The Journey to My First Open Source PR

I Thought Open Source Was for Geniuses

Looking at contributor lists on famous open source projects on GitHub always made me feel small.

Who are these people that write code like this? Is there room for an ordinary developer like me?

For 3 years, I was a spectator. I clicked stars but never filed a single issue. Then, by chance, I ended up submitting my first PR.

The Catalyst: Finding a Bug

I found a bug in a library I used every day. A date formatting library was displaying the wrong day of the week for certain locales.

In the Korean locale, Tuesday was showing up as Monday.

At first, I spent 3 hours debugging, thinking it was our code. Eventually I traced it into the library's source. There was a typo in the locale data -- an array index was off by one.

I Filed an Issue

I started by opening an issue on GitHub. Reproduction steps, expected result, actual result -- all laid out clearly.

Writing in English was intimidating, but since it was technical content, simple sentences were enough.

Within 30 minutes, a maintainer responded: "Good catch! Would you like to submit a PR?"

My heart started racing. I'd just been invited to contribute.

Preparing the PR

I forked the repo and cloned it. I read the contributing guide carefully.

Branch naming conventions, commit message format, how to run tests -- it was all documented. I'd heard that ignoring the guide gets your PR rejected instantly, so I was meticulous.

The fix itself was simple. Moving one element's position in a locale data array.

The code change was 1 line. But adding a test took an hour. I wrote a test case verifying the day-of-week output for that locale.

I Submitted the PR

I opened the PR with a clear description. What the bug was, why it happened, how I fixed it, and what tests I added.

I attached screenshots comparing the output before and after the fix.

For an hour after submitting, I kept refreshing GitHub notifications. Worried I'd done something wrong.

The Review

The review came the next morning.

The code itself was fine, but the reviewer asked me to verify that other locales didn't have the same issue. I checked all 12 Asian locales -- fortunately, only Korean was affected.

Two days later: "LGTM, merging!" The PR was merged.

It was a small fix, but knowing my code was now part of a library used by thousands of people felt unreasonably satisfying.

What Changed After That First Contribution

Open source became less scary.

I realized you don't need to add major features. Typo fixes, documentation improvements, type definition additions -- small contributions are genuinely welcome.

I've since submitted 8 PRs to 5 projects. Most are small fixes. But with each one, I feel my ability to read other people's code improving.

For Those Just Starting

The common advice to look for "good first issue" labels is cliche but genuinely useful.

That said, fixing a bug you ran into yourself -- like I did -- is a more natural starting point. You have real motivation because it's a problem you personally experienced.

The barrier to open source contribution isn't technical -- it's psychological. The moment you drop the "am I really qualified to do this?" mindset, you're already halfway there.

Even if it's 1 line of code. Just submit it.