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Comment by ExtremisAndy | Hacker News Reader

I have never contributed to open source because I have always been so impressed with the source code I’ve seen in these projects. It intimidates me! I’m a self-taught programmer, and while I’ve certainly written thousands of lines of useful code (useful to me, in any case), I know it isn’t “correct” (as in, idiomatic or ideally what you should write). If I could ever get to the place where I trusted my own work, I’d love to contribute to open source because I do have a few projects in mind (mainly useful to folks in the humanities) that I know I can make, but I’m just too embarrassed at the low quality/ugliness of my code.

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Start fixing typos in the docs and error messages in projects you use.

Try to send bug reports and look at how they fix it. Sometimes it is even difficult to find the file that must be fixed. Perhaps next time you spot a bug, it is in the same file and you can fix it.

Start with small changes, I recommend not investing more than one of two afternoons because the maintainer may not merge it. Perhaps because the code is bad, perhaps because it doesn't follow the (implicit hidden) spirit of the project, perhaps because the maintainer is a moron.

Try to follow the nearby code style. Each project/maintainer has preferences. If you break them, the maintainer may ask nicely to fix them before merging.

(If they are not nice, just forget about the project. You have lost only two afternoons.)

(Whitespace changes is a hot topic, try to avoid whitespace changes unless you know the local policy.)

> I know it isn’t “correct” (as in, idiomatic or ideally what you should write).

That's why there are maintainers who will tell you what you should change in order for your patch to be accepted upstream. This happens all the time, just go and read the mailing list or active Pull Requests of the project. (This is a good idea anyway, as reading through pull requests and comments will give you a good idea how 'things are done' in that project)

And don't worry, most maintainers are usually very friendly to newcomers. :)

> but I’m just too embarrassed at the low quality/ugliness of my code.

If you contribute something to the Open Source community that works and is useful, then you might find some people who really appreciate the effort you went to.

...regardless of code quality...

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