My Hacktoberfest 2021 experience

D'yara WilliamsD'yara Williams
3 min read

Hacktoberfest 2021 Recap

Hello to everyone reading this. 👋🏽 This was my first year participating in the seasonal event, and it was very exciting and fun for me. I enjoyed searching for an open-source project to contribute to while challenging myself to learn a new framework during the process. Being a first-timer I spent a lot of time getting to know what open-source is and how to be a participant.

Some helpful sites that helped me to find which issues on repos to contribute to.

Tech Stack used during this event:

  • HTML5, CSS3, Javascript, NextJS, Java, and Jekyll

Here is a list of my accepted contributions and what I contributed:

Vovoca: ⭐This is a Music Player and streaming app for royalty-free music, we call it VOVOCA⭐

The issue I found was Add Contributors Section. The maintainer wanted to add a developers section for contributors in their web app.

Live Preview of My Contribution

Requirements:

  • Developers should be changed to Team in Navigation Tab On the Developers page add new section Contributors below the Developer Sections.

  • I was also asked if this section of contributors could be dynamic by utilizing Github API.

Java: A beginner-friendly repo that features programs in Java.

The issue I found was Add data structure/algorithm programs in Java. The maintainer wanted an implementation of any data structure/algorithm in Java.

Requirements:

  • Before opening a PR it was asked that you checked to make sure the same program is not included in the repo before opening a Pull Request.

Hacktoberfest:

The issue I found was the Header issue. The maintainer wanted the navbar updated to look like this:

Navbar Example

Cloud_haiku:

Cloud Haiku is an open-source repository that collects haikus about the cloud and cloud technology and publishes these haikus on its website.

Requirements:

  • Compose a haiku in Markdown you should name your Markdown file your_haiku_title and put it in the /_haikus directory of the project
  • This is a Jekyll site, so you'll also need to include some boilerplate at the top of the file. Keep the layout as haiku
    • Next to the title: put the title of your haiku.
    • Next to the author: put your name (this can be just your first name or a pseudonym if you would like).

Live Preview of My Contribution

Conclusion:

Overall this was a great event to participate in. The new framework I learned was NextJS, a flexible React framework that gives you building blocks to create fast web applications. Although I have never worked with Github's API things turned out excellent, and I became knowledgeable about how to do so.

I plan on participating in the upcoming events for the valuable experiences of open-source, and to sharpen my skills in the field of engineering.

This official event swag/prizes for completion of 4 PRs consisted of:

  • a dev.to badge
  • stickers
  • one of two prizes: a Hacktoberfest 2021 t-shirt or get a tree planted in your name

hacktoberfest-t-shirt-2021.png

Thanks for reading this article, and congrats if you won some swag too. :)

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Written by

D'yara Williams
D'yara Williams

An enthusiastic Software Engineer specializing in Full-Stack Development.