For 2016, I challenged myself to contribute to 10 different open source projects on github.
I started looking for a project to work on by scanning through the list of trending github projects. I eventually decided to work on Proselint. The purpose of this project is to develop a tool that could analyze writing - it's a linter for prose.
I want to be a better writer, so a tool to improve my writing would be good to know about and to use. It would also allow me to 'dog-food' software. I like projects where I'm also the user.
Looking through the github page, there were a lot of existing small issues, many of which were tagged 'Easy'. I eventually chose to fix an issue where I would add a check that looks for paragraphs that start with the word 'But'. It seemed like a good balance of an easy problem that I could solve, but not a completely trivial code update.
I eventually made the code change, got my pull request accepted, and became an open source contributer. It was a really small update, but even still, I learned and was reminded of a number of things.
- pip is a really cool package management program. I should incorporate it into my projects more.
- regex is powerful. I shouldn't be afraid of it.
- nosetests is a great way to run tests. I should use this more.
- I need to figure out a good way to organize files/code better. Having a good structure makes things much easier to find and update.
- Normally, gvim is my go to text editor, but for this new project Atom with the vim plugin might be a better option. It's much easier to navigate across files and folders and it has some auto-complete to move things along.
This was my first open source contribution adventure, and it was fun, inspirational (for me), and educational. For my next projects, I will look for a variety of projects (different languages, different applications, etc ...). I think the variation will teach me a lot.
As they say, it's certainly better to give than to receive.
