#Hacktoberfest 2019

Every year Digital Ocean puts on a hackathon in October called Hacktoberfest and this year they are partnering with DEV. As some may remember last October was the very end of my nanodegree program so I didn’t participate.

What is Hacktoberfest?

Hacktoberfest is a month long hackathon where people all around the world celebrate and contribute to open source code, basically code that is available for others to use. Common open source software includes WordPress, GIMP, Blender and Notepad++.

The goal is to make four quality pull requests over the course of the month. That’s basically one a week. The first 50,000 people to complete it get a t-shirt. Last year they gave away 46,088. I already did one this morning just to get the hang of the process of it all.

This year they are also showcasing some projects to help with climate change and helping prove open source software can help change the world and has an impact on everyone.

Why I’m participating

I’ve been wanting to get into open source for a couple months now to be able to use the skills I’ve been learning and interact with others’ code again since I miss that and I feel as though participating in something globally, like Hacktoberfest, will help motivate me to actually start.

Since it is my first time doing open source I’m going to start off with easier issues, but would I really be me if I didn’t add on more goals for myself?

Hacktoberfest Goals:

1. Contribute to one climate change- based project
2. Do one PR where I have to learn something new
3. One contribution using C++ (if I fail on any this will be it since it’s a super new language to me)
4. One contribution utilizing React or Vue frameworks

What are your October goals? Who else is participating? Have you contributed to open source before?