Hacktoberfest23: The 5th year contributor

Originally written as a Hacktoberfest 2023 Writing Challenge on dev.to.

Hi friends! 👋

I’m Ayu, a tech blogger, front-end developer, and open source and tech community enthusiast based in the Netherlands.

This is the 5th year I’m participating in Hacktoberfest as a contributor.

https://github.com/adiati98

The highs

One of my Hacktoberfest 2023 pledges is to have one accepted PR.

But… I completed the Hacktoberfest on October 10th! 🎉

List of accepted PRs

1. Update monthly challenge page to Hacktoberfest — Virtual Coffee
2. Add Comment Out to Issue Templates — SheSharp
3. Fix Format of the type of PR — SheSharp
4. Update content in October challenge page — Virtual Coffee
5. Update content in “What is Hacktoberfest” section at Hacktoberfest Initiative website — Virtual Coffee
6. Add October 2023 Newsletter — Virtual Coffee
7. Update Ayu’s profile for Hacktoberfest 2023 — Virtual Coffee
8. Fix broken link to a resource on Hacktoberfest Initiative website — Virtual Coffee
9. Add a pull request template — SheSharp
10. Update README and Transcriptions Guideline — Virtual Coffee

And I still have one PR with the “waiting” status. 😄

This is not the end of my Hacktoberfest 2023 journey. If, along the way, I could contribute more, I would.

But this year, besides contributing, I became a first-time maintainer for open source projects in several tech communities while supporting beginners.

The lows

I want to learn to read, understand a codebase, and contribute to a code-related issue. So, I took an issue to fix some styling with Tailwind in a NextJS project.

I definitely need more practice to read a codebase and to know where to look to fix an issue. I still need to work on this. I’m still busy with this particular issue, so it might be done after the event. Even so, I won’t give up on this unless the maintainer tells me otherwise. 🙌

Growth

Even though it’s very challenging, I should give myself a pat on my back for finally getting the courage to take a coding-related issue and learn to understand a big codebase! 💪

One of my passions is documentation. Through these contributions, I learned much more to see documentation in more detail.

Career-wise, finding a job as a front-end developer is quite challenging.

I always know that helping and supporting other developers through writing or mentoring is my happy place. That’s the reason why I’m pursuing a developer relations, tech community management, or a technical writer role as a career.

But with some coding skills under my belt and eyes for details, I’m also considering learning about testing to pursue a QA tester/engineer career. I’m crossing my fingers and wishing to land a tech job soon! ✨