Hello everyone! Welcome to a new post about open source! For my first pull request during Hacktoberfest I chose to work on a front-end issue for Telescope an open source web server and client application for aggregating and presenting a timeline of Seneca's open source blogs.

Finding the Right Issue to Start on

When I was choosing my issue I wanted to choose something that was not easy but, would pull me out of my comfort zone. So I ended up choosing a front-end issue would that would allow me to get my feet wet in contributing in a big open source project. This ended up being a perfect first issue as not only did it bring me out of my comfort zone but once I solved the issue it felt really good.

The Issue Solving Process

Setting up the environment for the front-end was not as difficult as I thought it would be. After I got the development environment up and running, I wanted to replicate the bug. Since this was a deprecation warning I just checked the console to make sure it was there for me. Now that I found Material-UI: The css function is deprecated. Use the styleFunctionSx instead. I checked the stack trace in the console to find the file yelling about this warning. I eventually found a file within the Material UI folder that was causing the problem. I was confused as Material UI was causing the problem so I thought maybe the solution was to update it. After updating it, I ran into a few more easy to fix deprecation issues and was ready to create my pull request.

Pull Request Time!

I tested my code and realized one of the snapshots for the website were not passing. I got very confused and tried to work on the code until it could get fixed but, nothing was working. I started to get worried as I didn't understand why it wouldn't pass the test and decided to create a pull request. The pull request was reviewed and asked for the code to be changed to have passing tests. I know it wouldn't get accepted but I was hoping that it would be easier for people to help me if there was a pull request. After the pull request I jumped into the slack requesting for some help with the failing test and got amazing help from the community. The community told me I had to update the snapshot as I changed the front-end with the update. Once I fixed the snapshot things started working and tests were passing!

Conclusion

In conclusion, working in open source is very scary because you are throwing your code out in the open. Also if the issue seems very small one, it still can spiral into something more than a fix for a deprecated function. One thing I would change is asking for help. It is so important to ask for help! When you ask for help when struggling it makes things much easier! If you're looking for an open source project, I would highly consider working on Telescope!

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