So I totally just read this amazing article on how to find issues to solve on GitHub… And I’ve found some repos that I am very interested in.
However, upon actually looking at the issues, the “I don’t know where the hell to start” thought keeps hitting my mind, and frankly I feel overwhelmed. Like I literally have not seen one “newbie issue” or issue marked even for beginners that I even remotely feel comfortable solving (aside from something completely worthless like correcting a typo in the readme lol)… Because I don’t know the codebases…
Can you please give me your best advice/strategies for this?
It has nothing to do with knowledge of the language, but when you are trying to solve an issue on a 500-file-large repo that you are completely unfamiliar with… It kinda overwhelms you.
Is this the kinda thing where I need to hang on the issues forums for a few weeks, play with the app, and learn the codebase slowly? Or is it something I should be able to do right away? Obviously, this varies by project but the vast majority of projects that Im into are quite sizeable.
Plus, I’m not really even familiar with some of the requirements and conventions to even contribute to half of them… The requirements for contributions alone can be overwhelming.
But at the same time, I’m ready to take on a project big time… I’ve spent 4 months now working my rear end off, and I have a pretty deep understanding of object-oriented programming, mainly in .NET/C#… But the language isn’t really the issue.