How can a new developer get involved in open-source projects?
14th February 2012
My answer to How can a new developer get involved in open-source projects? on Quora
I was going to say the same thing. Find a useful project in GitHub (preferably one that clearly has an active maintainer), fork it, fix a bug (look at the project’s issue tracker) then make a pull request.
It’s best to do this on a project that you are personally using, since then you’ll have a better understanding of what needs to be improved.
More recent articles
- The Axios supply chain attack used individually targeted social engineering - 3rd April 2026
- Highlights from my conversation about agentic engineering on Lenny's Podcast - 2nd April 2026
- Mr. Chatterbox is a (weak) Victorian-era ethically trained model you can run on your own computer - 30th March 2026