this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
63 points (100.0% liked)

Free and Open Source Software

17938 readers
139 users here now

If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Gaywallet@beehaw.org
alyaza@beehaw.org
63
How do I know when I'm good enough at coding to solve issues/ commit code related changes on open source projects? (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by wtry@lemm.ee to c/foss@beehaw.org
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I program in C and python, and even good first issue problems seem like I have to be Dennis Ritchie himself to solve them. How do I know when I'm ready to solve and commit to projects?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Buttons@programming.dev 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

There are (roughly) two types of projects:

  1. Projects that have coding standards that are documented. If you want to contribute to one of these projects then read the coding documentation and follow it. People will help you write code that fits the standards.

  2. Projects that don't have coding standards. When you look at such a project you'll see endless layers of shitty hacks that mostly work, sometimes. Add your own shitty hack to the pile and as long as everything still mostly works, you're good.

[โ€“] star_nova@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago

Seconding this and wanted to add:

It's more or less the repo owner's job to keep the codebase organized. So if they created a set of standards, follow them. If not, submit as clean a PR as you can.

load more comments (1 replies)