10 Open Source Projects To Contribute To As A Tools Developer
Introduction
Contributing to open source projects is a great way for developers to gain valuable experience, build up their portfolio, and give back to the developer community. As a tools developer, you have the advantage of bringing specialized expertise to projects focused on developer tools and workflows.
There are many benefits to contributing to open source like improving your coding skills, increasing your visibility, making connections with other developers, and learning how large projects are managed. It's also an impactful way to help sustain open source which powers so much technology today.
This article highlights 10 beginner-friendly and prominent open source projects that tools developers can contribute to. There are opportunities across languages, platforms, and domains for you to choose projects matching your interests and skills.
Whether you're just starting out or looking to level up, these open source projects are a great way to build relevant experience, expand your skills, and showcase your work to future employers. Time to start contributing!
Beginner-Friendly Open Source Projects
When getting started with open source, it helps to find projects with an inviting and supportive environment for new contributors. These communities are ideal for first-timers to learn collaboration skills and gain confidence.
First Contributions
First Contributions provides a straightforward tutorial for making your very first open source contribution through simple GitHub issues and pull requests. Its easily digestible documentation and responsive maintainers create a smooth onboarding experience for complete beginners.
As a tools developer, you can enhance the project by improving its tools, documentation, and contributor workflows. Given its impact on onboarding newbies, any improvements make the open source community more accessible.
Up For Grabs
Up For Grabs aggregates projects that actively want new contributors to work on beginner-friendly issues. It makes discovering entry points easier by bringing many options together in one place.
As a tools developer, you could build integrations or improvements to the portal by adding features like filtering and recommendations. Streamlining the contributor experience advances the project’s goals of onboarding newbies.
CodeTriage
CodeTriage helps developers identify and subscribe to open source projects needing assistance. Emails suggest issues to work on tailored to your experience level.
With your tools expertise, you're well-equipped to expand CodeTriage's capabilities for matching projects and contributors. Enhancing this workflow sustains open source by funneling volunteers to projects needing help.
Prominent Open Source Projects
Contributing to widely used open source projects like Kubernetes, React, and Angular is impressive on any resume. And as a tools developer, you can bring specialized expertise to improve their internal tools and workflows.
While prominent, these projects welcome new contributors and offer mentoring. Start small by fixing bugs, improving documentation, and building out testing. Then work your way up to more complex issues and features.
Kubernetes
Kubernetes has become the industry standard container orchestration platform with a thriving open source community. As a tools developer, you can work on Kubernetes’ CLI tools, dashboard, documentation site, and other areas related to its developer experience.
React
React is the popular JavaScript library for building web application UIs. As a tools developer, you can contribute to React DevTools for debugging, build tools like Create React App, error messages, and documentation.
Angular
Angular is the leading TypeScript-based web application framework. As a tools developer, you have the experience to improve Angular’s tooling, IDE integration, documentation site, and components like Angular Material.
Developer Tool Focused Projects
For tools developers looking to build relevant experience, contributing to projects focused on developer tooling is a strategic choice. Your specialized expertise will be invaluable working on tools like linters, test frameworks, and package managers.
And compared to ubiquitous platforms, becoming a core maintainer of a popular dev tool is often more attainable. Use contributing as a pathway to long-term involvement with these projects shaping the developer experience.
ESLint
ESLint is the leading JavaScript linter used across many projects to enforce coding style and conventions. As a tools developer, you can work on ESLint's rules, custom parsers, configuration presets, and plugin ecosystem.
Yeoman
Yeoman streamlines development workflows through its scaffolding system for creating projects from templates called generators. As a tools developer, you can build and improve generators tailored to different platforms, libraries, and use cases.
Jest
Jest is the popular JavaScript testing framework used widely for unit, integration and snapshot testing. As a tools developer, you can contribute to Jest's performance, APIs, CLI, and integration with other dev tools and IDEs.
Tools-centric Organizations
Organizations like the Apache Software Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, and .NET Foundation provide a wealth of tools developer relevant projects to contribute to.
With consistent contributions over time, becoming a committer or maintainer is very attainable. You’ll also get mentorship, connections, and diverse experience working across many projects.
Apache Software Foundation
The ASF supports ubiquitous projects like Hadoop, Kafka, Tomcat, Cassandra, and Beam. As a tools developer, you can contribute to dev tools projects or improve tooling across other ASF projects.
Eclipse Foundation
Eclipse manages popular Java IDEs, modeling tools, frameworks, and runtimes. As a tools developer, you can work on Eclipse IDE plugins, build tools, and other projects focused on developer workflows.
.NET Foundation
The .NET Foundation supports open source .NET projects like editors, libraries, SDKs, and tools. As a tools developer, you have the opportunity to work on projects tailored to the .NET ecosystem.
Conclusion
Contributing to open source provides great opportunities to gain experience, expand your skills, build connections, and make an impact. Beginner-friendly projects offer welcoming environments for first-timers, while prominent projects let you work on large-scale systems using real-world tools and workflows.
For tools developers especially, contributing to projects related to developer tools and workflows allows you to expand your domain expertise. Use open source as a pathway to showcase your skills, gain visibility, and advance your career in developer tools and beyond!
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