How to Open Source with Richard Schneeman

Getting your first contribution to an open source project is a lot harder than many make it seem, but fear not future contributors! Richard Schneeman joins the show to talk to Andrew and Julie about getting into open source contribution, and his new book, How to Open Source. Ready to contribute but don't even know where to start? Go ahead and download this episode now to find out!
Timestamps

[0:40] Andrew just finished giving his BridgetownConf 2022 talk
[0:55] Richard introduces himself and talks about a feature he added that will be coming out in Ruby 3.2
[2:20] Andrew asks Julie if she was ever obsessed like him about getting a commit into Rails, which launches into a discussion with Richard about contributing to Rails and how he paired with Aaron Patterson.
[5:20] Richard shares how he got started contributing to Rails on a regular basis, which led to creation of CodeTriage.\
[9:00] Andrew shares how he began contributing to open source through baby steps by replying to issues in some of the libraries and tools he used.
[9:53] Julie mentions that getting to know the types of issues that come into projects you want to contribute to can be a big help and Richard adds some more reasons why this is very helpful for new contributors.
[11:30] Richard explains how to make micro contributions like hearting an issue or commenting on them. 
[12:50] Richard discusses how contributing to open source is harder than most people make it seem to juniors, which led to why he wrote How to Open Source.
[14:30] Julie discusses her first open source contribution with Ruby for Good and how we often forget the complexity of things we do every day for newcomers. She also recommends letting the maintainer know if the instructions for setting up the project are missing or incorrect. 
[17:24] Richard recommends having folks take notes of their own experience and how experienced devs sidestep issues instead of providing feedback to the maintainer.
[19:23] Andrew asks what the prerequisites are for folks interested in How to Open Source.
[22:30] Richard talks about showing up early to projects and it generates some discussion around making sure that you are making valuable contributions, respecting the the maintainers time, and Hacktoberfest.
[27:22] Andrew asks Richard about 24 Pull Requests and where folks can follow him online.

Links


Creators and Guests

Andrew Mason
Host
Andrew Mason
Senior Product Developer at Podia, co-host of the Remote Ruby podcast, and co-editor of the Ruby Radar newsletter
Julie J
Host
Julie J
Software developer at Codecademy
How to Open Source with Richard Schneeman
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