Contributing to open-source, is it worth it? In this article, I will share with you why, as a software engineer, you should contribute to open-source: the impact contributing to open-source can have on your career including all the benefit you could get just from contributing.
1.Improve your coding skills
Indeed practice makes one perfect. when you contribute to open-source, you get the opportunity to do a lot of coding, which, in my perspective, is the best way to learn to program. You also get to watch people do programming, which, by far, is the second-best way to learn something (coding in this case). You find a lot of open-source projects from Github and other open-source hosting platforms like Gitlab and bitbucket. You get to add a feature to a project you want to contribute to by forking the repository, adding your implementation, and then making a pull request to the main repository for the owner of the project to merge your code. you can also contribute by fixing a bug in a project. There are a lot of first time issues beginners can contribute to fix. most open-source projects have guidelines for that. moreover, going through someone’s code improves your debugging skills: you get to know how people solve a given problem, the approach they took in solving the problem and more.
2. Networking
Contributing to open source project brings about networking. Networking (not in the sense of cables or infosec but in the sense of meeting new people) helps you to meet new people from different parts of the world. You meet people from Asia, America, Africa, and Europe who are also interested in coding. At a certain point in our career, we all need someone to direct us, someone to guide us, you can easily find this mentor within this network of people.
3. Outstanding portfolio
Building an outstanding portfolio is one major advantage that comes with contributing to open-source. You tend to attract recruiters with open source contributions included in your resume. Imagine adding “I contributed to the famous react project” in your resume. Your open-source contributions speak a lot about you, give a good impression about you and shows recruiters what you are capable of doing.
4. Reasons to never give up
Most people tend to give up after one or two job rejection. learning to code and applying for jobs needs a lot of motivation. There are a lot of parts to take to gain your first job. when you contribute to open-source, you find yourself in a community that will help you stay motivated. the community tends to encourage and motivate as you progress. You feel you are worth something when you are surrounded by people that motivate you to get better and learn more.