The goal of this project is to empower you to contribute code to open source projects on GitHub by teaching you the mechanics of the process in an interactive experience.
In this experience, you are a doer. You take action first, and learn about the action afterwards. This design helps you get comfortable in the unknown, an entity that is omnipresent in the coding world. If you're feeling confused, that's ok. Read the instructions carefully, trust the process, and have fun!
To help guide you through the experience, there will be comment blocks (like the one your reading now) that explains just enough context before your next action.
An open source project is any code that can be freely used, changed, and shared by anyone. An open source project usually contains a license that declares specific terms of use. Open source projects are important because they help develop and spread great ideas and push technology forward.
GitHub is a website that hosts open source projects. A project on GitHub is called a repository (or repo), a folder that holds code. GitHub allows people to collaborate on a repo through features like issues and pull requests. By the end of this experience, you'll understand how to use these features to contribute your ideas to other projects.
Issues (like this one) allow people to track and discuss any task related to the project. Issues are not always problems with the code. They can also be feature requests or questions about how to use the code.
To help organize the project, issues can be tagged with one or more label. When you graduate from this project and are looking for more ways to contribute, look for projects with issues tagged with labels help wanted, good first issue, up-for-grabs, first-timers-only, or something similarly inviting.
Follow contributing guidelines.
If written well, CONTRIBUTING.md will explain everything you need to know in order to successfully contribute to the project. If a project does not have this file, you should ask for guidelines by opening an issue.