New Contributors To Open Source, Please Blog More
Tags: blogging, opensource
Published: 2016-09-14 21:33:38

---
title: New Contributors To Open Source, Please Blog More
published: true
description: 
cover_image: http://i.imgur.com/cNncnpL.png
tags: blogging,open-source
---

I wroteÂ [this post](https://medium.freecodecamp.com/a-beginners-very-bumpy-journey-through-the-world-of-open-source-4d108d540b39#.9qxdyihio)Â a while back to help newbie contributors realize that theyâ€™re not alone in feeling lost & dejected when they donâ€™t understand a huge code base or how different modules interact with one another. There are a lot of us in the same boat. And itâ€™s okay to be there. So many people reached out to me telling me that they were motivated by my post to start or resume contributing. A few maintainers were also encouraged to go back and review some pull requests after reading it. I couldnâ€™t have asked for a better response!

After a fair amount of deliberation, I reached the conclusion that the main reason for such a reaction is that the dialogue has been one-sided for a very long time. There have been a lot of posts by maintainers on how to get new contributors involved in their projects & all the things they can do to make their project beginner-friendly from tagging of issues to setting clear contribution guidelines, etc., tons of guides on how to start contributing, questions on Quora and other platforms, but there arenâ€™t as many posts by newcomers on how it pans out when they start to contribute. Iâ€™ve gone through many of those guides myself but it isnâ€™t as helpful as a fellow newbie contributorâ€™s firsthand experience with a project they started contributing to, the path they followed, what they expected & what came out of it. Itâ€™s difficult to strike a balance when only one party is communicating.

Thus, I want to encourage all new contributors to document their experience if they wish to help us establish this balance. I assure you itâ€™s worth your time & patience. While writing, you canâ€™t gloss over the details, you canâ€™t brush what you think is not required under the carpet. It forces you to perceive things as they are & not how you think theyâ€™re & put them into perspective. It also helps you realize where you started & how far youâ€™ve come. Write to learn better.

I know a lot of folks will be thinkingâ€Šâ€”â€ŠI donâ€™t know enough to write about a particular topic. You donâ€™t have to be an expert at a topic to write about it. Write what you know. If youâ€™re wrong, someone will point that out & you get to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. Itâ€™s a win-win situation. Believe me, nothing feels better than knowing something you wrote helped a person who is struggling, be it with a technical topic, motivation or inspiration. Even if it doesnâ€™t help a lot of people, itâ€™ll certainly help you at the end of the day.

I was scared of all the things I mentioned above & Iâ€™ve been a couple of drafts piled up, waiting to be published for the fear that theyâ€™re not good enough just yetâ€Šâ€”â€Šthey can be better, more polished, more technical. Iâ€™ve been surfing the internet for inspiration to write better or even just find topics that I feel qualified enough to write about. Thatâ€™s when I stumbled across a postâ€Šâ€”â€Š[Write An Excellent Programming Blog](https://emptysqua.re/blog/write-an-excellent-programming-blog/)Â byÂ [A. Jesse Jiryu Davis](https://medium.com/u/4bd421fec9d9). I keep going back to it & re-reading it if I feel like I donâ€™t have a topic or feel ill-qualified enough to write about what I know. Another place I look for inspiration all the time isÂ [Julia Evans](https://medium.com/u/152f65dab15)â€™Â [blog](http://jvns.ca/)â€Šâ€”â€Šher posts are short, simple, to the point & a joy to read & still she manages to make you learn something interesting with almost every post. I occasionally end up onÂ [Joel Spolsky](https://medium.com/u/869c7e626b83)â€™s[Joel On Software](http://joelonsoftware.com/)Â &Â [Jeff Atwoodâ€™s](https://twitter.com/codinghorror)Â [blog](https://blog.codinghorror.com/). Theyâ€™ve some high quality content on all sorts of things related to tech & I like visiting them once in a while. If youâ€™ve a favorite programming blog you visit often/regularly, please let me know in the comments.Â :)

Look around for inspiration, I am sure youâ€™ll find lots of it since a lot of quality articles on various things related to tech get published everyday. If you donâ€™t feel confident enough to start writing on technical topics, itâ€™s okay, youâ€™ll get there slowly & steadilyâ€Šâ€”â€Šstart with just documenting your journeyÂ :

- How you got involved with the organisation youâ€™re contributing to
- What kind of community they have & how welcoming it is for new contributors
- The project you chose to work with & what went into deciding the same
- How difficult was it to set up the local development environment, where you got stuck & how you crossed that hurdle
- How you found the first issue to work on
- If you had a mentor assigned, how was your experience working with him/her & the kind of help you received
- What you expected open source to be like versus how it actually turned out to be
- Any advice youâ€™d like to give to fellow newbie contributors once youâ€™ve gotten your feet sufficiently wet
- How to behave & what kind of questions to ask in a organisationâ€™sÂ [IRC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat)channel orÂ [Gitter](https://gitter.im/)Â room

These are just some topics I can think of off the top of my head. You donâ€™t have to write daily or weekly or follow a strict time-bound schedule. Write when you feel like you feel youâ€™ve something worth telling, something that can help others & in turn help you too, be it a small victory or a large contribution.

Slowly & steadily, as you gain more experience, you can begin to write on technical topics depending on your skill set. It can be something youâ€™ve been working on or with for a significant amount of time or your journey to acquire a new language/framework/library. At this point, you might wonder, too much has been written on that topic already, what more can I possibly add to it that hasnâ€™t already been said? It doesnâ€™t matter how much has been written & by whom, it never stopped anyone from writing another article from their very own viewpoint, based on their understanding. Everything you write has your very own perspective which might greatly differ from another personâ€™s despite the same topic. Itâ€™s all in the detailsâ€Šâ€”â€Šhow you break a topic down, how you approach & understand it. So donâ€™t let the fact that there is too much already written about a particular topic deter you from writing your own.

Therefore, I want you to write & extensively document your experience extensively for you to learn better, become a better developer & possibly help a lost, intimidated newbie contributor in the future searching the internet frantically to find their way around the vast world of open source software.

P.S.- If youâ€™ve any additional ideas, Iâ€™d like to know them & possibly add to this post as well.Â :)

Thanks toÂ [Pawan Dubey](https://medium.com/u/bf986335bdb3)Â andÂ [Quincy Larson](https://medium.com/u/17756313f41a)Â for helping me refine this article.

This article was originally published on [Medium](https://medium.com/@shubheksha/new-contributors-to-open-source-please-blog-more-920af14cffd#.lqdj1roy0).