Top 6 Open Source Projects For Beginners To Explore
All budding and aspiring developers often have the same origin story — endlessly scrolling through YouTube videos of freeCodeCamp, sitting through playlists of coding lectures, googling the best online courses, materials, references etc. But sadly, to label yourself as a coder, this process alone is not enough. All of these tutorials and materials only impart knowledge to the learner. It is hardly a source of hands-on experience and practical application skills.
That is why all beginner developers should commit to projects that help them apply their skills and learn more in the process. These projects can be a solo effort for them to test their skills, or as a team, with fellow developers from around the world.
Open source projects are an excellent way for coders and developers to test their mettle and learn more advanced methods. In an open-source project, there will be many contributors of varying skill levels and expertise.
Each contributor adds to the project according to their capabilities, and a combined effort leads to the fulfilment of the goal. Therefore, it is the best way for any individual to learn, gain practical experience, and understand what it’s like to work with a team of peers.
The best way to get started is to find GitHub issues that have a “newcomers”, “good first issue” or “easy” label. These issues are comparatively easy and therefore could serve to be a good starting point. Also, you can choose repositories that are beginner-friendly. Therefore, we will be discussing the top 6 open-source projects, especially for beginners so that you can get started!
1. Mozilla Firefox Source Tree
Mozilla’s Firefox Source Tree contains dozens of projects on which you can get your hands dirty. Not only are they welcoming new contributors, but they also provide extensive documentation on how to contribute to their projects. Since the whole process seems long, they have a separate and dedicated channel where you can ask doubts and ask for help. On their documentation page, they have a column where they have specially mentioned websites, bugs, open issues, etc. for students and people who want to contribute to open source.
2. Firefox DevTools
This is another popular project of Mozilla that contains a set of web developer tools that are built into the Firefox web browser. Core tools include Page Inspector, Web Console, JavaScript Debugger, Network Monitor, Performance Tools, Responsive Design Mode, Accessibility Inspector, Application panel, and many more. This means so many projects to contribute to! To contribute to their codebase, you can join their community which explains how to get started, and they also provide a tool that helps to find bugs that you can resolve.
3. Pandas Package
This powerful Python package is widely used in data manipulation and analysis and if you’re into data science, data analysis, or machine learning, you would have definitely used it. You can also contribute to the project activities as it currently has more than three thousand open issues to be resolved! The project is open to bug fixes, documentation improvements, and bug reports. They have a contributing guide and if the code seems confusing to you at first, try resolving issues in the documentation.
4. Scikit-Learn Library
It is a Python module built over SciPy for machine learning. It also has a huge number of open issues and provides an issue tracker to get the latest updates about open issues so that you could jump right in to contributing. The project welcomes contributors of all levels and has a development guide that lists information about contributing to the code base, documentation, tests, and more!
5. TypeScript
Microsoft’s TypeScript is a programming language for application-scale JavaScript that adds optional types to support tools for large-scale JavaScript applications. Currently, having close to five thousand open issues, it could be a great place to start since you can encounter all types of issues, be it beginner or expert. As a contributor, you could submit bugs, review source code changes, and contribute to bug fixes. You can also join their Discord community in case you are stuck somewhere!
6. Pytorch Library
It is one of the most famous deep learning and machine learning libraries which is majorly used as a replacement for NumPy and as a deep learning reach platform providing a great deal of flexibility and speed. Since it has a 90-day release period, you can file a new issue if you find a bug. You can also contribute new features, utility functions, or extensions to the code by opening a new PR with discussion. It also has more than five thousand open issues, and therefore it could be a good place to start!
The open source community is the best place for a newbie in the field of coding and developing. There you have all the necessary tools, materials and people to take you forward on your learning journey. The projects given above are some of the best beginner friendly repositories out there, perfect to start growing your developing skills. So what are you waiting for…Get going!!
