KIET Group of Institutions Ghaziabad Fest Experience (Hacktoberfest 2023)
Hello there!! As I write this article, I’m reminded of October, which was filled with fun & zeal to compete, collaborate & contribute, all thanks to Hacktoberfest 2023! Before I share about my own Hacktoberfest experience, let me brief you about what is Hacktoberfest!
What’s Hacktoberfest?
The name Hacktoberfest gives away “Hacking during October” vibes, doesn’t it? Well, in my opinion, it sure does! Hacktoberfest is a month-long celebration of open-source projects, their maintainers, & the entire community of contributors. The maintainers tag their repositories, especially for Hacktoberfest & invite open-sorcerers (yes, exactly) from across the world to make their valuable contributions to these repositories. The Hacktoberfest website tracks contributors’ progress based on the number of PRs (pull requests) merged successfully. This entire event takes place in 4 weeks in October & is extremely popular in the entire open-source community.
How I contribute during Hacktoberfest, 2023?
When I registered on the Hacktoberfest website last year as a contributor, right before October began, I was in my freshman year of college & a noob in the open-source community. I had never even created a PR, let alone thought of getting 1 merged, but Hacktoberfest challenged me to get 4 PRs merged in just 4 weeks! I wasn’t sure how I would do that because it wasn’t just that I hadn’t contributed to open-source earlier, but also because I had just begun to learn frontend development at that time & wasn’t sure about making valuable contributions to real-world projects. That was where our college club came to the rescue!!
InnoBeginner, KIET Group of Institutions, Ghaziabad, organizes an event called “Coderspree” every year in October. During this event, the club participates in Hacktoberfest as a repository maintainer & calls for contributions from the students of our college. Let me tell you how it works –
Since we need to get 4 PRs merged in 4 weeks, InnoBeginner brings a solution for all those who are better at DSA than they are at development or those who are noob open-sorcerers. During Coderspree, they give us a bunch of DSA problems every week. We solve them, create a PR in our very own folder in the repository every week for 4 weeks, & PR gets merged when our solutions have been verified by the maintainers. Amazing concept, right?
Well, that was how I was able to complete the challenge within time during Hacktoberfest, 2023. Every week brought us new & interesting questions to strengthen our coding skills!
What I got from participating in Hacktoberfest, 2023?
- I learnt how to create PRs & how to use GitHub Desktop.
- I was able to solve 40+ DSA problems!
- I received some awesome digital swags (Holopin badges)!
- Best of all – as my first PR got merged successfully, the Hacktoberfest team planted for me a Nile Tulip (????????? ?????), a tree species native to eastern Africa, which is cultivated for its large bright yellow flowers!
In conclusion, I would recommend everyone to contribute to open-source during Hacktoberfest every year, & will continue to do so myself as well!