Thank you for sticking with me throughout this series! This is my final post, where I’ll summarize everything I did for Hacktoberfest. In total, I made four contributions across four different open-source projects. This was a very engaging event, and I’d love to participate again next year.

Progression

I wanted to work on a backend issue, but I spent a lot of time looking for the perfect issue. Eventually, I decided to start simple and get the flow going by making an easier contribution. I began with adding documentation for a small open-source project.

Next, I contributed to another project by adding a CI/CD pipeline, implementing a lint checker that runs every time a new PR is opened. For my third PR and first coding contribution, I fixed the navbar responsiveness for a frontend application built on Next.js. Finally, for my last and most complex PR, I worked on adding a new feature to a Python library built on top of requests.

Learnings

This event helped me pick up a lot of new technical skills, which I’m sure I’ll use as a software developer, both after graduation and in future open-source contributions.

• Glance over the repository and make sure you understand the general folder structure and the purpose of the files in the root. I didn’t do this initially, and an answer to one of my questions was in there the whole time. Following this tip would have saved me a lot of time.
• Before committing and pushing, go over your changes to avoid pushing random debug logs or comments left over from development.
• If you know your solution isn’t optimal, don’t implement it. STOP and work toward a better solution. Don’t rely on someone else to fix your mistakes later on.

Conclusion

Participating in Hacktoberfest has been a fantastic learning experience. Not only did I improve my technical skills, but I also gained valuable insights into the open-source workflow and community collaboration. Each contribution taught me something new, from understanding project structures to building clean, effective solutions. I’m excited to apply these skills in my future projects and look forward to diving into more contributions next year. Thank you for following along, and happy coding!