Hacktoberfest Recap!

#hacktoberfest23 #hack23contributor #hacktoberfest #opensource

I'm very happy to announce that four of my merged PRs have been approved by the hacktoberfest team and I have received my hall of fame entry and reward kit!

I have blogged about four out of the five PRs shown in the above list:

	Issue Type	Issue	PR	Blog
Week 1 PR	documentation fix	Issue	Corrected the linked to sample files in README.md	Blog
Week 2 PR	small bug fix	Issue	FIX: prevent sending one word question	Blog
Week 3 PR	proposed UI enhancement	Issue	Allow clicking checklist section titles to expand/collapse sections	Blog
Week 4 PR	intermediate-level enhancement	Issue	FEAT: Displayed total registered users in homepage	Blog
Additional PR	small bug fix	Issue	Hide Follow button for Lists created by Current User	N/A

I did an extra additional PR since my Week 1 documentation PR was not merged, and I wanted to have 4 merged PRs to complete hacktoberfest. Unfortunately I did not have the time to write an extra blog post on that PR.

My Progress in Open Source!

In week 1, I started out with little to no open source experience and never having done any open source contributions on any real world open source projects. My first pull request was fixing a few broken links in a README file. In week 2, I completed a small two line fix to add validation to a form. In week 3, I tested out a project and raised an issue myself, which I later fixed. In week 4, I wrote an API and implemented caching to localStorage.

At the beginning of this month, I was worried about whether I could find any issues that I have the knowledge to work on, but halfway through I started having a lot of fun coding. I even started looking for more challenging issues to work on.

I was able to work with many different technologies during hacktoberfest, and there are even more that are not listed here that I explored while looking for issues.

JavaScript
TypeScript
HTML
CSS
React framework
Valibot Library
Notion Database
Firebase Authentication
husky

Learnings

I learned a lot about the different technologies, how to set them up, and how to use code to interact with them. For example in week 2, I set up Notion database and Firebase for authentication. In week 4, I used Notion APIs to retrieve data from the database. I used a Valibot method in week 2 to add validation to a form. I learned about husky and how it was set up to automatically format my code with Prettier and ESLint.

I got to put the knowledge I learned in school to fix documentation, fix minor bugs in the UI (#67, #70), make enhancements in HTML pages, write event listeners, write APIs, and implement caching in localStorage.

Most importantly, I learned the process of contributing to Open Source code! This includes reading contribution guidelines, checking out existing coding conventions. Also communicating with the project owner about how they want a fix implemented, receiving feedback, and revising my code accordingly. This is all good preparation and practice for working as a software developer. I highly encourage everyone to participate in the next hacktoberfest :)