October 31st. That means it's Halloween 🎃, but it also marks the end of Hacktoberfest23. I had the privilege of taking part in Hacktoberfest 2023 this year and it was an intimidating, yet rewarding experience, learning about how to contribute to open-source projects and improving my knowledge as a developer. I will be recapping my progress for my first Hacktoberfest!

PRs

#1 - Python Hunt

• Issue, PR, Blog Post

For my first issue, I worked on creating a webpage in a Django project that describes key Python variables, for Python beginners. The webpage primarily was built with JavaScript, but Python was used elsewhere and I needed to understand how to set up the route for my created webpage. Despite it being my first time working with Python and Django, the Django documentation was well written and I was able to learn what I needed to in order to implement this feature.

#2 - Starwar Archive

• Issue, PR, Blog Post

For my second issue, I dived into React and worked on creating a page that displayed detailed information of a Star Wars character. This was probably my most challenging issue that I worked on this Hacktoberfest, as I needed to learn how to use useQuery and useQueries and majority of my time went into this. Additionally, adding in the necessary CSS tags to make an ideal page layout took a lot of trial and error. It was a great issue to work on and I definitely gained some experience with React apps.

#3 - Software Engineering Unlocked Podcast

• Issue, PR, Blog Post

For my third issue, I worked on improving a transcript for a podcast episode. This issue was the one that shocked me the most as I went into this issue thinking it wouldn't take much time, but I had to rewind the recording multiple times for each section to make sure everything matched between the recording and transcript. Although this wasn't a code related issue, I learned a lot by having to research the terms used and just by listening to the recording, as the episode was quite informational.

#4 - Back to Starwar Archive

• Issue, PR, Blog Post

For my fourth and final Hacktoberfest issue, I went back to a project that I worked on earlier in the month (#2). This time I worked on a issue to create a page for each starship that can be pulled from SWAPI. What was interesting to see while working on this issue was that I needed to improve the changes I made from PR #2 in order to add my changes to this issue.

Final Thoughts

Contributing to open-source projects was quite daunting for me initially, but participating in Hacktoberfest 2023 was an amazing experience and it really helped boost my confidence as a developer. If you had told me a few months before today, that I would be able to successfully complete four pull requests for multiple open-source projects, I would've said you were crazy, but here I am 🤩! My only regret was that I was unable to sequentially find issues that gradually increased in difficulty, but this only pushes me further to continue to find issues that will help me improve my developer skills.

Although my Hacktoberfest23 journey comes to an end, I hope that my open-source journey continues for a long time. Looking forward to Hacktoberfest24 and seeing you on my next blog post!