I am excited to have completed the OSCA Open Source Challenge. This is an initiative with the aim to support the tech ecosystem in Africa to contribute to open source projects. This challenge spanned for 3 weeks from 16th August 2021 to 6th September 2021, here are a few things I learned while participating in this challenge.
Meet with amazing people
During the course of this challenge, I had the opportunity to meet with amazing people like Edidiong Asikpo and Bolaji Ayodeji on a google meet where they shared tips and guides on contributing to open source. It was an interactive session, so we had time to ask them questions and get answers.
Contribute to Open source projects
I had the opportunity to contribute to numerous open-source projects which include.
- Design resources for developers by Brad Traversy
- Chryz-Hub Organization
- Chryz-Hub Organization
- Qeens Organization
- Radon Todo App
- Design resources for developers by Brad Traversy
- Zuri
These contributions varied from documentations to bugs fixes and adding new features, some were quite challenging and required more time to get merged by the PR lead. But they were all fun and exciting to contribute to.
Gained Experience
Participating in this challenge was awesome you tend to pick up good habits like reading the contributing guidelines in a project, if any, raising an issue before making a pull request, making your commit as minimal as possible for easier review.
A funny moment was this one time I saw a typo in the documentation of an open-source project, as a good contributor, I quickly raised an issue on it, properly explaining where I found the typo and steps to take to fix them. Another awesome contributor quickly worked on it without referencing the issue that was raised. 😅 It was funny because, contributing to open source can sometimes be competitive, so It is good to remember to follow the important guidelines regardless. That is how you stand out as a contributor.
PS: I did get a message from the maintainer apologizing for the PR that was made by another contributor. Though he didn't have to, it was totally fine but it is all a part of what makes Open source interesting and supportive for everyone.
Summary
This challenge was overall awesome and I am glad to have been a part of it. I look forward to contributing to more OSCA community projects in the near future. Thanks for reading.
Here are a few Important links/resources to check out if you're interested in this topic.