Switch into tech

Stage 5 · Lesson 4 of 7

A first open source contribution

Proof without a CS degree

projects are public projects that anyone can read and help improve. An accepted shows three things. You can read code you did not write, follow a project's rules and take review feedback.

That is daily work in any tech job. Start small: a fix, a test, a translation, or an issue labelled for newcomers. Read the , and comment on the issue before starting.

Keep your (your proposed change) small and focused. Your background can help here too. Projects in health, education, finance or science often need people who understand the field. The Sefism Open source roadmap covers this in depth.

Common trapopening trivial pull requests just to collect contributions, which wastes maintainers' time, and they notice.

A question to check yourself, an AI practice session and 1 cheat sheet entry come when you add the roadmap to your account. Add it

Resources for this stage

Start with

Practise

  • First Contributions

    A guided first pull request, so your first real contribution is not your first time using Git

  • Good First Issue

    Beginner-friendly issues in active projects once you have done a practice pull request

Keep handy

  • Kaggle Datasets

    Public datasets from many industries, often including the field you came from

  • Hashnode

    A free developer blog for your write-ups and case studies

Also worth your time

  • Learn In PublicRead

    The short essay behind learning in public, and why it keeps paying off

Mark this stage as not done?