Hacktoberfest 2023 — from a junior engineer perspective
I got my Python backend engineer offer one month ago, and I knew Hacktoberfest during the preparation for Canonical. 如果對文章有興趣，想要看中文版，可以到這裡觀看：GitHub.io
TL;DR
Don’t read it; go to Hacktoberfest to make great PRs.
Previously on Tyler
It’s been a long time from writing articles on Medium. Last week, the article about the coordinate system got 69 views, which was a lot in history, and I realized that I’d have written more here. (Though I still have Chinese posts on my own github.io). In short, I graduated from Astronomy, failed PhD applications to Unis in the UK, and started my Python backend engineer position 2 months ago.
Thanks for all the views! Hope the code helps.
Hacktoberfest
While preparing for Canonical, I realized the stars or the PRs are one important metric to evaluate an engineer, especially for OpenSource-related positions.
OpenSource projects or repositories are an important thing in the coding community. Most of us are used to code starting with `import`, but where does the library come from? Most of them are open-source projects. Developers made them for free, for the public, and accepted great PRs to improve, fix, and enhance the library.
The framework I used for my static blog is Hexo, which provides a fantastic way to create your own posts and host them on GitHub. Hexo is a great example demonstrating the importance of open-source projects.
Hacktoberfest is all about giving back to those projects, sharpening skills, and celebrating all things open source, especially the people that make open source so special.
How to participate
I’m sorry I don’t have experience with this since I knew it this year. But I collected all the information I could find.
Date: You may register from September 26 to October 31 (Starting on October 1)
Platform: You can make PRs via Github or Gitlab
Reward: This year, there are no T-shirts but instead digital rewards. This may be due to spam PR/MRs in the past and the cost issues. You need to accomplish 4 PR/MRs in total to get the reward.
To find those participating repos, simply search Hacktoberfest. You should see a list of repos with the tag Hacktoberfest, which is labelled hacktoberfest-accepted. There are over 100K repos with the tag!
What to avoid
- Dummy changes, such as removing whitespace, fixing typos or optimizing images
- DO NOT take other’s work, e.g., branch, PRs, commits for your own credit
The spirit of open source projects, to me, is to make the community a better place and create positive influences. Instead of focusing on the prize you’ll get after 4 PR/MRs, enjoying the fest is also important!
What to expect
Although it’s the 10th anniversary, I expect fewer participants this year regarding the change of reward. However, with respect to the booming of generative AI, the issues, i.e., the accepted PRs, would be more challenging. Surely, we still could find trivial problems to solve, but overall, the difficulty is higher and requires more experience in coding.
In other words, one participant should expect considerable growth in this journey. This event is for fun, for the community, and for good deeds.
There should be one article after Oct., which will be the thoughts about participating in this event. Looking forward to my first time at Hacktoberfest.
