.gif)