the secret to getting started on an open source project:
- the easier projects to contribute to is projects you use or have used, or have used alternatives, and that you care about
- read the contribution guide if there is any!
- join the slack, IRC, discord / whatever communication tools they use, read the discussions!
- clone the project, make sure it runs locally, and if there are tests, run them! Then, use the tests to figure out parts of the codebase that interest you and work your way UP from them! Tests honestly are a great way to see the critical paths and components of a codebase, so working your way up from them is usually every effective
- Tinker with the codebase! Tweak things, see how it behaves, itll force you to interact with specific components of it and learn about them. You can also check out solved issues’ PR locally and look at the entire call path, how the PR’s code is ran and from where, to start mapping out the lands.
- look through a few solved issues on github, check out the PRs, spend time on understanding why and how these things were fixed
- if you want to contribute, but dont know where to start, DM one of the maintainers and ask for easy starting points: they’ll know what is hard and what is simple and get help you get started
- At first, even super issues will be hard. It’ll take time to hack around, you’ll need to ask questions, you might open a few PRs that get closed, but no one will ever look badly at someone trying to help. Just communicate that you’re new and this is YOUR attempt, and ask them about what THEY would do