How to start contributing to open source projects

Self taught, four months doing tutorials and online courses.

Still have a lot to learn, BUT Ive been reading that one of the better ways to learn how to code is to contribute to open source projects. I really like this idea, BUT I know quite sure how to approach this. How to start?

I understand the basics of GitHub, but I don’t know how to contribute, I see a lot of really cool projects but when I open the code it is overwhelming.

Any advice? Any nice cool easy projects for beginners to contribute?

You want to contribute to things that you actually use. Trying to pick some random project that you don’t have any personal connection to is unlikely to go well. For an open source project that you use (a library, a tool, a webapp, freeCodeCamp), look at their repository. See if they have a README. See if that README has guidelines for contributing (FCC does, but not all OS projects do). Look at the GitHub Issues. Start investigating the codebase and seeing where you can make improvements.

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