The post on dev.to about how newbies should blog more was not the reason I actually pushed commits, but it was for writing this.

I gotta start with that I’m the kind who gets hyped quick and can lose interest just as quick. What was I expecting? Feedback. Something. Even getting yelled at is better than being ignored, and if I happen to find a welcoming community where I feel I can contribute meaningfully, I’d probably stay there for good.

My reasons for not participating is that I’m yet to find a community that “buzzes” and I want to contribute to something I use myself. Not that sure about the latter, but it definitely makes things easier (and more familiar).

Many people seem to hesitate before posting or attempting to contribute to open source software for reasons I can’t really understand personally (fear of looking stupid etc). Many obediently start from fixing “fit for beginner” bugs.

I tried that too. Sure, it wasn’t anything especially easy to dive into, so I didn’t expect miracles (rather expected a ban or something equivalent). I found a minor bug on the Ruby language’s bug tracker that I felt I could possibly fix even if I had to use C (and I’ve never used C before). The guides on how to contribute weren’t exactly verbose, so I put together a hacky fix and asked if something along those lines would fit. I’m still waiting for any form of response and starting to lose interest.

I also opened a pull request on Rails for a minor API change that I personally would find very convenient on the job. Rails’s guides were much more helpful than Ruby’s for sure, but after a few days of no response to my suggestion on the mailing list, I just went ahead and put the PR up. Still no response, and I can only hope someone will notice someday.

Then again, it’s only been 2 months since I started coding for a living, so the road ahead is still very exciting.